Reviewed on Monday January 4
“You’re gonna know my name by the end of the night,” sings Gary Clark Jr. on his now-customary set opener, ‘Bright Lights’. Truth be told, the introduction isn’t required. Five years ago, he was just another obscure blues musician noodling away to pay the bills; now he’s headlining the famous Sydney Opera House, and he’s clearly thrilled to be here.
The lanky Texan guitar master is a smooth operator to boot, and fast becoming a regular on the Australian touring circuit. He doesn’t quite have the devil in him like so many in the blues lineage before him – you wouldn’t come across the oh-so-suave Clark on a murky Mississippi crossroads at midnight – but he makes up for it by traversing styles from traditional rock’n’roll (‘Ain’t Messin ’Round’) to soul (‘The Life’) and all in between.
Joined by a slick backing band, Clark and his signature Epiphone six-string inspire an evangelical following from his fans. Undaunted by the high-brow surrounds of the Concert Hall, individual crowd members take to yelping, applauding and riffing on air guitars at random intervals throughout the show. To be sure, it’s a performance based on impulse – almost every song has two or more sprawling solos – and all that improvisation means there are occasional flat moments in the set. But the Gary Clark Jr. experience is more about witnessing an artist in process, and more often than not, it’s astounding.
Special mention goes to the rhythm section of drummer Johnny Radelat and bassist Johnny Bradley, who lay down the canvas on which Clark paints his masterpieces. Guitarist King Zapata is an idiosyncratic sideman, dressed in a Pharrell hat and dark sunglasses. Near the end of the night, there’s a special appearance from the golden vocals of Leon Bridges (though the chosen song doesn’t give him much time to shine) and his sax player, who threatens to steal the show.
But all eyes remain fixed on the frontman, who’s grown with every performance on these Antipodean shores, and will be bigger than ever by the time his next tour comes around. As Clark himself puts it: “I don’t believe in competition / Ain’t nobody else like me around”.
