Page 50 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2017

Marie and Walter Trout are central to evolving
the research on the role of blues as healer.
Photo by Greg Waterman

The Blues Prescription

By Don Wilcock Based on her PhD dissertation on modern blues fans, her
Walter Trout vividly remembers the low point in the book The Blues – Why It Still Hurts So Good is an exhaustive
hospital. “My son brought me a Strat and said, ‘You need to study on how the blues has served as a healing force in blues
do this and keep in touch with who you are.’ They sat me in a fans’ lives. Not only does Marie – now Dr. Trout – make good on
chair and put the guitar in my hands, and I couldn’t get a note proving the validity of her title, she also shatters more than one
out of it. I just broke down and said, ‘Get it out of my sight. I glass ceiling in the process and gives blues fans the promise of
can’t relate to it anymore.’” a bright future.
In 2014, Walter underwent a successful liver transplant “A lot of people hold things in,” says Grammy-nominated
and was virtually pulled from the jaws of death by the love and Louisiana swamp blues artist Kenny Neal. “They don’t share
caring of his wife, Marie. For nine months, he lay in a hospital [their health problems], and they look at us being artists as
bed contemplating his demise. He wrote unflinchingly about his different from them. We’re no different from anybody else, and
experience on his CD titled Battle Scars. we have our trials and tribulations as well.” Kenny was on the
“I get emails all the time from people saying, ‘I’m going Blues Foundation’s "Blues as Healer" keynote panel that I hosted
through something similar with my health and your album has with him, Walter, Marie and Patti Parks (founder of Nurse ‘n
given me hope.’ Then, I realized the importance of music,” he Blues) at this year’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis.
explains, “but for a while there, I had to literally downsize it in The panel was enlightening as we each testified to the palliative
my brain and tell myself ‘what you did was not that important.’
And that was because I didn’t expect to ever come back to
it, and how was I going to face life not doing what had been
my passion and my entire reason to live since I was like 10
years old?”
How many times have you had friends, family or
acquaintances ask you why you go to blues festivals and listen
to such sad music? To those of us who love the music, it’s a
naïve question. It makes us feel better. Walter’s wife Marie
decided to look into why the blues has become like a religion
in its ability to improve our outlook on life, and in many cases, Walter Trout, Marie Trout, Don Wilcock, Kenny Neal and Patti Parks (l to r) discuss
save our lives. the healing power of the blues at 2017 IBC keynote panel Photo by Andrea Zucker

48 Blues Festival Guide 2017