The self-proclaimed “World's Greatest Bar Band” – George Thorogood and the Delaware (yes, we’ll use the group’s full name here) Destroyers – return to their home state for a show at Wilmington, Delaware’s Grand Opera House on Monday, March 23 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are priced from $35 to $52. For more information, call the Grand box office at 302-652-6677.It’s hard to believe, but it has been six years since Thorogood and the Destroyers performed in Delaware. They rocked Wilmington's Big Kahuna back in 2003.
I’ve never interviewed Thorogood, but through stories told by friends of friends, he always impressed me as a fairly unpretentious guy who charted his own course – as passionate about his semi-pro baseball team as he was about his music career.
The March 2009 issue of Delaware Today magazine features an article that chronicles Thorogood’s career, and what writer Matt Amis calls Thorogood’s “checkered relationship” with his home state. Maybe Thorogood did have a rough adolescence here, but by the early 80s, after he had become Delaware’s first bona fide rock star of the MTV age, Thorogood seemed to have reconciled with his past.
Even though he didn’t officially live here, he certainly was spending time in the area. On at least one occasion circa 1982-83, Thorogood showed up unannounced with his guitar at a now defunct Newark, Delaware bar and grill called the Crap Trap and played a set for open mic night.
Thorogood appears to have maintained that same unassuming personality trait to this day. Regarding his return to Delaware, Thorogood is quoted in the Delaware Today feature as saying, “I’m really looking forward like you wouldn’t believe…. I used to think the only way I’d get into the Grand Opera House is if they asked me to sweep the floor.”
Monday’s show at the Grand is going to be recorded for an upcoming live album. If it comes to fruition, it will be the first live album by a nationally known music artist ever recorded entirely in Delaware.
Give “Lonesome George” credit for remembering the First State. Thorogood is one of only a handful of nationally known music artists to mention or allude to Delaware in his songs. In addition to Thorogood’s “Delaware Slide,” the slim list includes “School Days” by Loudon Wainwright III, “Dover, Delaware” by Canadian folk-roots band the Duhks, Perry Como’s “Delaware,” and Fats Waller’s “(You’re A) Square From Delaware.”
Examples of live recordings originating in Delaware are even rarer. In fact, the only other occurrence that I can find of a live recording taking place in Delaware during the rock era is a track on Earthbound, a 1972 album by the British progressive rock band King Crimson. The album opens with a track called “21st Century Schizoid Man” that was recorded in Wilmington at the old State Armory (which used to be located at 10th and DuPont Streets) on February 11, 1972.
King Crimson was opening for the J. Giles Band that night.
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