Sonny Landreth

A new double live-album sees the slide maestro playing both electric and acoustic guitars in a set from his hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana…

- David Mead

When we mention to Sonny that it’s nice to hear him playing acoustic on his new album, he says: “A lot of people don’t know there was a two-year period in my career when I didn’t even pick up an electric guitar. I bought a Martin D-28 from a friend of mine and I had a metal bodied Dobro – and that’s all I played.”

So, in a way, Recorded Live In Lafayette is a return to his roots and a splendid opportunity to hear an often-overlooked side of an artist whose slide style is a wonder to behold. Recorded over three nights in an intimate club, the album revisits material from across the span of Sonny’s career, with an eclectic set of instruments, including a resonator guitar built around a ’56 Oldsmobile hubcap!

1 There’s No Place Like Home

“I’d been thinking about doing an allacoustic album – I haven’t done that since 1973 and it had been a long time since we’d done a live album. To be honest, I struggled with what to do and how to do it. We’d played a show in the theatre where we did the recording in my hometown, Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s a beautiful room. It just made sense: all our resources are here in terms of my engineer, who lives down the street with all his equipment, and I’ve got all my gear here and the whole band and everything. So we really just kinda went for all of it.”

2 Choose Your Material Well