The New Buddy Guy's Legends: A Great Venue for a Show

We've been consistently covering the developments at the new Buddy Guy's Legends (700 S. Wabash) for awhile, so we were obviously pumped to attend the official grand opening party last Tuesday.

It was our first time stepping foot into the new place and although it was a Tuesday, the place was still packed. Although the musicians were solid, we're not going to focus on that in this post. Everyone knows that Legends gets solid Blues musicians, so there is no need to extrapolate on that.

What we are going to talk about is the new venue, which is definitely an upgrade from the old building down the street. As a friend of ours used to say, the old building had "character" and by character we mean walls that could cave in any second and bathrooms that looked like they could use some cleaning. Gone are those days.

The new club is brand spanking new. Yes, it used to be a different club, but you can tell Buddy invested a lot of money to clean up the place and make it look great. There are many similarities to the old club. If you look at the floor you will notice the signature blue and white checkerboard pattern is still in tact. On the walls you will find enough legendary rock and blues memorabilia from some of the greatest names in music.

The one thing you won't find is a bad seat. The old club was notorious for having blocked views due to badly positioned pillars (which is understandable given that the old space probably wasn't originally designed for a club or concerts). The new place is wide open. When we arrived all the seats were gone, but we were able to hang out in the back and still see everything happening on stage.

The biggest improvement in our mind was the quality of the sound system. An old Tribune article mentioned that the new club was going to have a state-of-the-art sound system, which seemed to be true based on our first experience.

So there you have it and quick rundown of our first experience at the new Buddy Guy's Legends. Like we've always said, it's great to have a legend in your backyard and we're glad our legend (in this case Buddy Guy) finally has his own home in the Sloop.