The rugged stretch of northern Denmark, which Walter Trout calls home, is often referred to as ‘cold Hawaii’. It’s easy to see why. As we drive towards his house in the fishing village of Vorupør, the North Sea lurches to our right in towering, frothy waves – daring surfers to tackle them. On land, other natural scenes feel more Scandi: tall evergreens, small herds of cows, scrubby grass dunes dotted with World War II bunkers.
We’re in the car with Trout and his Danish wife/manager, Marie, when a language lesson begins.
“It’s very soft,” Marie says of the Danish word for ‘thank you’, as she steers us past a striped lighthouse towards the beach. Thirty years in California with Walter have Americanised her accent, but Denmark is in her blood. “Tak, like that, tak.”
So far, her husband’s grasp of Danish is a little sketchy. As she confides later, that hasn’t helped his application for Danish residency.
“Takka-takka-takka tak!” he cackles in broad New Jersey tones, drumming his hands on the dashboard, grinning mischievously. Briefly the storied, 71-year-old bluesman is like a schoolboy, even with his dark eyes, hand tremors and mottled skin on his arms; signifiers of more than just age. Dark times. Wild times. The liver transplant that saved him eight years ago.
Walter Trout has a more turbulent past than most, much of it tracing back to his violent (former prisoner-ofwar) stepfather in Laurel Springs, New Jersey. Today, pulling faces for our
