Nothing short of a hydrogen bomb could stop Buddy Guy’s first solo on “Best Damn Fool,” the opening track on his new powerhouse album
Skin Deep. It’s fierce, intense, caterwauling. Guy dives into a free falling circular riff with the commitment of a locomotive plunging from a bridge, only to leap back into the melody that’s the tune’s backbone a moment before impact.
Through the whole album his playing is relentless and brawny, whether he’s roaring in the title track or sparring with Eric Clapton on “Every Time I Sing the Blues” and with pedal steel wizard
Robert Randolph on “Out in the Woods.”
“It’s like being a prizefighter,” Guys says, reflecting on the disc’s pugnacious character. “If you lay down, you never have a chance to win. But if you keep punching, you might hit the one that lays ’em down.”
With help from Nashville-based producer Tom Hambridge (Susan Tedeschi, George Thorogood, Johnny Winter), Guy has indeed created an album that pulls few punches. And the disc’s July 22 release date puts it in stores eight days before Guy turns 72.
Besides laying down a challenge to all guitarists,
Skin Deep has autobiographical currents that run through many of its songs. “Best Damn Fool” rekindles the macho bravado Guy’s mentor Muddy Waters packed into classics like “Hoochie Koochie Man” and “She’s 19 Years Old” while sounding utterly contemporary.
Allman Brothers Band six-stringer
Derek Trucks brings a textural edge to his playing with Guy on “Too Many Tears,” which Guys sings in duet with Susan Tedeschi, Trucks’ wife, who pours every bit of the warm butterscotch in her voice into the track.
“That’s My Home” has a sweet, restrained turn from Randolph. And they team again on the 12-bar stunner “Out in the Woods,” where Guy has fun with his rural roots (“
I live out in the woods/I’ve got wolf blood in my veins.”) as he tugs rich, hot-tube-saturated notes from his guitar and Randolph conjures up a solo that sounds like a steel-stringed whale’s song.
“Hammer and Nail” and “Smell the Funk” both put the blues-rock hammer down hard, and Guy outlines out his musical roots and routes in the latter, explaining, “
I laid it down in Louisiana/And took it to Chicago with me.”
The most poignant song is the title track, which subtly attacks the demon of racism by drawing on the classic bluesman’s memories of growing up in rural Lettsworth, Louisiana. “
Man in Louisiana,” Guys sings, “
He never called me by my name/He said, ‘Boy do this and boy do that’/But I never once complained/I knew he had a good heart/But he just didn’t understand/That I needed to be treated/Just like any other man.” All the while Trucks’ subtle, angelic slide underscores Guy’s message that “
skin deep/underneath we’re all the same.”
That is, of course, until it comes to playing guitar like Buddy Guy, whose reputation as a singular force in American music in reaffirmed in
Skin Deep.Click
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