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"Quinn Sullivan, 14-year-old blues whiz, talks Crossroads Festival
"Playing Madison Square Garden was the highlight of my life. I still can't believe it happened."
Joe Bosso 6 hours ago

What were you doing when you were 14? Chances are you weren't playing with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Warren Haynes, Gary Clark Jr., Jimmie Vaughan and a dozen other blues greats at Madison Square Garden.

But that's exactly what middle-schooler Quinn Sullivan did last week when he helped close out the first night of Clapton's 2013 Crossroads Guitar Festival for an all-hands-on-deck version of Joe Cocker's High Time We Went. Earlier in the evening, Sullivan joined Guy, his mentor since 2005, along with pedal steel master Robert Randolph for arena-razing readings of Damn Right I Got The Blues, Slippin' In and Let The Doorknob Hit Ya.

"Playing Madison Square Garden was the highlight of my life," Sullivan says. "I still can't believe it happened. I went from watching the Crossroads Festival DVD in 2004 to playing it last week. That's just crazy!"

Sullivan credits Guy with maneuvering his own spot on stage to include him in the proceedings. "From what I know, you have to be personally invited by Eric Clapton to play Crossroads," says Sullivan. "Buddy kind of worked things out to get me in. It's just one of the things he's done for me. I'm so indebted to him."

On 18 June, Sullivan releases his debut album, Getting There, a rascally and reverent collection of 12 original blues tunes that also features an assured take on Clapton's To Get Better In A Little While. And once classes let out for the summer, he'll hit the road with Guy for a US tour. It's pretty heady stuff for someone not even old enough to shave, and in the following interview, Sullivan talks about how he came to love the blues, his practice routine (or lack thereof) and what it's like to rub shoulders with key figures of the blues elite.

You got into the guitar at, what, three years old?

"Yeah, I was about three. My parents had a lot of music in the house – Grateful Dead, Beatles – and I grew up listening to it. They brought me to a lot of blues festivals and shows around here in New Bedford [Massachusetts], and I just loved the music. For me, the guitar stuck out. I can play a little drums, a little bass, a little keyboards, but the guitar felt special to me.

"I got my first guitar one Christmas, one of those little First Act models, and I just loved the feel of it. Everything about playing that guitar felt right to me."

At what point did it become more than that? For many people, playing the guitar, especially the blues, is a calling.

"That all hit me when I saw the Crossroads Festival DVD from 2004. Buddy Guy was incredible on that. He played Sweet Home Chicago, which was so good. He did his thing with Hubert Sumlin, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray and all those guys, and I really thought he was amazing. His style, his mannerism, his stage presence – it all struck me as being something really cool.

"At the time, I was listening to The Beatles – and they're still my favorite band of all time – and a lot of jam bands. I didn't know too much about the blues. Getting into it was a real eye-opening experience."

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