Guitar genius Sonny Landreth plays The Kate Tuesday

October 19, 2018 12:00 am • Last Updated: October 19, 2018 12:42 pm

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Sonny Landreth (Photo by Lucius Fontenot)

This is casino country, so it's not that unusual for magicians, illusionists and sleight-of-hand wizards to appear in the area with some regularity.

This includes the magnificent Sonny Landreth, who appears Tuesday in Old Saybrook at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. But rather than levitate over a crowd, or saw through a swimsuit-wearing beauty, or even pulling a top hat out of a rabbit, Landreth's sorcery is of the musical variety.

The Mississippi-born guitarist/songwriter, a long-time resident of the blues- and Cajun-drenched southwest Louisiana, is a unique slide player who reinvented the technique and, along the way, established himself as a fine tunesmith and searing live performer.

Landreth first came to public awareness when, as a teenager, he joined the primordial zydeco outfit Clifton Chenier and His Red Hot Louisiana Band. After Chenier's death, Landreth became a noted session player (Kenny Loggins, Mark Knopfler, Junior Wells) and enjoyed stints with the elite bands of both John Hiatt and John Mayall.

Along the way, he invented and then refined his own dazzling slide technique. In addition to the "tube" over one finger to induce a flowing, keening, sustained sound — as per Son House, Robert Nighthawk, Duane Allman, Derek Trucks, Elmore James, Muddy Waters and Rory Gallagher — Landreth uses odd tunings and the first three fingers on his fretting hand to play haunting chord clusters and hammer-on BEHIND the slide.

Hmm. No one thought of that before.

Landreth became a solo artist and, over the last 25 years, has become a musician's musician with a steadily growing civilian fan base. Onstage and via such profoundly great albums as "South of I-10," "Levee Town," "The Road We're On," "From the Reach" (with respective duet partners like Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson and Vince Gill), the stunning "Bound by the Blues" and last year's acoustic AND electric in-concert document, "Live in Lafayette," Landreth has become a true rarity: That person who may be the best in the world at what he does.

But any Landreth show is not remotely about jaw-dropping technique for the sake of it. Landreth is a delighted slave to music. He has a tremendous band with longtime drummer Brian Brignac and bassist David Ranson, and his songwriting, while blues-based, ventures into a wide and evocative mélange of southern musical history. He's also a student of history and a devotee of music as a global force.

Recently, from his home in Lafayette, Louisiana, Landreth answered five questions. A thoughtful, kind man with a subtle wit, Landreth is as engaging in conversation as he is onstage.

Q: The basis of the blues is a recurring twelve-bar structure comprising the timeless I-IV-V chord progression. How do you explain the perfection of that simple pattern, and where did it come from? Is it like the Big Bang Theory comes to the blues? Did it just spontaneously appear one day?

A: (Laughs) That's probably a good way to put it. It sure has endured as a form of musical expression. You know, culturally, folk music evolved and provided a voice for rural people. There was a simplicity to it. and it was a great way to communicate in an understandable way. A type of universal language. And blues is sort of the same way. It's fascinating, and it became a refined form. I think musicians contemplated it for a long time and experimented maybe but ultimately or instinctively just decided to roll with those three chords. Of course, the running joke has always been, "What's the fourth chord?"

Q: In 2015, you released your last studio album, "Bound by the Blues." There's a lot going on there. You cover tunes by legends like Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Skip James and Big Bill Broonzy, and they work very well in a thematic sense with the originals on the record. It seems like the overall feeling revolves around a plea for unity in a very broad sense. Is that accurate, and would you describe it as a concept album?

A: It is a concept album for sure, centered around the universal appeal of the blues and grace in the face of adversity and what we all share on this planet. Almost by definition, the blues are bound to spill over into worldly events. I didn't specifically want to make statement in terms of the political ... but if the idea is to offer hope, well, that's really important right now.

The basic idea was to look at my musical heroes and contemplate what they had to go through as human beings. It's one thing to learn a song, but it's important to me to think about where the song came from. What was it like for them at that point in history? In their struggles? It's a very complex thing, and that's why I picked that group of songs. And playing them over and over, as these songs have cycled over our set lists ... well, you hope you evolve as an artist and a person anyway, but it's been remarkable to have these songs as a barometer. Any good song will teach and change you on a personal level and in a bigger sense if you listen.

Q: For the hometown "Live in Lafayette" recording, you split the double album between an acoustic set, which is fairly new for you, and the more traditional electric performance. Is that a format you're actually using on tour now?

A: Yeah, we have been since the release of the album. It seemed like a fun thing to do for the record. And what we learned is how well it works fundamentally. You know, we do a lot of festivals, and it's a format where one band after another in that setting just comes out with the idea of just beating everyone to death. You've got an hour so let's go for it.

But we figured out that it's different to come out and breathe a bit, to play with the dynamics. The (acoustic and electric characteristics) play off of each other really nicely, and that set-up also has given me an opportunity to revisit and reinterpret some older songs.

Q: In that context, do you play the same tunes acoustically from night to night and the same songs electrically, or do you switch back and forth and play with the formats?

A: Ultimately, you always find the ones that work better one way of the other. At the same time, as far as our audience is concerned, a lot of these songs have stood the test of time, and people enjoy hearing them in new ways. It's fun for us to explore the dynamics, too.

I'm a bit limited because we fly a lot, and I can't bring as many guitars as I'd like. That limits what you can do, but we make the best of it. We've gone through a lot of variations, and that's part of the fun of it. (Laughs) And once we lock into something, I like to enjoy rhythm familiarity for a while before it breeds contempt.

Q: In performance, there are certain crowd favorites like "U.S.S. Zydecoldsmobile," "Gone Pecan" and "Blue Attack" that you know are going to explode. But are there other specific songs you yourself look forward to each night?

A: It's hard to say any one in one respect for me because they all have special meaning, and I'm just totally gratefully to play them for people. Yes, all three of the songs you named are up there, and there's a reason they're on the set list. Another perspective to me is what's the most challenging to play. "Brave New Girl" and segueing into "Uberesso" are the two of my favorites and most difficult and I have to keep playing every day because they're brutally unforgiving. It's like an athlete; you have to work out to maintain that level. If it looks effortless, it's because I've worked so hard. But you also have to be careful. If you get too technical, you can lose that soulful quality. I appreciate technique, believe me, but the music that moves me relies on that emotional quality.