Chicago slide guitar sovereign Lil’ Ed Williams missed the best Antone’s Blues Festival to date last week, but now genre hardcores get a six-string clinic in the intimacy of Fifth Street’s Home of the Blues. Growing up on the Second City’s rough & tumble Westside, the slashing firebrand fed his brand’s pre-millennial Renaissance alongside Austin’s Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Clifford Antone himself would’ve made a point emceeing Williams, 71. February’s Slideways, the Imperials’ 10th album for Alligator Records since 1986 and his first in a decade, tickles a thicker voice and syrupy tempos, but as his solo on initial single “Bad All By Myself” proves, bluesmen only become more primal with age. – Raoul Hernandez
