Guitar Hero

Don't know who Buddy Guy is? We can sum it up easily: He's the man responsible for inspiring some of the greatest guitarists in rock music. Without Guy's wailing solos and over-the-top stage show, rock 'n' roll might not be what it is today. That's why he's in the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame. On Sunday, the Chicago blues legend performs at the Show Me Center. He phoned in last week for an interview with SE Live.

Matt Sanders: So it's 8:30 in the morning. I thought blues players slept in. I guess you don't.

Buddy Guy: No. I was born in the country, son, and I've been trying to break that ever since I went into music. I've been up at four or five o'clock every morning when I'm on the road or when I'm back at home.

MS: Even though you've established your career long ago, you still hit the studio and put out new music. Are you working on new stuff now?

BG: Yeah, we go in the studio as soon as I finish coming through there. ...

MS: Has it gotten hard to come up with new material and keep things fresh in the studio and on the road or is it natural now?

BG: No, it's not natural because of course when you go in the studio ... you hope to be creative and try to come up with something to keep this music alive. A lot of my sessions in the past have been as much older stuff ... as a matter of fact, more older stuff than new. So they gave me an opportunity to kind of produce myself now and I got quite a few new songs that I've written and co-wrote with some other guys, and right now it looks pretty good to me. Of course, you never know until it gets out there what people are going to think of it. So I'm going to try to be creative, and this is my first shot at producing myself, so at least if something happens I can go forward like if they didn't held me back in the '60s when they wouldn't let me explore until the British guys say 'I got it from Buddy Guy.' ...

MS: So I guess you don't take for granted that people are going to listen to your music just because you're Buddy Guy?

BG: I don't know. ... I'm just going into the studio, look up at the good Lord and pray I hit the right note and say the right thing, you know. It's like being locked in a room, and don't have a key and somebody ... open the door and you come out of there. That's what I'm hoping will happen with this session I'm fixing to do because, nowadays ... blues, on the satellite radio you can hear it, the rest of them, we ignored.

But I do know if you come up with a pretty good enough record, I don't think they can hold it. ...

But if you don't it takes millions and millions to get those records played on some of those big radio stations. This I heard through the grapevine.

MS: You came from the deep South, a sharecropper family. Some people say you have to have that background to really understand the blues. What do you think?

BG: No, I disagree with that. The reason I disagree with that, after a lot of the white kids started playing blues and I heard this same kind of stuff, if you white you can't play the blues.

But now all you gotta do is look at Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan and then you say "well, [expletive], I better ask another question now." So I don't pay no attention to that, man. A lot of songs you hear me sing and a lot of the old blues players sing ... most of that stuff they didn't even write.