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Steamboat Springs — If a musician can't play with soul, blues guitarist Walter Trout doesn't want him in his band.

"Just think of the phrase blues and what that encompasses," Trout said. "It's not really about technique; it's about feeling. So if you're playing this kind of music and you don't have feeling in it, you might as well go drive a cab."

Since he first picked up an electric guitar more than 40 years ago, Trout has put out more than a dozen albums of his own music. Before going solo in 1989, he was a sideman to acts including John Lee Hooker, Canned Heat, John Mayall, Big Mama Thornton, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, Bobby Hatfield of The Righteous Brothers and Bo Diddley.

Trout comes through Steamboat Springs on his way to the Greeley Blues Jam where he'll headline a bill that includes Marcia Ball and Charlie Musselwhite. He plays with his band today at the Old Town Pub. Trout talked with the Steamboat Pilot & Today about his music career, playing with the greats and finding his own style.

STEAMBOAT PILOT & TODAY: What initially attracted you to the blues?

WALTER TROUT: I think it was the feeling in the music, that it can just be language to express feelings and emotions and thoughts. : I was more attracted to music that had some depth to it than what was playing on the radio.

SP&T: Musically, how did you transition from being a blues sideman to having your own bands?

WT: I had all those years as a sideman and I played with all these great blues acts, these legendary blues acts, and I think through that I was labeled as being sort of just a blues player. But through all of that, I loved all of the American roots forms of music. : I've really tried to in my own way put it all together. I've tried to create a sort of hybrid blending of all that stuff. :

The whole time I was out being a sideman and touring with those folks, I was writing on my own, and I actually had my own band that was the house band at a little bar at the beach here where I live in California. I used to come home from those tours and really feel like when I went down to the little bar at the corner, that's when I really got to play, because I could go in there and sort of play anything.

SP&T: Was there one headliner who influenced you more as a sideman?

WT: I learned a little something different from everybody I was with. But the one thing I knew at an early age that you had to do as a sideman, when you got a job playing guitar with somebody : I would get all the records I could by that person, and I would immerse myself in their music, and I would try to become a part of their vision.

You couldn't get up with Big Mama Thornton or John Lee Hooker and start whipping into Jimi Hendrix solos; it just wouldn't work. You had to respect where they were coming from musically. : By doing that : when you went from one to the other, it was a real learning experience.