Two Buddy Guys shared the Keswick Theatre stage Tuesday night. Both wore overalls, a plaid work shirt, and sneakers, grinned luridly, and wrenched live-wire solos out of a gloriously tacky, black-and-white polka-dot guitar.
But while one - the blues maverick, whose high-energy performances have long been the stuff of legend - made an admirable showing, the night was dominated by his underwhelming double.
For most of his distended set, the 65-year-old Guy enacted a ritual that was affirming, rather than genuinely moving. His constant proclamations that he "sure felt like singing the blues" were almost didactic. Likewise, his impersonation of Muddy Waters, whose gravitas is nearly the polar opposite of Guy's hyper-thyroidal personality, couldn't help but lapse into camp.
