Brittany Howard, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and More Austin Blues Festival Reviews

A one-day 2023 tryout doubled to two days of on-point blues-and-beyond curation in the second year of Austin Blues Festival.

Organized by the Antone’s team, the fest reincarnates the Waterloo Park shindig that nightclub founder Clifford Antone started in his name back in 1999. After a major park redesign a few years back created the Moody Amphitheater, which wound up being primarily booked by Live Nation, we’re especially grateful for the homegrown event’s expansion. Check out the Chronicle music team’s reviews from Austin Blues Festival below. – Rachel Rascoe

Buddy Guy in the crowd at Waterloo Park (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Buddy Guy, Showman and Shredder

By 1992, when yours truly arrived in Austin as a twentysomething blues seeker, Buddy Guy had already transitioned from shredder to showman. Despite molten comeback and mainstream breakthrough Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, Louisiana guitarist George “Buddy” Guy spent more time onstage jawing and showboating than actually laying hands on that which Woody Guthrie once dubbed a fascist-eradicating machine. Three-plus decades later and knocking on 88 in July, as he announced in closing out day one of the Antone’s Blues Festival, that dynamic remains unchanged, yet he’s aged gracefully into one of the last golden-era blues ambassadors. Observing Guy repeatedly around town, I’d come to believe his guitar held no more secrets for him, so he transitioned to a rap-adjacent MC or even hype man, charismatic to a fault and unfailingly crowd-pleasing. All that held fast for just under 75 minutes, with guests including 90-year-old singer/harpist Bobby Rush and Jimmie Vaughan, but now every word, gesture, and hard stop proved comforting. Today, an audience with Guy perhaps serves the same magic for us as when he fell in with Muddy Waters in the late Fifties upon moving to Chicago. And when he did lay hands on this axe for 10 minutes walking through the crowd, he chopped down the mountain Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan once climbed with the edge of his hand like a blues God almighty. – Raoul Hernandez

Jimmie Vaughan Fires Up Sue Foley and Soul Man Sam

Just as television finales often fall short of the penultimate episode’s preemptive fireworks, set-up man Jimmie Vaughan more or less capped the first day of Antone’s sophomore blues festival before headliner Buddy Guy basically encored the beautifully-arced day of single-stage curation. No small feat, that, since the last blues GOAT standing rose to the occasion admirably. Even so, Vaughan and the Tilt-A-Whirl Band out-bluesed the last-word Chicagoan by a Texas mile. Liquid by second selection “Roll, Roll, Roll,” Austin’s forever fabulous T-bird, 73, then sank his teeth into Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s “Dirty Work at the Crossroad,” a guitar and vox workout demonstrating the eldest (and surviving) Vaughan brother hasn’t lost a step. His blithe tenor remains smooth as suede and pleasing as pie, while his thumb and strum Stratocaster action tickles, bites, and gouges. Sue Foley and her pink axe raised “Howlin’ for My Darling” its Howlin’ Wolf, with the red-maned local slinger coaxing licks that positively caught fire as she and Vaughan burned down Bo Diddley’s rumbling “Pretty Thing.” Twelfth Street hero Soul Man Sam guested as well, summoning his deep and gruff, yet never rough, blues exaltation best on a deft “St. James Infirmary,” complete with a Louis Armstrong growl. – Raoul Hernandez

Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas Came to Party

Easy to take Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas for granted. Sister states Texas and Louisiana swapped enough accordion acts through the ages to fill the Gulf. Kicking off Austin Blues Festival on an unseasonably dreamy Saturday – cloudy and breezy, 85 degrees – Nathan Williams and his family band set a New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest tone that lasted the next nine hours plus. Eighty-year-old gospel fixture Blind Boys of Alabama dug “Way Down in the Hole,” Crescent City scion Ivan Neville led Dumpstaphunk through throbbing NOLA beat voodoo, and all-women brass brigade Original Pinettes Brass Band led a second line through the Moody Amphitheater grounds before staging a stand out front of the stage – blowing and thumping a cappella like the day’s gusty airflow. None quite touched Nathan Williams’ driving zydeco. Brother Dennis Paul Williams southpawing clipping licks and cousin Allen Williams Sr.’s six-string bass fed a monster drummer and incessant rubboardist. The bandleader, 61, exchanged Excelsior-made squeezeboxes, whirling up a delirious mania. “Was that all right?” Nathan asked frequently, but two additional quips landed as well: “I came to party” and “We got more soul than a shoemaker.” – Raoul Hernandez

Big Freedia (right, with mic) (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Big Freedia Throws “Azz Everywhere”

Look no further for proof of the communal joys of dance music than Big Freedia, who describes her vocation on Instagram as “Bringing people together through the power of Ass.” That she did on Sunday, when she spent her Blues Fest set encouraging folks to throw it back. Apart from the curiously poppy 2023 Central City cut “$100 Bill,” Freedia mostly stuck to her OG New Orleans bounce tracks not found on Spotify – like “Rock Around the Clock,” “Y’all Get Back Now,” and, of course, “Azz Everywhere.” Even “Gin in My System” got the crowd call-and-response treatment (“I got that gin in my system/ Somebody gon’ be my victim”). While DJ Juane Jordan spun the Triggerman beat, the MC’s four dancers did splits, death drops, and twerked while holding hand stands; after Freedia asked them how they “eat it,” each took turns miming their own oral sex strategies. Ten lucky audience members were welcomed onstage to get in on the fun. Easing up on the aggressive beats, the Queen Diva cued up Queen Bey’s Freedia-sampling “Formation” and “Break My Soul.” When she wrapped the set with a PG line dance, her mission became clear: shaking ass isn’t about sex; it’s about fun. – Carys Anderson

Brittany Howard (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Brittany Howard Takes Us to Church

With the texturedness of a weathered vocal veteran, Brittany Howard hits pretty high notes, rumbles sturdy low ones, and jumps between them. She’s got the kind of voice that makes us lesser beings say, in awe, “she’s got soul.” Closing out Austin Blues Festival Sunday, Howard used that soul to deliver something close to gospel – in music and in message. Bolstered by an eightpiece band, the vocalist performed muscular versions of tracks from February’s What Now (a monumental “Earth Sign” and wailing “Red Flags” stood out) and maintained the energy in favorites from 2019’s Jaime (“Stay High” remains as charming as ever). Between songs, Howard’s crowd addresses felt even more like sermons. “Love is not something you hang onto. It’s a gift. You let it move through you and move you, change you, and you say thank you, and you can move on,” she imparted, before the acoustic breakup song “Short and Sweet.” Experimental piano romp “13th Century Metal” filled with more commandments, like, “Just do the best you can to be kind to your fellow man.” Church organ, powerhouse vocals, “love thy neighbor” wisdom; if you missed your Sunday service, Howard made up for it. – Carys Anderson