Bar/fly: Chicago

A crowd gathers at Buddy Guy's Legends bar, in Chicago. Photo / Supplied

On a rainy Monday night in Chicago, folk from the audience are taking to the stage in Buddy Guy's Legends bar.

A changing roster of part-time blues frontmen deliver walk-up performances into the early hours of the morning. An earnest-looking fellow in collar and tie who could be here to audit the bar's financial records lays down some hellish solos. A longhaired bogan with a goatee who looks like he should have been a gas-pumping extra on Breaking Bad tears the place apart. They walk in with their guitar cases; many walk straight out after they've played. And they're all pretty damn good.

The announcer's nephew is filling the drum seat. He and the older guy playing bass are the only constants.

"Seems we're a little heavy on guitarists tonight," says the uncle. "Light on drums."

You wouldn't know it; the impromptu rhythm section is tight.

A guy takes to the stage wearing a washboard, like some sort of Tin Man armour, and holding a spoon in each hand. A grinning doppelganger for the goofy sidekick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, he joins two guitarists onstage and rubs his cutlery along the grated metal plate. I'm showing my non-blues credentials here, but this dude looks like he's acting out a dare on his stag-do.

"Is that guy for real?" I ask a guy at the sound desk.

"It's the washboard. He's for real," the sound-desk guy says with a look that suggests he's wondering if I'm for real.

The open mic is closed for the last hour of the evening, as local bluesman Linsey Alexander steps up. He's definitely for real.

The announcer rattles of a list of places he's performed with Alexander.

"What's that place? By Argentina? Uruguay! That's it, we played in Uruguay!"

The 71-year-old Alexander, known as "Hoochie Man", is dazzling on the guitar and spends much of his time on stage joking with the audience, boozily flirting with two bemused Japanese women and mimicking an extensive array of oral sex techniques to them and anyone else. It's quite a show.

Buddy Guy, the man whose joint we're in, is regarded by many as the man who connected the blues to rock and roll. He channelled the founding fathers of Chicago's electric blues - men like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf - with the later legends of popular guitar rock.

"Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others," said Eric Clapton.

The walls are bedecked with guitars played by rock gods when they visited the bar. There's Stevie Ray Vaughan; there's Keith Richards.

Legends is a cracking place. I visited on every night but one of a four-night stay in Chicago, never paying more than US$10 at the door and mostly drinking the excellent Anti-Hero IPA by Revolution Brewing Company. (Give the house beer, Buddy Brew, a miss.)

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Air New Zealand flies twice daily to Los Angeles from Auckland, increasing to three daily services from December-March. From there, US domestic carriers continue to Chicago.

The writer travelled as a guest of Air New Zealand and IPW, the travel showcase to the USA.