GARY CLARK JR LIVE

Personnel: Gary Clark, Jr. (vocals, guitar, harmonica); King Zapata (guitar); Johnny Radelat (drums). Audio Mixer: Doug McKean. Recording information: 2013-2014. Photographers: David Jackson ; Ben Sklar. Texas guitar ace Gary Clark, Jr., who at his best sounds like nothing so much as the past and the future of the blues, has been compared to guitar icons like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His playing is a powerful and inspired mix of blues roots with some contemporary soul and hip-hop touches, but it remains the blues always, and the blues is perhaps even more central to his sound than it was for either Hendrix or Vaughan. Clark's major-label debut, 2012's Blak and Blu, stretched the blues thing a bit thin in places, and it only partially resembled his live sets, which were wild, gritty, and often beautifully elegant surveys of electric blues, with Clark's solid originals settling nicely with vintage covers, all with no frills and gimmick-free. Clark, for all the press about it,