Susan Tedeschi/Buddy Guy

Saw Buddy Guy and Susan Tedeschi on Thursday night. Susan Tedeschi is a brand new musical infatuation for me. I only had a "best of" and I got her newest album, Back To The River a few days before the show knowing that she was presenting mainly songs from it. I love the album, love her voice, and was quite excited to see her at the Metropolis, despite the fact that I'm getting too old for standing up all night, huddled up against complete strangers (and in this case, one or two smelly strangers), stretching my neck hoping to catch a glimpse of anything or anyone on stage. When did people in Montreal get so tall?

But that's not the point.

Back To The River is a solid country-blues album with lovely songs with usually excellent and often yummy guitar playing (do I need to mention her husband Derek Trucks or even Doyle Bramhall II?). She performed most of it on Thursday, and I was quite happy with the whole thing, in particular with the performance of "700 Houses", yet another song inspired by Katrina, but which happen to be my favourite one on the album. We were also treated to "It Hurts So Bad" and a quite pretty rendition of "Presence of The Lord", and well, in my book, you can never go wrong with that song. She sounds actually better live, I thought, a little more raspy, and I found her guitar playing skills much improved over the short playing I'd seen her do on the Crossroad 2007 DVD (although she did seem to have hand problems in that show).

I was very happy with the show, so much that it didn't occur to me that most of the crowd present was in fact there to see Buddy Guy, who was doing the second part. Not knowing much of his work except for the big hits, I was quite surprised to see how much enthusiasm his presence generated. The crowd was simply wild. And I soon found out why. Not only is he (well, duh!) an exceptional guitarist, the man is simply an amazing entertainer, who knows how to work a crowd. He goes beyond performing and technical prowess, he also makes sure the people who paid for their ticket are having a truckload of fun. And he's a funny, funny man.

Honestly, not knowing his repertoire, Hoochie Coochie Man (after having started the show playing something quite funky, and stopping his musicians with "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I'm here to play some blues...") and Mustang Sally are the only songs he played that I recognised, but he did spend some time entertaining the crowd (there's no other way to put) by imitating Eric Clapton (Strange Brew), Jimi Hendrix ( Voodoo Chile) and something by John Lee Hooker (can't recall the name, I'm afraid) and it all was pretty darn cool if you ask me. Not to mention the selection of body parts he played with, including belly, bum and tongue. Of course, I could have done with a few more killer guitar solos (although I should add his guitarist is also quite awesome), I was certainly entertained.

Buddy is the second artist of his age that I see performing, and I'm starting to suspect that 70 is the new 40.