Blues, Beers, and Bolts

Live Review

Jun 3

Chris Duarte flips on the electricity at Regent Theatre on Friday, 2 June 2023.

Rolling thunder and lightning flood the Boston area as the bluesman takes the stage.

People love pictures of lightning. The power, the majesty, the violence. There’s an air of a primitive god at work in the splintered finger hellfire coming down to earth.

If you’re able to capture the split second onslaught with a camera, it feels like you’re laying your eyes on something forbidden.

Credit Mark Garfinkel of NBC 10 Boston for these photos of the lightning storm that rained down on Boston during Chris Duarte’s set at Regent Theatre. Extra points for capturing the bolts against the background of the Boston skyline.

A few more of my @NBC10Boston lightning photos from last night’s #Boston thunderstorms. They include lightning over the city, Chelsea, & Eastie, and a split-second difference regarding the photo I sent out last night here. #StormHour #PhotoHour #Weather pic.twitter.com/ZS31qcoDkp
— Mark Garfinkel (@pictureboston) June 3, 2023

You don’t want to be on the receiving end of that wattage. Better to stay indoors, crack a beer, and enjoy some blues howlers from the Austin-area musician at the Regent Theatre.

Take whatever is unholy and magical about lightning, bottle it, and pour it like a sweet salve into the body of a guitar. You’ve got fire beneath your fingertips. Was that what it felt like when Les Paul invented the electric guitar?

There’s a power to the electric guitar that sings all the more sweetly in the blues. Think about the transition from the folk acoustic wranglings of the Delta blues to the switched-on screamings of artists like Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Jimi Hendrix. When you walk through that doorway into the amplified realm, it’s like Bruce Banner turning to the Incredible Hulk. It’s almost too much power for one six-stringer…

With the help of the rest of the Chris Duarte Group, the Austin-based musician stitched together a ferocious set of blues howlers on Friday night. The crwod enjoyed more than a few tracks off his latest album Ain’t Giving Up. Shades of Stevie Ray Vaugn in Duarte’s sound, which was as smooth as silk and as sharp as a tigerclaw.

Extra points for the rambling man stage banter between songs. Stories of life on the road and how he found his way on stage. Shout out to the rhythm section for building the launchpad that let Chris Duarte blast off into the stratosphere.

Extra points for the British spelling of ‘theatre’ in Regent Theatre and treating ‘show place’ as two words in the theatre’s slogan: “Arlington’s Show Place of Entertainment.”