Description Grammy-winning artists Buddy Guy and Jonny Lang are set to take the stage Tuesday at your Thunder Bay Community Auditorium on April 11, 2010.
Guy, a blues legend, has won five Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards along with the Presidential National Medal of Arts. He released his first album in 1965 and has influenced many notable musicians including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
And he's still cranking.
Guy released his most recent album, "Skin Deep" in 2008. "Skin Deep" consists of all original material and includes guest appearances from Clapton, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks.
"This is the first time I really had more control," Guy said in a statement on his official Web site, buddyguy.net. "Everything in here is new. Most of the other albums have been a few new songs and then back to the older stuff or the covers which is fine, but you gotta be creative. I would talk to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck when they were all making records, and they would tell me that they would go in the studio with the freedom to play what they wanted. This time, I had that."
Guy, now 72, found inspiration for his new album from his youth spent in Louisiana during the era ruled by Jim Crow laws.
"I used to play with this boy, ride horses, down close to where I was born," he said. "Then when we were 13, his parents made us stop. They used to say you had black blood or white blood, but we'd get a flashlight and hold it up to our skin and we'd just see red blood. That's what I mean by 'skin deep.'"
The album addresses the racism Guy endured and his belief in equality. "Underneath we are all the same" he says in the title track's chorus.
Although only 28 years old, blues musician Jonny Lang can be considered a veteran of the blues, having released his first album at age 15.
"I haven't known any other way," Lang said of his career.
When Lang was 11, he saw his first live blues performance in Fargo, N.D., by the "Bad Medicine Blues Band" and knew right then he wanted to create blues music.
After Lang began taking lessons with the band's guitarist, the group re-created themselves as Kid Jonny Lang and the Big Band with Lang in the lead.
Since then, his musical career has spanned 15 years and included five albums.
His latest gospel-inspired album "Turn Around," released in 2006, earned him a Grammy.
"Every record I've done has felt progressively more and more like the real me," Lang said. "But more than anything I've done, this one comes straight from my heart."
Lang, who has toured with The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, cites B.B. King and Buddy Guy as mentors.
"It's wonderful to get to play with (Guy)," Lang said. "He has always been a big influence with me musically. I still feel like a little kid to him. We've had some great memories. I feel in a way like he is an old friend."
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