Texas tornado

David Fricke witnesses a genuine blues guitar phenomenon.

It was a commanding entrance, as if Jimi Hendrix had walked out in 1969, right into the long climb and flames of Hear My Train A Comin’. Gary Clark Jr. – the 32-year-old Texan who has been called the future of electric blues guitar since Eric Clapton and Questlove of The Roots started dropping his name at the turn of the decade – opened with his signature storm, the heavy, title shuffle from the 2011 EP, Bright Lights. Singing slightly behind the beat and riffing through the verses with measured cool, Clark wasted no time warming up in his solo, strafing the air with crusty shrieks, climaxing in a sustained paroxysm of staccato strum and fretboard slalom. There was also no mistaking Clark’s diffidence to limelight. He allowed his second guitarist, King Zapata, take the first break and performed Bright Lights entirely in silhouette, his beanstalk frame and flat-brimmed fedora backlit in harsh, white rays. The effect was visually striking but confounding, certainly to fellow guitarists; it was impossible to see Clark’s hands at their work, to digest the manual detail in his attack and finesse. Clark’s balancing act – a genuine, riveting phenomenon in his field, suspicious of the conservatism implicit in the mantle of saviour – was a running zigzag in this two-hour show. Clark and his no-frills band – Zapata, bassist