Buddy Guy
Roseland Theatre
April 23
with Moreland & Arbuckle
21+
Tickets
Any discussion of Buddy Guy invariably involves a recitation of his colossal musical resume and hard-earned accolades. He's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a chief guitar influence to rock titans like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, and Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues.
Buddy has received five Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts.
Yet despite this long list of achievements, Buddy Guy and his music remain as vital as ever. Just this year, Buddy appeared on the big screen nationwide with a show-stopping performance in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film, Shine A Light. At the age of 72, he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone for the first time, as part of the magazine's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs" package (his cataclysmic 1961 recording of "Stone Crazy" made the list). And now, the release of Skin Deep an album of all original material, with guest appearances from fellow guitar wizards Eric Clapton, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi, and Derek Trucks adds yet another dimension to this master's legendary career.
Buddy says he's excited about the new ground broken on Skin Deep, and about continuing to find new challenges to set for himself. "If you get too old to learn, you might as well go out of this world backwards," he says. "It's like being a prizefighter, if you lay down, you never have a chance to win. But if you keep punching, you might hit 'em with the one that lays 'em down. "My eyes and ears are wide open," he concludes. "You never know what's gonna happen."
Buddy Guy's wide-ranging impact on the music of the 20th Cenutry is not easy to fully encapsulate, but one of his more renowned disciples does him justice:
"He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people," Eric Clapton remembered at Guy's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. "My course was set, and he was my pilot."