Skin Deep Is Buddy Guy's New Album

Yesterday Buddy Guy released his new album Skin Deep and I put together a little YouTube of the title track and, courageously, the first single. The album was produced by Tom Hambridge and includes guest appearances by Eric Clapton, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph and Derek Trucks (featured on this song). Buddy could sit back on his laurels, and enjoy his Grammy Awards and Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame status and being constantly referred to as an influence, an innovator and a pioneer. Instead, he’s rockin’ the house all over again, not because he needs the money but because he has something to share. Thank God! Although he’s always associated with the West Side Chicago blues sound, he was raised in the South. “Skin Deep” deals with racism like few others songs have:

“I used to play with this boy, ride horses, down close to where I was born,” he says. “Then when we were 13, his parents made us stop. They used to say you had black blood or white blood, but we’d get a flashlight and hold it up to our skin and we’d just see red blood. That’s what I mean by ‘skin deep.’” (He and that childhood friend recently reunited, backstage at one of Buddy’s shows in Louisiana.)