The legendary Robin Trower continues to be prolific with the release of a brand-new studio album, Come And Find Me due on 25th April via Provogue – In fact you can listen to the first taster from the long player ‘A Little Bit of Freedom’ right here at RAMzine.
Come And Find Me was Tracked sporadically over a twelve-month period at Newbury’s Studio 91 (the setting for all Trower’s recent solo albums), the genesis of the album speaks volumes about the guitarist’s late-period momentum and high standards.
New single ‘A Little Bit of Freedom’ starts in combative style with a blast of wah-wah guitar and a bold first line: “I don’t need no-one to think for me”. The man himself commenting: “I had a strong sense that red tape and rules are really constricting things in the world,” then continued: “Too much red tape, not enough freedom to think – It’s got to where you feel straitjacketed.”
Trower stands on the cusp of a whirlwind year that will see him put down heavy miles across America and the UK, “I’m chomping at the bit, because I had to cancel a US tour last year due to an operation” he noted – You’ll find a full list of UK dates below, with tickets available here.
As he reaches his eighth decade, with a lifetime of accolades and a seminal body of music behind him, Robin Trower is still chasing the biggest high he knows. It always starts the same way, with a road-scuffed Fender Stratocaster and a revved-up Marshall amplifier, those skilful fingers exploring the fretboard until a riff sticks and a new song ignites. And from the cultural flashpoint of sixties London with Procol Harum, through 1974’s stadium-filling Bridge Of Sighs, right up to this year’s Come And Find Me, it’s these addictive moments of creation that have kept the guitarist vital, relevant and contemporary while his peers trade on past glories.
Never one to let interviewers too deep into his headspace, Trower once explained that each new album is a snapshot of his situation and worldview at that moment. As such, Come And Find Me is the best way to know the guitarist better in 2025, and this new record is clearly not the work of a lofty rock star but an engaged participant in the real world, with relatable loves, hates, hopes and fears. “Musically, there’s a strong R&B flavour behind it, but it’s obviously rock ‘n’ roll,” he explained. “Lyrically, I think the world has become a lot darker in the last ten or twenty years. But there’s always hope. There’s more good people in the world than there are bad.”
Always a sociable musician and generous collaborator, Trower enlisted his trusted studio band for Come And Find Me. Drummer Chris Taggart once again drives these powerful songs, with returning US bassist Glenn Letsch providing low end on ‘Tangled Love’ and ‘I Fly Straight To You’ (Trower played the remainder).
Long-standing vocalist Richard Watts brilliantly interprets the guitarist’s highly personal lyric sheets, while guest singer Jess Hayes is a head-turning addition for ‘Tangled Love’’s tough, choppy soul. For the fairy dust, Trower turned to Studio 91’s owner Sam Winfield for the engineering and final mix – but the guitarist was intimately involved with every element.
Trower’s ambivalent stance to the times is writ large on cuts like the tremolo shudder of ‘The Future Starts Right Here’ (“We’re becoming so tribal and taking sides, like, ‘Oh, you’re not with me – I must hate you’”) and the stinging ‘Without A Trace’ – “That song is about all the lies in politics, mostly, and on social media. You know, this absolute out-and-out lying, to try and influence people,” Trower declared.
Elsewhere, the guitarist’s famed musicianship takes centre stage. Try the glowering angst and molten solo of ‘Take This Hurt Away’ (“That song actually started when I thought to myself one day, ‘I wonder what I would come up with if they asked me to write a song for a James Bond film…’”). Or spin the swampy ‘One Go Round’, that lived up to the ‘seize-the-day’ lyric with its rapid birth in the studio.
Fiery, thoughtful and fuelled by real human emotion in a time of machine-generated music, Come And Find Me is hardly the work of a rock icon resting on his laurels. On the contrary: keenly aware of passing time, Robin Trower has made it his late-period mission to capture as many shards of magic as possible. “In one way, I can’t believe it, that I’m still going at 80,” he says. “It’s kind of scary. You know that you’re way down the road, and you could hit a brick wall at any time. But I still love doing this. For me, there’s nothing more rewarding than working on a new song…”
The full track listing for Come And Find Me is ‘A Little Bit of Freedom’, ‘One Go Round’, ’I Would Lose My Mind’, ‘Come And Find Me’, ‘Take This Hurt Away’, ‘The Future Starts Right Here’, ‘ Tangled Love’, ‘Capture The Life Begun’, ‘Without A Trace’, ‘I Fly Straight To You’ and ‘Time Stood Still’ – After checking out the bruised, soulful manly sexy blues of A Little Bit of Freedom’ you can order the album here.
