ABSTRACT: 01:49 Trout reflects on his set on the Acura Stage. 02:40 Trout speaks to how going on stage was once quite difficult, due to a prolonged undiagnosed bout of Hepatitis C, and how a liver transplant turned it all around. 05:12 Trout attributes the cirrhosis that necessitated his liver transplant to “a misspent youth.” 05:45 Trout explains that he wanted to be a blues player, the reason he moved to LA, because the music moved him like nothing else, though he enjoys a variety of genres. 07:06 Trout explains that he’s on tour an average of nine months a year, so picks up a guitar daily, but mostly in front of crowds. He is, however, taking lessons for the first time in his life, which he says are helping him improve, though he finds them challenging. 08:43 Demonstration, new technical knowledge from his lessons. 09:10 Trout, describing music as “limitless,” explains how he tries to push himself to improve. 10:55 Trout describes playing with John Lee Hooker, and the band’s departure from the twelve bar structure. 12:23 Trout explains how he got the gig with Hooker, in which he was the only white person in an all-black band, which backed up a huge number of greats, some of whom he lists. 15:01 Trout says he began writing songs early on, eventually switching from ballads and rock tunes to the blues, heeding a girlfriend’s advice to avoid the themes of missing a former lover and bribing lovers with material goods. 16:26 Demonstration, “I Got the Blues for My Baby” 17:28 Demonstration 18:49 Trout speaks of his time in the hospital, revealing that he assumed he wouldn’t make it, and his recovery. Initially frustrated that his first songwriting attempts after re-learning to play were “clichéd shit” he took his wife’s advice to write about what’d happened to him. 22:40 Trout admits that the album he wrote during his recovery, Battle Scars, may well be his best, but he’s hoping not to have peaked, as he continues seeking betterment. 23:57 Trout discusses “Gonna Live Again,” which closes that album, and he describes as a conversation with god, asking why he’s been kept around. 24:47 Demonstration, “Gonna Live Again” 27:33 Trout explains that his “misspent youth” involved two years with heroin, to which he was introduced by Jesse Ed Davis, who he met almost immediately upon moving to LA. He tells how Carlos Santana effectively performed an intervention, resulting in his sobriety since 1987. 33:32 Trout reveals his recipe for psychological health, realizing that each day present an opportunity to make choices that increase your self-esteem and self-respect. 34:06 Trout tells how his parents were both music aficionados. 34:36 Demonstration, “Hard Times” 35:28 Trout shares how lucky he is, having had parents who never told him to get ‘a real job.’ 35:45 Trout explains that he has a brother who he never sees, his being a sea captain. 36:18 Trout describes We’re All In This Together, the project that followed Battle Scars, in which he decided to seek joy. 38:32 Demonstration 39:42 Trout explains that though he was friendly with B.B. King, he never got a chance to play him, missing an opportunity not long before he died because he succumbed to jet lag. 41:36 Trout describes his decision to leave John Mayall’s band to form his own, a decision made on his thirty-eighth birthday.