Back when music was only available on a vinyl album, the pure excitement captured on a live album was considered the ultimate document coveted by hardcore music fans. Clark continues this tradition by bringing the live album to a younger generation of music fans. Live North America 2016 was recorded absolutely live, with no overdubs. What you hear is how it went down.
The album includes all new and unreleased live recordings from Gary Clark Jr's 2016 tour in support of his internationally acclaimed 2015 album The Story of Sonny Boy Slim. It features several songs from that album, including "The Healing," "Grinder," "Our Love," "Cold-Blooded," and "Shake," featuring Leon Bridges and his saxophonist Jeff Dazey. The set is characterized by raw soul and funk, classic solo and blues performances, and severallengthy, tour de force guitar jams. It includes two previously unreleased covers, Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do" and Elmore James' "My Baby's Gone" as well as "You Saved Me" and "When My Train Pulls In" - fan favorites from Clark's Warner Bros. Records critically praised debut Blak and Blu.
Clark's incendiary performances were also beautifully captured on Gary Clark Jr. Live, which was released in September 2014 and met with tremendous critical and commercial acclaim. Both live albums chronicle Clark's evolution on stage as his songs expand and find new life beyond the studio recordings. Much like the great blues, jazz, and soul legends of past, these recordings are lightening in a bottle - historical moments in time for an artist who is ever-morphing and one of the truly great improvisers of his generation and our time.