Since 1989, few winter nights in Chicago have been hotter than the Thursday through Sunday evenings in January and early February which make up Buddy Guy’s annual live performance residency, an incredible run now spanning nearly four decades.
Since ‘89, Guy’s Wabash Avenue club Legends has celebrated live blues music nightly, moving a few blocks north in 2010 where it now sits in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood just about a mile from the Chess Records building in the home of the electrified blues.
Boasting shocking appearances by artists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Bowie, Derek Trucks, Sudasn Tedeschi, Slash and countless others along the way, Legends now attracts blues fans from around the world at the start of each calendar year, celebrating the legacy of Guy, 88, anew.
“People from other states just flock in because you don’t have this kind of club that’s survived – even before COVID,” noted Guy during a conversation at Legends last year. “Joliet is about, what, 40 miles from here? They used to have great clubs. Gary, Indiana used to have blues clubs. None of that survived. California is the same way. In New York, B.B. King’s club closed down. Long Island, all of them are gone now,” said the guitarist.
“I started this because throughout my years when I didn’t have a name – I was just playing locally around here with mostly local guys – and every January, the weather would be so bad that if you did try to travel around in a little station wagon, it’d be snowing,” Guy explained. “And so I just said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna try to go on the road that month. I’ll just stay and play.’ And, finally, I got a little club in 1972 called the Checkerboard. And I just said I would play the whole month there,” he said, referencing the Checkerboard Lounge, Guy’s south side precursor to Legends which famously hosted an on stage blues summit featuring Guy, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones in 1981.
Guy left the Checkerboard in 1985, opening Legends four years later, fortuitous timing as his 1991 album Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues would soon crossover to the mainstream, exposing the music of Guy, then 55, to a wider, younger audience while marking the beginning of one of music’s more remarkable second acts.
Each night of the Legends residency features a pair of unique openers, with this year’s run including appearances ranging anywhere from 26 year old blues phenom Kingfish to 91 year old legend Bobby Rush.
The Legends sets double not just as a celebration of Guy’s vaunted catalog but as a trip through the blues canon, with the guitarist taking fans on a unique musical journey from the Delta blues north.
Earlier this month, “Downtown” Charlie Brown hit the Legends stage for an acoustic set ahead of a performance by John Primer and the Real Deal Blues Band, with Guy and his group closing out the evening following an all hands jam.
“I played with Muddy Waters – we always gotta do this one,” said Primer with a smile, working up his take on “Mannish Boy.”
Primer, 79, arrived in Chicago in 1963, working places like Maxwell Street. Performing with Willie Dixon, Primer would join Waters side in 1980, appearing on stage with him during the aforementioned iconic Checkerboard summit.
Kicking off the set, Primer and his four piece backing group rolled through a shuffle in G, with Primer working in a snippet of James Cotton’s “Take a Message.”
Primer played on that studio cut while Real Deal Blues Band guitarist Tom Holland served time alongside Cotton for over a decade too, performing on the Grammy-nominated 2010 album Giant.
“When I met Tom, he was 15 years old – now we old men,” said Primer on stage at Legends with a smile, glancing left at Holland. “When I started my first band, it was Tom. Now he does his own thing with the Shufflekings,” recalled the bluesman, setting up “I Got the Same Old Blues.”
Holland returned the gesture, staring daggers to his right as both guitarists locked in, shredding duelling solos as the track drew to a close.
Steve Bell, who recently appeared in the Oscar nominated Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, handled harmonica on “Hard Working Woman” while Primer applied a scorching slide to “Hard Times.”
But, with just two performances left in the 2025 residency, the evening belonged to Guy, who took to the stage coffee mug in hand, locking in with keyboard player Dan Souvigny as he tore through a frenetic solo at the top of “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.”
“Thank you,” said Guy, acknowledging the rapturous applause of the sold out crowd. “I must tell you, if you don’t like the blues you’re in the wrong f–ing house!” said the guitarist, setting up a soulful run through Dixon’s “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.” “S–t!” screamed Guy midway through, sipping from his mug as the four piece group stretched out early.
Revisiting Eddie Cooley, Guy and company offered up their take on “Fever,” conjuring up images of the smoky clubs of yore as Guy worked in a bit of Hendrix during Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”
“This is just my opinion, but I think the greatest guitar player I ever heard sounds something like this,” said Guy later as the crowd shouted out the name of B.B. King in response.
The guitar handed to Guy by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in the 2008 Martin Scorsese-directed concert film Shine a Light hangs above the Legends bar, one at which Guy stopped for a drink following a quick trip down Wabash Avenue, where the octogenarian bluesman shocked downtown tourists and passersby as he performed street side from the sidewalk adjacent to the club.
But the evening’s unquestionable highlight featured Primer and Holland joining Guy, daughter Carlise and Guy’s band on stage, drawing the evening to a close shortly after midnight as Guy headed for the merch table.
While the 2025 residency has officially wrapped, Guy is nevertheless ready for a busy year, launching a tour alongside Tedeschi Trucks Band in May ahead of a solo run taking him into mid-July, extending his farewell tour via the “Damn Right Encore!” run.
“They don’t play this type of blues on the radio anymore,” said Buddy Guy. “But I’m gonna keep playin’ it!”
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