Sonny Landreth
February 25, 2020
Once, a theater space in Somerville, MA
Sonny Landreth… you not going to see a more spectacular display of slide guitar virtuosity for a long time.
The silver bottleneck on his pinky flashed as fleetingly as a shooting star as he nimbly rode it up and down every inch of the guitar’s neck, caressing, thrashing, plucking every inch with jaw dropping riffs, his hands inches apart from the bottom of the neck of his Resonator and the throat of the guitar body. Mesmerizing.
The blues he played in the first half of his set was lyrically drop dead beautiful and played with the atmospherics that few players can emulate. Not much body language, the man just sat there, whaled away with alternating finger fast slides and achingly slow holds to caress one note. Gasps were audible, some of them mine. His percussionist and rhythm guitar player were on stage but all eyes were on Sonny.
Long gray hair flowing straight down to his shoulders, faded shirt and jeans, he looked more like a geek at the back of a computer store. When he sat on a wooden chair and made that guitar sound like the sound track to a rocket to heaven or a slow decent into the blue room in hell, the rest of the outside world simply disappeared from consciousness. For many, he ascended a throne for the next 45 minutes.
Sonny got into an instrumental run for the second half of his set. As brilliantly as he played, my ears got used to the unremitting genius of his playing and longed for another killer blues song to complement his playing. The full house at Once Theater in Somerville didn’t seem to mind.
You’re gonna have to go some to find virtuoso slide guitar playing like this. In the spirit of Mardi Gras, which was today, he played a zippy Zydeco song with so much zap that a few couples found enough space to dance in the corner.
He’s on the road with Long Tall Marcia Ball. There, my friends, is a double bill of Louisiana music that has more energy than a bomb hurricane.
Photo, videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
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