by Jeff Clark, Staff Writer
BILOXI (GG) — Foghat will make a stop at 8 p.m. Friday at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi. Tickets to the show start at $20 and are available at Ticketmaster.com. For Foghat lead singer Scott Holt, the show is a kind of homecoming.
“I lived in Biloxi when I was very young,” he said. “But I was so young that I don’t have any core memories of my time there.”
Foghat has been making music for more than 50 years since forming in 1971, when Roger Earl and Lonesome Dave Peverett left Savoy Brown to start a new group rooted in blues-driven rock.
The band broke through commercially in 1975 with the release of Fool for the City, a double-platinum album that featured the hit song “Slow Ride.”
Decades later, Foghat remains active on the touring and recording circuit. The band’s most recent album, “Sonic Mojo,” was released in November 2023 and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart. The album remained in the chart’s Top 10 for 34 weeks.
The band’s current lineup blends longtime members with newer additions. Earl remains on drums, joined by Bryan Bassett on guitar, Rodney O’Quinn on bass and vocals, and Holt on guitar and lead vocals. Before joining Foghat, Holt spent time on the road and in the studio with the legendary blues icon Buddy Guy.
“I started with Buddy in 1989, which was when he got his record deal with RCA,” he said. “It was a beautiful thing. It’s great to see an artist get what they worked so hard for and beautiful fashion. He’s truly an icon, and I’m proud of him and everything Buddy has done and accomplished.”
Holt said he “loved every second” of his time on the road with Guy.
“If he called me tomorrow and offered me a gig, I would be there. I tell him that all the time. When he offered me the gig the first time, I was so excited that I wasn’t even sure if I was getting paid. My dad had to call him to make sure I was getting paid.”
For the past few years, Holt has been performing with Foghat. He said it was his friendship with Earl that led him to the opportunity.
“I’ve been in the band for four years now, but I’ve been friends with Roger since like 2014. I went down to the band’s rehearsal studio in Florida, and I played with them, and they invited me back. We stayed in touch, and I would go down and write with Roger. We wrote so many songs that we put a side project together called Earl and The Agitators with Bryan. We started off opening for Foghat, which meant three-fourths of Foghat were opening for Foghat. One day, Roger told me he needed to talk to me, and he asked me to join the band. They’re a beautiful group of people.”
One of the band’s hits, “Slow Ride,” gained renewed popularity in recent years, appearing in films such as “Dazed & Confused” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” Couple that with a Jim Carrey mention of the band at the 1999 MTV Video Awards, and the band is enjoying a resurgence that continues to this day.
“I’m grateful to play that song every night,” he said. “I encourage the crowd every night when he performs it to turn their cell phones off and just be in the moment because that performance is just for you. I’m realizing that some of the moments we try to capture with our devices make us miss the moment. When we play ‘Slow Ride’ in Biloxi, it is just for you.”
(Photo submitted by Foghat)
