Buddy Guy: Skin Deep : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ever the showman but never the best album artist, blues-guitar innovator Buddy Guy has nevertheless recorded more consistently since 1991's Damn Right, I Got the Blues. That's not to say he hasn't turned out a few turkeys (remember 1993's Feels Like Rain?), but this isn't one. From the dirty wah-wah riffs and stinging leads of "Best Damn Fool" to the raw country blues of "Out in the Woods," Guy, at 72, shows no signs of fatigue. With a slew of guests — Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Eric Clapton — Guy is better when he's ripping out the kind of grungy, distorted licks that inspired Hendrix to redefine the electric guitar than when he attempts a message song like the why-can't-we-all-just-get-along title track. In that one, his apology for clueless racists — "I knew he had a good heart, but he just didn't understand/That I needed to be treated just like another man" — might ring a bit empty to fellow African-Americans who survived the civil rights era. But Guy is a blues man, not a protest singer, and when he wields his ax with perfect restraint over the organ and loping bass line of "I Found Happiness," you best believe that's what he's done.