Robin Trower

“The blues really is what you would call the fountainhead of everything I’ve done musically,” British guitarist Robin Trower said. “Certainly, in practically everything I’ve written I’ve tried to sort of get that feeling of the blues into it.” Trower, 52, started off his career as a musician in London by being a student of early rock and roll music.

“I first started off with real rock and roll,”he said. “Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and then I graduated on to Chuck Berry. I was playing guitar in clubs around London in a rock and roll group called The Paramounts, when I first heard the blues music of BB King. That was a turning point and a cross roads you might say in my studies.”

In his three decade long career, the master electric guitarist has gone from The Paramounts, a group he recorded with from 1962 to 1966, to Procol Harum. Trower remained in Procol Harum as the group’s lead guitarist until departing to pursue a solo career in 1972.

Throughout the years, even though Trower has recorded many blues tracks, he has secretly wanted to release an album of strictly blues music.

“I’ve had people say to me once or twice over the last three or four years,”Trower said,”‘Why don’t you do a blues album?’ but it has been on my mind for a very long time really. I knew that one day I would feel up to it whenever I thought I was good enough to do it.” The result of Trower’s desire to record an all blues album is his most recent release titled,”someday blues”, which available nationally on the independent label, V-12 Records Inc.. Trower and his manager Derek Sutton, own the record label. “It was Derek’s idea that we own our own record label,” Trower said. “A, because no major label wanted to sign me for anything. And B, to enable me to make the music I wanted to make. The major labels, they want you to be commercial basically. You can’t blame them, they’re in it to make money after all.” In addition to playing all guitars on the “someday blues”, Trower, for the first time in his career also sings the vocals.

Trower is currently on a national tour supporting the album. “We do five or six songs off of “someday blues” every show,”he said. “The material has been received well. I’ve always had an idea of the sound I’ve wanted to make and on this tour,we’re playing right along with that plan. On-stage, it’s a very basic, sort of stripped down sound. Bass,drums, rhythm guitar,lead guitar and vocals. And that’s it. That’s the way this whole album and the music we play on this tour has been.” Despite a three year hiatus from touring as a solo performer, Trower finds he still has a faithful following here in the States. “The tour has been received wonderfully,” Trower said. “We’ve had great crowds coming out to see us and the audiences love the new stuff, which is very encouraging to me.” Trower is completely removed from the modern rock music scene here in the USA. He does not even listen to any of the modern rock groups or modern rock radio. “For the most part,” Trower said,”for my own pleasure, to be honest, I listen to a lot of 1920’s and 1930’s popular music, stuff that’s not blues.

I love the vibe about that old stuff.

There’s something about it that’s magical. It’s definitely something that’s been lost by the rock and roll recording artists today. From time to time,”he continued,”I do listen to blues for my enjoyment. However, it’s not a lot, because I feel like all my favorite stuff, I know it well and I’ve played it to death. There hasn’t been anything to come along in the blues field for years and years that I’m fond of. There’s some very good people, but it just isn’t quite it for me..”