If Gary Clark Jr.’s sold out appearance at Higher Ground is any sign of his popularity, the buzz around the Austin bluesman is about to turn into rolling thunder.
Clark had the Vermont venue’s ballroom audience in the palm of his hand as soon as he walked onto the darkened stage. A fist-pumping audience greeted his first guitar solo on the “Catfish Blues,” and it just was enough for him to just approach his microphone between songs and change his facial expression to get a rise out of the tightly packed crowd. To his credit, he didn’t milk that devotion but rather worked to earn it. Restrained as his stage presence was as he played, his repartee with the crowd was hushed too, even when introducing a number with the observation, “I feel like getting crazy!”
Offering homage to “one of his favorites, Albert King…” in the form of “Oh, Pretty Woman (Can’t Make You Love Me),” garnered about the same amount of enthusiasm. Gary Clark Jr. played a variety of styles in his two hours onstage, but inserted a straight-blues tune every four or five numbers, as if to remind the audiences of his roots. Yet this pacing also had the effect of contrasting with songs like “Things Are Changin‘” that featured vocals as he played a white Fender Stratocaster.
His insertion of heavier guitar-based numbers such as “When My Train Pulls In,” at certain junctures also communicated his grasp of influences, beyond his earliest roots and in surprising, but logical, ways. Returning alone to the stage for an encore, as if a transformed folkie, Clark Jr. played quiet electric guitar and blew harmonica on “In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down).” Then Clark called the band back on stage for “Numb,” similar to, but more open-ended than “Bright Lights, Big City,” the number that go the heartiest response from the increasingly loose listeners; it was a crowd-pleasing move and borderline predictable, except that it was done with such smooth self-assurance.
Well along in the development of his own style, it was a conscious statement to insert the melodic theme of Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” around an Albert Collins cover (“If You Love Me Like You Say”) Gary Clark Jr. doesn’t emulate one guitar legend more than the other, except in the deep feeling he communicates in his solo acts and the general pleasure he takes in playing his instrument; his nonchalance is that of a musician who’s learned enough to know being too careful with the guitar will not reveal anything new about its capabilities of conjuring sound.
Anyone inclined to avoid ‘next big things’ would do well to cast aside their predetermination based on word of mouth (and even perhaps his first full-length album, commercial concessions and all) to pay attention to Gary Clark Jr. in this live setting. His open-minded approach to his music includes nurturing camaraderie with his well-honed accompanists, all of which (bassist Johnny Bradley, the snappily-attired guitarist King Zapata and drummer Johnny Radelat) visibly relish the opportunity to accompany this man. The chemistry they’re developing could conceivably allow this young man to not only exceed his promise (which at this point is considerable), but elevate him to a pantheon even beyond his Austin roots.
