My wife and I caught Buddy Guy at the Lerner Theatre in Elkhart, Indiana. It was our first show at the Lerner, even though we’ve lived a 30-minute drive from Elkhart for over 20 years. I don’t know how this happened, but we got some good seats (after a ticket mix-up at the box office) and settled in for the opener – 17-year-old blues guitarist wunderkind Quinn Sullivan.
Sullivan first played on stage with Buddy Guy when he was seven years old. He shreds like he’s been playing for far longer than seventeen years. He played a few cuts from his three albums, as well as a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.”
Buddy Guy came out to meet a rowdy crowd (many of whom had done plenty of pre-game drinking) and got right down to business by breaking a guitar string on the first note.
Once a replacement guitar was brought to him, he proceeded to shred through “Damn Right I Got the Blues” and then played around with classics like “Rock Me Baby,” “Fever,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and “Who’s Making Love to Your Old Lady?”
Guy had plenty of fun stories as well, including one lively rant about genetically engineered chickens and tomatoes (“When I was a kid, a tomato was like cotton. You could make a sandwich out of it. Now you get a tomato and you could play baseball with it.”) and how you should buy produce that still has bugs on it (“Because it hasn’t been sprayed with stuff you shouldn’t eat.”).
One wild part of the show was when he played a guitar solo using a drum stick and a shirt.
Trust me, it worked. It worked quite well, in fact. He was flailing his guitar with a T-shirt and playing Cream riffs while doing it. He also walked through the crowd, shredding and singing the whole time.
He brought his son, Greg Guy, and Quinn Sullivan back onstage for the end. His back-up band was, just like the last time I saw him, killer. They can play seemingly any tune and stop on a dime. Greg Guy and Sullivan played along during Buddy’s hit “Feels Like Rain” and then tore through Clapton and Hendrix covers to end the show.
The show was close to three hours total, and a fun performance that had everyone cheering and hollering. Buddy Guy is eighty-one years old now, so don’t miss him if he comes close. He’ll probably tour until he drops dead, but make sure you see him shred. There aren’t many living legends anymore.
Keep your mind open.
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