August 24, 2009
Buddy Guy. Download image.
• Patio party with live music before the show
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The Alys Stephens Center will kick off its 2009-10 season with the legendary Buddy Guy at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26 in the Alys Stephens Center, 1200 10th Ave. South. VIP tickets are $80. Performance tickets are $65, $55, $40; $20 for students. Call 205-975-2787 or go to www.AlysStephens.org. The evening will begin with a patio party at 6:30 p.m. featuring live music from Tennessee Hollow in the Haskell Courtyard, Dreamland Bar-B-Que plates for sale and a cash bar.
George "Buddy" Guy is a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues. He has a colossal music resume and many hard-earned accolades, but he got his start in Louisiana, born in 1936 to a sharecropper's family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth. He was 7 years old, he recalls, when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar" - a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother's hairpins. There usually was no plantation work to be done on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and it was during this precious free time that Guy developed the skills that would bring him fame.
A chief guitar influence to rock titans Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Guy is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and five-time Grammy Award-winner and has earned an incredible 23 W.C. Handy Blues awards (the most of any artist). Guy has been honored with Billboard magazine's Century Award for artistic achievement and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Most recently he appeared on the big screen with a show-stopping performance in Martin Scorsese's concert film of the band The Rolling Stones, "Shine a Light," and on the cover of Rolling Stone for its "100 Greatest Guitar Songs" issue. Clapton declared Guy "the best guitar player alive." The release of "Skin Deep," an album of all original material with guest appearances from fellow guitar wizards Clapton, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, adds yet another dimension to this master's legendary career.
This show is part of the Legends & Icons Series and is sponsored by Davis Architects, 100.5 FM, AL.com, The Birmingham News and Viva Health.
About the Alys Stephens Center
Located on the UAB campus, the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center is one of the Southeast's premier performing arts centers, hosting the best in international, national and local performances. Home to the UAB departments of Theatre and Music and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the ASC also presents its own season, bringing the world's best music, dance, theater, comedy and family entertainment to Alabama. For more information on all Alys Stephens Center events and programs, visit www.AlysStephens.org.