Being a weeklie podcaste from Madison, Wisconsin featuring several remarkable curiosities therein occurring being a compendium of live music from divers artistes
Show #191: Sonny Landreth at Orton Park Fest '08
August 27th, 2009
The 44th Orton Park Festival here in Madison begins tomorrow. This week’s podcast is a prelude, of sorts, and features Sonny Landreth’s performance at last year’s festival. Show notes are by Dave Watts from WORT’s Blues Cruise.
Every so often one comes to a fork in the road. Sometimes a momentous decision (to marry or not) and sometimes a relatively inconsequential one (which band to see at the Taste of Madison). And on a sunny day (or a Sonny day I suppose) years ago I had a decision to make and I had made it. I was going to see Head East. As fate would have it Janet and Duane, New Orleans transplants of my acquaintance, happened to run into me and scoffed at my foolishness. “Head East? Your brain must be Flat As A Pancake!! You have to come with us to see Sonny Landreth!!” they said. Not being familiar with his music at the time I hemmed and hawed but knowing that they had great taste in music I succumbed to peer pressure and accompanied them. And at the corner of Carroll and West Washington Avenue I first saw Sonny Landreth. He had a style unlike any I had heard. When I think of slide guitar I think of Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor and such. Sonny is unique in that he puts the slide on his pinky and uses the fingers on his slide hand to do all sorts of crazy things to the strings (picture Hound Dog Van Halen) while most other slide guitarists just pick with one hand and are content to use the other to just move the slide up and down. Not surprisingly he was voted best slide guitarist of 2008 in Guitar Player magazine, the mag of choice for guitar geeks (not sure how he was displaced by Susan Tedeschi’s husband in 2009 but there you go).
It was a beautiful day at the Orton Park Festival on 8/23/2008. The weather was good too. Enjoy.
Setlist:
Port of Calling
South of I-10
Native Stepson
Promise Land
Wind in Denver
Hell at Home
Storm of Worry
The Milky Way Home
Blue Tarp Blues
Überesso
Key to the Highway
USS Zydecoldsmobile
Back to Bayou Teche
Pedal to Metal
This is Landreth doing “A World Away”.
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