August 6
Damn Right Farewell Tour
Buddy Guy
with Eric Gales
dj WALKIN’ LOVE
BUDDY GUY
ERIC GALES
SUNDAY AUGUST 6 @ 2PM
STERN GROVE FESTIVAL
DOORS AT 12PM
WHAT TO KNOW & WHERE TO GO
Know Before You Grove
19th Ave. & Sloat Blvd., SF
Watch it live on KBCW 44 Channel 12
RESERVATION INFORMATION
Reservations open on July 6 @ 2pm
If you can’t get tickets when reservations open, keep checking back on Eventbrite as we will continue releasing tickets up until the show day.
Reservations are required but don't guarantee entry. Entry is on a first-come, first-served basis
Four Reservation Limit per person
Senior and ADA seating is available on a first come first served basis once on site and is available for 1 senior and 1 guest
Children 2 yrs + require a reservation
Doors open at 12 noon
Concert starts at 2pm
Enter through designated entrances only:
#1. 19th & Sloat
#2. Vale Ave.
#3. 23rd & WawonaYou may bring your own food and beverages
Buddy Guy
At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received 8 GRAMMY Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #23 in its "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
In 2019, Buddy Guy won his 8th and most recent GRAMMY Award for his 18th solo LP, “The Blues Is Alive And Well”.
In July of 2021, in honor of Buddy Guy’s 85th birthday, PBS American Masters released “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase The Blues Away”, a new documentary following his rise from a childhood spent picking cotton in Louisiana to becoming one of the most influential guitar players of all time. The documentary features new interviews with Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr, and more. Watch the full documentary at PBS Online here.
Though Buddy Guy will forever be associated with Chicago, his story actually begins in Louisiana. One of five children, he was born in 1936 to a sharecropper’s family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans. Buddy was just seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift “guitar”—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother’s hairpins.
In 1957, he took his guitar to Chicago, where he would permanently alter the direction of the instrument, first on numerous sessions for Chess Records playing alongside Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the rest of the label’s legendary roster, and then on recordings of his own. His incendiary style left its mark on guitarists from Jimmy Page to John Mayer. “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people,” said Eric Clapton at Guy’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. “My course was set, and he was my pilot.”
Seven years later, July 2012 proved to be one of Buddy Guy’s most remarkable years ever. He was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture; earlier in the year, at a performance at the White House, he even persuaded President Obama to join him on a chorus of “Sweet Home Chicago.” Also in 2012, he published his long-awaited memoir, When I Left Home. These many years later, Buddy Guy remains a genuine American treasure and one of the final surviving connections to an historic era in the country’s musical evolution.
Eric Gales
Eric Gales is a blues firebrand. Over 30 years and 18 albums, his passion for the music and his boundless desire to keep it vital has never waned, even when his own light dimmed due to his substance struggles. Throughout it all, he continued to reinvigorate the art form with personal revelation in his lyrics and bold stylistic twists in his guitar playing and songwriting.
Five years sober, creatively rejuvenated, and sagely insightful, Eric is ready for the fight of his career. Aptly, he calls his masterful new album, out January 2022 on Provogue/Mascot label Group, Crown. Here, Eric opens like never before, sharing his struggles with substance abuse, his hopes about a new era of sobriety and unbridled creativity, and his personal reflections on racism. The songs are delivered with clarity and feature Eric's personal experiences and hope for positive change. In addition, the 16-track collection boasts his finest singing, songwriting, and his signature guitar playing that burns throughout. Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, this is Eric at his most boldly vulnerable, uncompromisingly political, and unflinchingly confident.
Crown was forged in tragedy but rises triumphantly. The day before Eric left Greensboro, North Carolina to Los Angeles, California to work with Joe and Josh, he heard the news about the George Floyd murder. As a Black man in America, he had a lot on his mind when he touched down in Music City to write songs for Crown.
“What made George Floyd any different than me?,” Eric asks. “As I began to chat about this to Joe and Josh during preproduction, raw and unnerved emotion came out of me, and Joe furiously scribbled down notes about it all. These songs came from those outpourings. They’re about my life, and what’s happening in the world right now. When it came time to sing, I had to take breaks between vocals to cry and let it out. I was sharing my experiences as a Black man, and my private struggles. This is me letting the world know what I’ve been through.”
Since 1991, the Memphis-born guitarist has blazed a path reinvigorating the blues with a virtuosity and rock swagger that have him being heralded as the second coming of Jimi Hendrix. He was a child prodigy with bottomless talent and fierce determination, and at just 16 years-old released his debut, The Eric Gales Band, on Elektra Records. He’s earned high praise by guitarists’ guitarist and household name axe men such as Joe Bonamassa, Carlos Santana, Dave Navarro, and Mark Tremonti. In addition, he has held his own with some of the greatest guitarists in the world, including Carlos Santana at Woodstock 1994, Zakk Wylde, Eric Johnson, and a posse of others as a featured guest touring with the Experience Hendrix Tour.
The story behind Crown dates back to the early 1990s when as teenagers Eric and Joe were both hailed as blues wunderkinds and torchbearers. Eric is three years older than Joe, and Joe used to open for Eric. The pair went on to very different lives and careers, but Eric’s full potential was hampered by his substance abuse issues. “While I was dealing with my affliction, Joe’s career skyrocketed. I put myself in the backseat through my drug addiction. The world knows me, but the world doesn’t know me,” he says. In 2009, Eric hit bottom and served jail time at Shelby County Correction Center for possession of drugs and a weapon.
Eric and Joe reconnected grandly in 2019 when Joe invited Eric to play with him onstage at a blues cruise encore performance. It was the first time the guys had played live together onstage in 25 years, and it has since been named one of the most explosive guitar duels ever, amassing over 3 million plays on YouTube.
“There was always a brotherhood with us. When we reconnected, Joe said to me, ‘You’re a badass guitarist; it’s your turn to get your seat at the table to wear your crown’,” Eric recalls. Shortly after their iconic face-melting jam, Eric approached Joe to produce him. Eric reveals: “We cried when we talked about it, he said ‘you have no idea how long I waited for you, now I am going to do my part to lift you where you’re supposed to be.’” Crown finds Eric stepping up to receive his due.
CONCERT SPONSORED BY
SEASON SPONSORS
Tables for this concert are currently sold out.
If you’d like to be placed on the VIP Picnic Table waitlist please email rsvp@sterngrove.org.
*Waitlist is for VIP Table purchase only, NOT for General Admission.
WHAT TO KNOW & WHERE TO GO
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CONNECT WITH US
DJ WALKIN’ LOVE
DJ Walkin' Love (Gregorio Perez Figueroa) is a vinyl disc jockey, artist and leader of the San Francisco based rock band BOLERO! He was the cohost of the radio program "FREAK FLAG RADIO" which is currently on hiatus as of now, to focus on live in person events.
Walkin' Love has played both public and online radio such as KXSF 102.5 FM, Psyched Radio, Its Fault Radio and other various institutions. His selections range from rare to dollar bin records within the styles of international groove, psychedelia, rock, funk, Latin, country, blues, soul and beyond.
Being a regular in the Bay Area Vinyl community, he has performed at such spaces as: The Chapel, Bandcamp Oakland, Make-out Room, Rickshaw Stop, Kilowatt, Eli's Mile High Club and more. His moniker "Walkin' Love" stems from a nick name coined by a close group of peers while studying at The San Francisco Art Institute, which is where he started his first radio show "Sonic Image Radio" in 2015.