Events: Arizona - Phoenix - Scottsdale

An Evening with Blues Superstars Buddy Guy & Jonny Lang, Friday, August 17 

   Danny Zelisko Presents an evening with blues legend Buddy Guy and highly regarded tour mate Jonny Lang at 8 p.m. on Friday, August 17 at the historic Celebrity Theatre. 

At age 81, Buddy Guy is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Guy has received 7 Grammy Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, 37 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), Billboard Magazine’s Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #23 in its "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." He was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture; earlier in the year, at a performance at the White House, he even persuaded President Obama to join him on a chorus of “Sweet Home Chicago.” Also in 2012, he published his long-awaited memoir, When I Left Home. 

It is hard to believe that at 37 years old Jonny Lang has already had a successful career for two decades. Easier to believe when you learn he released his first platinum record at 15 -- an age when many young people are just beginning to play music. Lie to Me revealed a talent that transcended the crop of blues prodigies floating around in the late Nineties. No flashy re-hasher of classic blues licks, even at that early age Lang was a full-blown artist with a style of his own. Also, setting Lang apart from the wunderkind crowd was a 15-year-old voice that sounded like a weathered soul shouter. Actual life experience was yet to come, and has been subsequently chronicled in a series of five uniformly excellent recordings. "I got married, had kids, and that arc has been recorded on albums along the way," says Lang. "There is a lot of personal history in there, and also some things that relate to world events."

Doors open at 6 p.m. Reserved tickets ($40, $65, $95) are still available at Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., in Phoenix, or online at www.celebritytheatre.com. To charge by phone, call 602-267-1600 ext. 1. All tickets are subject to facility and ticketing surcharges. All ages welcome.