CAPA Welcomes Buddy Guy To The Palace Theatre

Legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy returns to Columbus as part of his “Damn Right Farewell” Tour, marking the last extensive touring of his celebrated career. Guy will be in concert at the Palace Theatre, 34 W. Broad St., on Wednesday, November 15, at 7:30 pm. Tom Hambridge opens.

Tickets start at $44 and may be purchased at the CBUSArts Ticket Center at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.), online at www.capa.com or www.CBUSArts.com, and by phone at (614) 469-0939 beginning at 10 am Friday, June 23.

At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city's halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received 8 GRAMMY Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #23 in its “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

In 2019, Buddy Guy won his 8th and most recent GRAMMY Award for his 18th solo LP, The Blues Is Alive And Well.

In July of 2021, in honor of Buddy Guy's 85th birthday, PBS American Masters released “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase The Blues Away,” a new documentary following his rise from a childhood spent picking cotton in Louisiana to becoming one of the most influential guitar players of all time. The documentary features new interviews with Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr, and more.

Though Buddy Guy will forever be associated with Chicago, his story actually begins in Louisiana. One of five children, he was born in 1936 to a sharecropper's family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans. Buddy was just seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift “guitar”—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother's hairpins.

In 1957, he took his guitar to Chicago, where he would permanently alter the direction of the instrument, first on numerous sessions for Chess Records playing alongside Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the rest of the label's legendary roster, and then on recordings of his own. His incendiary style left its mark on guitarists from Jimmy Page to John Mayer. “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people,” said Eric Clapton at Guy's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. “My course was set, and he was my pilot.”

Seven years later, July 2012 proved to be one of Buddy Guy's most remarkable years ever. He was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture; earlier in the year, at a performance at the White House, he even persuaded President Obama to join him on a chorus of “Sweet Home Chicago.” Also in 2012, he published his long-awaited memoir, “When I Left Home.”

These many years later, Buddy Guy remains a genuine American treasure and one of the final surviving connections to an historic era in the country's musical evolution.

Tom Hambridge is a three-time Grammy winning producer, songwriter, and drummer. He has recorded with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards, Van Morrison, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Gregg Allman, Chuck Berry, Susan Tedeschi, and Johnny Winter to name a few. As a songwriter, Tom has had over 800 of his songs recorded by such diverse artists such as Eric Clapton, B.B. King, ZZ Top, Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, Keb' Mo', George Thorogood, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and many more. As a solo artist he has released six critically acclaimed albums.

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