Last night, Oscar did some John Hiatt stuff. That was great; I love John Hiatt.

But along the way, he stumbled upon somebody who I’m a HUGE fan of. That, of course, being Sonny Landreth.

Sonny plays a slide guitar like a guitar wants to be played. You can just tell listening to his stuff. The strings are smilin’.

And ol’ Sonny’s a Louisiana boy. Well, he’s a Mississippi boy, but he grew up in Lafayette, which means we can claim him.

And after all, this sounds more like Louisiana than Mississippi, right?

If that doesn’t, certainly this does. After all, when the name of the song is Back To Bayou Teche, it’s Louisiana.

And you can’t get any more Louisiana than the state anthem. This is the first version that beats Randy Newman, at least the way I see it (Randy Newman didn’t have any slide guitar in his rendition, plus he’s not from Louisiana and I still don’t forgive him that business about LSU boys coming out dumb).

Here’s a little bit of Sonny at the Crossroads Festival last year. That, in case you’re not aware, is the blues thing Eric Clapton puts on every year. And Clapton loves him some Sonny Landreth.

Here’s a little something with Sonny playing with Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits…

A little bit of Sonny getting it going on his own…

And to conclude this sample, let’s just call this a tutorial on how to play a little slide guitar.

The next time Sonny’s back in Louisiana is October 7. He’ll be at the Gretna Heritage Festival.