Every spring, Sonny Landreth, master of the slide guitar and co-composer of the classic “Congo Square,” plays his annual marathon of South Louisiana festival and club gigs.

Landreth’s evocative hybrid of slide and finger-style guitar technique supersedes the instrument. Contrasting plucked percussive notes with lyrical phrases produced by his smooth glass slide, he makes his guitar strings sting and scream, rage and weep.

A Mississippi native whose family moved to Lafayette when he was ...