04 May SunFest Friday Night: Gary Clark Jr. Soothed With Blues

Friday night belonged to bluesier sounds on the festival’s Tire Kingdom stage, and who better to really set the nighttime mood than Gary Clark, Jr.? The Austin-based guitarist is 29 years old now, but in a genre crowded by elder statesmen, he’s still something of a wunderkind.

As (recently written) legend goes, Clark Jr. taught himself to play the guitar as a teenager, taking a plucky friend to sit in on sessions and slowly gaining the respect of various Texas blues legends. Now, he enjoys a rare position, a fan base that straddles both old blues diehards, jam-band festival heads, and indie rockers, all who convened at the stage for his early-evening set.

Clad in a natty gray vest and fedora, Clark, Jr. got right down to business, opening his performance with an instrumental jam, only finally getting into vocals some minutes later. From there, things got totally danceable, wavering in and out of minor and major keys, from jams to easy singalong choruses.

[youtube id=”zT4C5hTpiLY”]