Guy takes MCA by storm Copeland provides solid opening act

ORONO — Buddy Guy was worried that the crowd at the Maine Center for the Arts would think he was responsible for the arctic blasts outside the University of Maine facility.

“I hope you don’t think that I brought these winds with me,” said the resident of Chicago, the Windy City. “I just brought you the blues.”

And between the blues legend’s red-hot guitar licks and the smoking vocals of opening act Shemekia Copeland, the Hutchins Concert Hall was a very toasty place indeed Saturday night.

Copeland, named Female Artist of the Year in the 2000 Living Blues Awards, left the sellout audience screaming for more after a too-brief, six-song set. Backed by her talented four-piece band, the 21-year-old pulled most of the set from her current Alligator release, “Wicked.” An exception was the set’s capper, “Ghetto Child,” dedicated to her father, the late bluesman Johnny Clyde Copeland.

After a too-lengthy intermission, Guy ambled onto the stage with his five-member band to the strains of “Got My Mojo Working.”

Resplendent in painted overalls

and a purple shirt, Guy explained how he would operate for the evening: “This is my first time here, so I don’t know whether to play loud or soft. So I’ll just do both.”

And that’s what he did for the rest of the 90-minute set. He made his guitar go from a whisper to a scream. He made the same with his serviceable vocals, ranging from a throaty growl to a strained falsetto.

Guy got the crowd involved early on. During “Feels Like Rain,” he played out onto one wing of the stage before jumping down into the audience. He played and sang all across one row of the interminable theater, then back again. “I’m going to mess with your mind,” he told the audience. “Play something different,” he told his band, which launched into “Until You Use Me Up.” Guy slipped out a side door, then back in another door farther up the auditorium, fruitlessly pursued by a well-meaning stagehand with his mike.

Later on, those in attendance were helping out with gusto on the choruses to “Someone Else is Steppin’ In” and “Mustang Sally,” winning the approval of the smiling Guy.

Also, throughout the set, Guy supplied his impersonations of his influences, including T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and those who emulated him, including Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

A highlight was Guy’s regular interplay with keyboard player Tony Z., who would imitate the licks that Guy was laying down.

Guy succeeded in his mission of spreading the blues when he exited the stage after “Drowning on Dry Land.” Audience members, offering a standing ovation, would have loved to have had even more of Guy, but he still left them warm all over for the journey back out into the cold.