Tab Benoit rolls into downtown Cleveland this Sunday, October 11, bringing more than three decades of Louisiana swamp blues to the House of Blues stage at 308 Euclid Ave. The guitarist and singer takes the stage at 8 p.m. backed by a trio featuring bassist Corey Duplechin and drummer Terence Higgins, with tickets running $45 to $90. It's a stop on his Soul of the Swamp tour, and it arrives at a moment when Benoit's career is enjoying a genuine second wind.
As Cleveland.com reports, Benoit has spent more than three decades turning Louisiana swamp soul into his own musical style since debuting with Nice and Warm in 1992. He's a premier blues guitarist known for playing a 1972 Fender Telecaster, and the accolades have piled up over the years: four Grammy nominations, multiple Blues Music Awards, and a sweep of four categories at the 2025 Blues Blast Music Awards, including Electric Guitarist of the Year and Male Blues Artist. He also won the prestigious B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award twice, in 2007 and 2012, and was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2010, according to the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival.
A Comeback Thirteen Years in the Making
Benoit's current tour follows 2024's I Hear Thunder, which returned him to the top of the Billboard Blues Chart at No. 1. That album marked his first studio release in 13 years following 2011's Medicine, a gap Benoit attributed to long-term record contract constraints before he launched his own independent label, Whiskey Bayou Records, according to Guitar World. Both Duplechin and Higgins played on the record, giving Sunday's Cleveland crowd a chance to hear the same rhythm section that helped power his return.
Higgins brings serious pedigree to the stage: the New Orleans musician is a two-time Grammy Award winner who has also performed with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the Warren Haynes Band, John Scofield, and Ani DiFranco, per Berklee PULSE. Duplechin, a native of Theriot, Louisiana, spent 14 years touring internationally with accordion player Chubby Carrier between 1995 and 2009 before becoming one of Benoit's primary touring and recording partners, according to the venue bio published by LPR.
Roots in Baton Rouge's Blues Scene
Benoit's swamp blues style wasn't learned in isolation. He honed it as a teenager at Tabby's Blues Box in Baton Rouge, sharing stages with blues legends Tabby Thomas, Raful Neal, and Henry Gray before forming his own band in 1987, a formative chapter Hoodline covered in a 2019 concert preview. That hands-on apprenticeship under working blues masters is part of why his guitar work carries the weight it does on stages like House of Blues Cleveland.
Benoit's advocacy runs as deep as his musical roots. He has spent years championing Louisiana's threatened wetlands and coastline, work that grew out of the Voice of the Wetlands, a Houma-based nonprofit he founded in 2003 to raise national awareness about coastal erosion in the state's marshlands through concerts and community organizing, per Wikipedia. The cause has become as central to his public identity as his swamp blues sound.
An Archival Release and a Charting Opener
Fans looking for more Benoit material after Sunday's show won't have to wait long. Whiskey Bayou Records has announced the October 23 release of Blues Masters Live, an archival album capturing a previously unreleased 2002 concert recorded at Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas, according to the label's own announcement on tabbenoit.com.
Opening the Cleveland show is Ghalia Volt, born Ghalia Vauthier, a Belgian-born one-woman band who has released five albums since 2016. Her 2019 record Mississippi Blend reached the Top 3 on the Billboard Blues Chart on three separate occasions, a run documented by Ruf Records. Volt later wrote and conceptualized her 2021 album One Woman Band during a month-long solo Amtrak journey across 18 states in August 2020, a creative process detailed by American Blues Scene.
Inside a Reborn Euclid Avenue Landmark
House of Blues Cleveland opened in November 2004 as an anchor for downtown's East Fourth Street entertainment district, converting a historic 1920s building into a venue with a multi-level main music hall and the VIP Foundation Room lounge, a transformation chronicled by Cleveland Scene. The venue has hosted a steady stream of touring acts over the years, including a recent married duo's anniversary tour stop and a live taping featured in Hoodline's coverage of local podcast hosts returning home. For Sunday's audience, it's a fitting setting for a guitarist whose sound was forged decades ago in a much smaller Baton Rouge blues club but has since carried him to stages across the country.
