WANT to blow away the Sunday night blues this weekend?

Then go see Matt Schofield, one of Britain's finest blues guitarists, at the O2 ABC in Sauchiehall Street.

The multi-award-winning guitarist has just embarked on a string of 15 UK dates - Glasgow is the fourth - after extensive North American and European summer touring.

Last year he wowed audiences across Britain as Joe Satriani's special guest. This time, he's the headliner.

Over the years he has played in some two dozen countries, and has played at the North Sea and Montreal Jazz Festivals. Live, as you'll see if you go on Sunday night, he's outstanding.

Matt's fifth studio album, Far As I Can See, released earlier this year, is a forceful reminder of his mastery of blues guitar, and continues his efforts to propel the British blues tradition beyond its 12-bars format.

It isn't hard to see why it has won admiring reviews - or indeed why Matt is the first guitarist in the British Blues Awards Hall of Fame, having won the award of Guitarist of the Year in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

When I catch up with Matt, he's in New York. "It's going very well," he says of his recent American dates.

"We just played B.B. King's Blues Club and Grill in New York last night, which is a great venue, and, you know, New York City - you can't really go wrong with that, can you?

"We've been over here in the U.S. for most of the year and we've done a number of shows in Europe. We go," he adds, "where we get asked to go."

The album does a splendid job of capturing the energy and the full sound that characterises his live gigs.

"We really wanted to achieve that, so what we did was to play together at the same time, which is what we've always done," Matt says. "We've always made records live. You can't really play this music by layering things up, overdubbing and editing things together. That's not how it works.

"This time in the studio, I didn't use any headphones, so I was just hearing my amps and the band.

"I would say we were almost prepared to compromise the sonic aspect of it to capture a moment in the performance. I don't think we did compromise, in the end, but we had been prepared to do that, to get that energy of the performance."

Two of the stand-out tracks - the slow-burning epic The Day You Left, and the Hendrix tribute, Red Dragon - were both first takes in the studio, done live, late at night. Both are spectacular.

"We played them both twice in the studio and picked the best version of each," says Matt. "I gave the guys - organist Jonny Henderson, drummer Jordan John and bassist Carl Stanbridge - a brief outline of both of those songs, and said, 'Okay, this is how it goes, let's play it'.

"That approach - getting us in the moment - definitely worked. Those are the two tracks that people have responded to most."

In Matt's own words, the lyrics of another song, Getaway, "came from the desire to create intimacy with the audience, by inviting them to share in the moment with the music - the same way the musicians must be in order to play it - something that, in these days of an audience filled with cameraphones, seems harder to achieve."

He's not the first musician to express a general frustration with the challenge of connecting with cameraphone-wielding audiences. A live concert, he insists, is a two-way experience, he insists, with the audience almost participating with the band, but if you're intent on recording the concert on your phone, "you miss the core of the experience of listening to the kind of music we play live - or it could be any kind of blues or jazz, or anything where it's in the moment."

But like other musicians, too, he acknowledges that Glasgow audiences can be something special.

"We love it up there. That kind of response is what we feed off. It's that two-way street thing again. People can make the gig as special as they want it to be. It's not solely down to us.

"If you give out a lot of energy, show you're attentive and enthused, you will get an enthused band back. Glasgow has always been a blast. Audiences there can demonstrate more freely and enthusiastically than some other audiences elsewhere."

The recent U.S. dates, and the current British tour, see Matt gigging without Jonny Henderson for the first time in a long time.

"We did our first gig together 18 years ago and he's been alongside me in my solo project for 12 years now, but he's about to become a father, so this is the first time he's not toured with me in 12 years.

"In the States I played with a couple of young guys from Miami but for the UK dates I'll be with Carl on bass, and Jamie Little on drums. I've known both of these guys for 15 years, so it will be much more of a family affair."

Some family. See them in action on Sunday night and they'll make you wish the weekend could last just a little bit longer.

l Matt Schofield + The Ben Poole Band, O2 ABC, Sunday. Far As I Can See is on Provogue Records/Mascot Label Group