At 89 years young, blues great Buddy Guy has just released his 20th solo album, Ain’t Done with the Blues. The 18-track collection arrived on July 30, coinciding with Guy’s actual birthday. The album’s release was celebrated with a special party and concert at Buddy’s Chicago blues club, Buddy Guy’s Legends.
Videos by American Songwriter
Ain’t Done with the Blues features contributions from a variety of well-known music artists, including Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Joe Bonamassa, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and The Blind Boys of Alabama. The album was overseen by Guy’s longtime producer Tom Hambridge, and features a mix of new songs co-written by Hambridge and covers of classic blues tunes.
Guy recently spoke with American Songwriter about Ain’t Done with the Blues, while also discussing his historic music career and his concerns about the future of the blues.
Buddy admitted that his favorite tracks on the album are his renditions of two vintage blues tunes originally released in 1955—Guitar Slim’s “I Got Sumpin’ for You” and J.B. Lenoir’s “Talk to Your Daughter.”
“That’s the stuff I was listening when the first electric guitar started coming out,” Guy noted. “[It was] around the same time I think B.B. King started coming out.”
Buddy noted that by recording songs artists like Guitar Slim and Lenoir, he hopes that he’ll inspire blues fans to learn about the musicians that influenced him.
“I didn’t get my schooling in no school teaching music or something like that,” he declared. “I got it from those great people you never hardly hear nothing about no more, and I’m trying to keep that alive.”
About Collaborating with Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
Guy collaborated with Ingram on a track titled “Where U At.” Buddy has been a supporter of the young blues star since early in his career.
“I saw him as a little boy in Mississippi, and he come up and played,” Buddy told American Songwriter. “I said, ‘I’m gonna take you to the record company.’ But I said, I’m gonna pay for you to do a session.’ I paid for his first session, man. And he done won a Grammy since then.”
Ingram’s second studio album, 662, took home a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2022.
Guy, meanwhile, appeared on Ingram’s 2019 debut album, Kingfish. Buddy told American Songwriter that he’s worried about the future of blues music and he hopes that young musicians like Kingfish will carry the torch forward for the genre.
“[T]he blues [needs] all the help it can get to be heard,” he said. “I just hope … [Kingfish and] some other young people, if they just could go ahead and keep it alive, keep it alive … hopefully it’ll stay around a little more.”
Guy’s Proudest Career Moment Partly Inspired One of His New Songs
Although Guy didn’t write any songs on Ain’t Done with the Blues, Hambridge, in collaboration with songwriters Richard Fleming and Gary Nicholson, incorporated aspects of Buddy’s life and career into some of the new tunes.
One example is “Been There Done That,” which features lyrics that touch on Guy’s journey from growing up in rural Louisiana a sharecropper’s son to eventually playing for “kings, queens, and presidents.”
Guy said his most proud moment was when he performed at a special star-studded blues celebration at the White House in 2012, and coaxed President Obama to take the mic and sing a bit of “Sweet Home Chicago.”
“I’d say picking the guitar in the White House is a long way from picking cotton on the farm in Lettsworth, Louisiana,” Buddy joked to American Songwriter. “I’ve been blessed very well, and [can] say I played well enough for a president to ask me to come there.”
Recalling what happened at the even, Guy said, “[S]omebody told me, ‘Call the president up to sing “Sweet Home Chicago,” ’cause he’s from [Chicago].’ I said, ‘Man, if I ask the president to come up here and do that, and if he don’t, … I would like to crawl under that table as soon as I saw he can’t come up.’ And he sung a verse of ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ with me.”
Guy’s Upcoming Tour Plans
This year, Guy has been on the road playing dozens of shows in the U.S. as part of his Damn Right Encore! tour. On Wednesday, August 6, in Tucson, Arizona, Buddy launched his last scheduled series of 2025 concerts. The trek is plotted out through an August 16 show in Seattle.
Asked if he had plans to add more dates to the trek, Buddy didn’t say, but he quipped that rather than a farewell tour, he considered it “kind of [a] slow down.”
Ain’t Done with the Blues Track List:
- “Hooker Thing”
- “Been There Done That”
- “Blues Chase the Blues Away”
- “Where U At” – featuring Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
- “Blues on Top”
- “I Got Sumpin’ for You”
- “How Blues Is That” – featuring Joe Walsh
- “Dry Stick” – featuring Joe Bonamassa
- “It Keeps Me Young” – featuring Peter Frampton
- “Love on a Budget”
- “Jesus Loves the Sinner” – featuring The Blind Boys of Alabama
- “Upside Down”
- “One from Lightnin’”
- “I Don’t Forget”
- “Trick Bag”
- “Swamp Poker”
- “Send Me Some Loving”
- “Talk to Your Daughter”
Buddy Guy’s 2025 Tour Dates:
August 8 – Chandler, AZ @ The Showroom at Gila River Hotels & Casinos – Wild Horse Pass
August 10 – Cerritos, CA @ Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts
August 12 – Saratoga, CA @ The Mountain Winery
August 13 – Santa Rosa, CA @ Luther Burbank Art & Garden
August 16 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
(Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images)
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