Main Street Memory: Buddy Guy in Fort Worth

Fort Worth's Main Street Arts Festival is happening as we speak. The event, which is the largest of its kind in all of the Southwest, now spans 27 blocks. That is a lot of art, music, and culinary delight in one place. According to fortworth.com, the festival attracts "tens of thousands" of patrons, and a 2014 news article cited 400,000 as the projected attendance that year. That is a lot of folks.

In the mid-1990s, back when I still drove a lime-green Volkswagen microbus, the Main Street Arts Festival had not yet become the mega-festival it is today. In what must have been 1994 or 1995, my friends and I hopped out of the van, walked a couple of blocks to Main Street, and lollipopped around enjoying the various booths until Buddy Guy was scheduled to play. At that point, we casually sauntered right up to the stage, which was just in front of the Chisholm Trail mural. Looking back, the whole thing was really pretty mellow. It was so mellow, in fact, that Buddy Guy was playing whatever the people in the audience requested; and I remember him at one point searing his way through "The Sky is Crying."     

Here is a little Buddy Guy for you. Watch for native Texan Terry Wilson on bass.