It’s a Tuesday night, and St Kilda’s iconic esplanade welcomes the autumn sea breeze. Outside the Palais Theatre, a healthy-sized crowd has gathered in anticipation of festivities to come. The legendary Buddy Guy is in town, and rumour has it he’ll be taking front and centre – but not before everyone is lulled inside by the soulful stylings of a Mr. Jonny Lang, who has been rightly selected as a supporting act on the icon’s Australian tour.
The venue decor gives off a majestic hue that puts gig-goers in the appropriate spectator state (the theatre is distractingly pretty, of course, until the lights fade and our focus turns). All eyes cling to the stage and Lang and his quintet take their places very unassumingly. There is a warmth in the young musician’s smile almost immediately putting punters at ease. But then again, it’s another story when he picks up his guitar and rips unflinchingly into his knock-em-dead blues set.
The sound is so powerful that it literally knocks the breath out of the audience, who becomes eerily still. But when the band joins, everyone remembers their dancing feet and a ruckus of appropriate proportions erupts like the sound outta Lang’s own pipes. For a 30-year-old with small beginning in North Dakota, one can’t help but wonder where on earth he acquired his deep, sandpaper snarl. His vocals sound wonderfully wounded and well beyond his years, but he is able to harness the meaning of his lyrics so easily that its clear his songwriting talent is something he must’ve been born with.
His guitar playing alone is clearly incredible enough to have him open for a legend such as Buddy Guy (the two collaborated in 1998 and 2010), but it’s his entire package, as well as the backing of an outstanding ensemble of musicians, with a special nod to his drummer, that starts the show off on the right foot. The song that steals the first act is a dynamic rendition of “Lie To Me”, which sees Lang give an acoustic, soulful intro later welcoming the band back on stage for a satisfying full-batter of our eardrums.
After a short cigarette break or visit to the Mr. Whippy van during intermission, the crowd is even more energised and vocal about their excitement when they return to their seats for the main attraction. Adult men begin to shriek like little girls would at a Justin Bieber concert. When the lights dim and the man of the hour takes the stage – wearing blue, nonetheless – it is to an uproarious applause. Guy reciprocates by doing the only thing he confesses he knows how to do – play the guitar like a god. And by “play” this scribe means punish. Yes, that’s right. The second Buddy Guy’s fingers touch his guitar strings everyone on the planet who has ever picked up one and had a go is being put to shame. It’s exhilarating.
His instrument is like a fifth limb, and his fingers dance about the neck like a skilled weaver’s would around a tapestry. Visually speaking, his display of talent is mind-boggling, but aurally? It’s another planet. Guy’s bandmates disappear into the background behind his virtuoso musicianship, until he brings two of them forward to engage in a bit of a musician’s joust, firstly with his backing guitarist and then with his keyboardist, who this scribe confesses has a slight advantage over the backing guitarist simply because he plays a different instrument to the legend.
The catalogue of classic blues songs Guy has to choose from would make anyone blush (and not just his own, for he can comfortably master anyone from Clapton to Santana to Hendrix), but the crowd is pleased to hear solid renditions of Muddy Waters‘ “She’s 19 Years Old” and John Lee Hookers “Boom Boom”. Buddy Guy original “74 Years Young” off his most recent album, Living Proof, gets its lyrics changed because, as he explains matter-o-fact, “I wrote that song last year. I’m 75 now.”
Guy is as charismatic as his music is intoxicating. His set is full of humour and guitar slapstick from beginning to end. He not only plays the blues but makes it look easier than tying shoelaces. With his amps cranked to 12, his guitar fills all frequencies in the theatre and leaves the licks tattooed to your brain for the rest of the night.
Later in the set he talks about his upbringing and how much it had an affect on his music. Guy is one of many senior African-Americans who made his living as a boy picking cotton on plantations in the south. “You see,” he explains, “growing up poor, having nothing, no education and no future, now that’s having the blues.” It wasn’t until later in his life that he found the guitar (hard to believe he wasn’t playing straight out of the womb) and relocated to Chicago, where he both pioneered the blues movement there and made a name for himself. His softer song “Skin Deep” is an ode to the strength and teachings of his mother, and he plays it with the proper passion of a rock ballad.
The set hits its peak when Guy disappears from stage and later reappears in the audience, with guitar in tow and a smile as wide as the isles he roams. Again, the grown men in the audience call out for his attention, and Guy obliges them by playing solos right before their eyes. One particularly lucky kid gets to play a few chords while Guy strums, and then like a flash he is back on stage to throw out some picks and thank us for our time with him. The truth of the matter is he’d just spent about 20 minutes connecting with his audience, breaking the barriers so many musicians have stayed so firmly planted behind for so many years.
“The first time I came out here was in 72,” he exclaims proudly, “and I love when ya’ll invite me out here. I’d play all night, but there’s a curfew looming!” It’s at this point he bids us farewell and leaves his band to conclude the night.
In his old age, you’d like to believe that Buddy Guy has as much energy as he did early on in his career, but to play as hard as he does for as long as he has been doing, you’d think he’d earned his right to go back to his hotel and enjoy room service.
– Cayce Hill
