Review: In Clearwater, Buddy Guy stages a triumphant farewell to touring [PHOTOS]

At some point during his extensive “Damn Right Farewell Tour,” blues legend Buddy Guy told his friend Bobby Rush that the two of them, and Willie Nelson, are the only ones in their age bracket still constantly grinding on the road.

Guy first hit the blues scene the year Dwight D. Eisenhower started his first term as president, and is an early example of being “your favorite artist’s favorite artist.” The 88-year-old guitarist inspired Jimi Hendrix, befriended Eric Clapton and B.B. King, and got the chance to work and be mentored by just about anybody who’s anybody in a post-Robert Johnson Chicago blues scene.

In 2022, Guy decided that it’s time to take it easy on the travel, and announced what ended up being a year-and-a-half long run of farewell gigs. Rest assured, he’s not retiring cold turkey. He’ll still play his blues club residency in Chicago, and Guy surely has a few more New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival sets left in him. But after watching some of his heroes’ skills crap out onstage as they got older, Guy fears that the same thing will happen to him if he continues traveling the globe for much longer.

Clad in a white polka-dot button-down and a black baseball cap repping his blues club, Guy wasted no time in kicking off his last-ever tour show with “Damn Right I Got The Blues” Saturday night at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall. He doesn’t make as many faces anymore, but would still bounce his junk around and briefly hold his creamy Stratocaster backwards, just to keep it charming.

His “Damn Right Blues Band” is still super tight, too. Keyboardist Daniel Souvigny filled the shoes of Guy’s decade-long keyboardist Marty Sammon, who died in 2022. Guy also stepped to the side a few times so second guitarist Ric Hall could tear up a Fender of his own mid-song.

And drummer Tom Hambridge even got to open the show with his own stand up drum set, and a slew of blues songs, many of which he wrote for other artists. One that stood out was “Upside of Lonely,” which Hambridge wrote while in a fantastic mood for a blues-song-seeking Foghat last decade. After the ask was made, he made it a challenge to write a “happy blues song,” and sure enough, it depicts all the best parts of a toxic partner no longer being in your life, in a bluesy fashion.

Guy paid tribute to Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and most notably, B.B. King with “How Blue Can You Get?” On that one—like on a good majority of songs that came earlier in his set—Guy stopped everything abruptly, not even giving the less-than-sold-out crowd a chance to applaud.

Normally, during these pauses, he would go into tales about how his family never had a lick of electricity until he was a teenager, or how he once visited someone who almost became his guitar teacher on his deathbed. But this time, it was to introduce a friend.

Fellow bluesman-who’s-seen-it-all Bobby Rush was on the bill for this show, but for whatever reason, he didn’t get his own set (though the 90-year-old has made annual appearances down the street in Safety Harbor for the last few years).

“This is the best guy who ever did it, and we got him anyway,” Guy declared before inviting his old, err, buddy onstage. The two shared in a version of Rush’s “Chicken Heads,” featuring harmonica sections from Rush that some people half his age would run out of breath even attempting, and later shared a few laughs on “Cheaper To Keep Her” before bringing another guest onstage.

Guy’s son Greg initially did whatever he could to avoid his dad’s music as a teenager, until he walked into a blues club as a young man and became mesmerized by what his father was doing onstage. This moment led him to start learning guitar, and sure enough, he joined the band for a show-ending, Muddy Waters triple-feature: Rush took care of vocals on “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” the older Guy did some improv on a shortened “Mad Love,” and after tossing guitar picks into the crowd, he hit the mic one last time for “Close To You,” which often meant he was about to walk up Ruth Eckerd Hall’s stage-right aisle with his guitar.

There were no up-close connections as such this time, and the song instead marked the end of a touring career. But damn right, can he stage a farewell.