Luke Doucet, right, plays for Bryan Adams in São Paulo, Brazil.Ricardo Matsukawa/Supplied
Fingers, don’t fail me now.
Luke Doucet’s first night as Bryan Adams’s temporary lead guitarist began with the song Kick Ass on Feb. 25, at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum of Puerto Rico. As Adams yelled, “Let there be guitar,” Doucet walked on stage playing a bouncy song-announcing riff in E-major to the delight of a roaring crowd.
He was terrified, never having rehearsed with the band, let alone appeared in the spotlight as he played his very first notes with them in front of 19,000 people. If it were a movie, Doucet would have looked into the camera and deadpanned: “You’re probably wondering how I got here.”
The story involves a phone call out of the blue, severe short notice, an airplane ticket to the land of Bad Bunny and a bundle of nerves. “It was a trial by fire, and the trial never stopped for the full run of the tour,” Doucet says. “That first night, I had no idea how any of the songs were even supposed to end.”
Roll over, Beethoven, life in the fast lane and rock and roll, hoochie koo: The experience is something Doucet can tell his grandchildren about.
He had received a long-distance ring from England the week before. “Could you,” Adams asked Doucet, “learn 26 of my songs and be ready to play in San Juan in three days?”
Though Doucet knew Adams from Adam, they’re weren’t close. He had worked on a never-released duets album by Adams and Kathleen Edwards years ago. A guitar solo from the sessions ended up on the song Just About Gone, from Adams’s 2022 LP So Happy It Hurts. That was the extent of their relationship.
Puerto Rico? Three days? More than two dozen songs with no rehearsal for a 12-date tour of the largest arenas in Latin and South America? The learning curve and logistics were insane. Besides, he had a new album and tour coming up with his own band, Whitehorse, with his singer-songwriter wife, Melissa McClelland. But …
“What am I going to say, no?”
Speaking about it now, Doucet laughs. A gun-slinger guitarist who has long been a member of Sarah McLachlan’s band, he’s answered these kinds of calls of duty before: He once subbed in for an ill Greg Keelor on a Blue Rodeo tour.
Luke Doucet plays for Bryan Adams in Mexico City.MOISES ARELLANO VILLALOBOS/Supplied
More recently, he stole the show with his blazing fretboard work last fall at the Neil Young 80th birthday tribute concert at Toronto’s Massey Hall, and he was a member of Joni Mitchell’s backing band at this spring’s Juno Awards in Hamilton.
Still, the offer from Adams was surreal. As a kid, Doucet played a cassette of Adams’s blockbuster 1984 album Reckless in his Winnipeg bedroom incessantly: Run to You, Heaven, It’s Only Love, Summer of ’69 and Somebody were ingrained almost molecularly.
“That record was the soundtrack to a certain way I felt about the world when I was 12 years old,” Doucet says. “It represented a kind of optimism, vainglory and desire.”
And now, because his regular guitarist (Keith Scott) was out of commission for a few weeks, Adams needed somebody − somebody like Doucet.
“I like his vibe,” Adams told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail. “He’s a great player and a top man.”
A top man who had his work cut out for him. To help Doucet prepare, Adams’s tour management sent digital files of previous concerts with audio stems that enabled the guitar parts to be isolated. Doucet spent three days with a laptop, headphones and his guitar learning the songs.
Luke Doucet at the 2026 Junos in Hamilton, Ont.Vincent Jones/Supplied
In true “have guitar, will travel” fashion, Doucet arrived in San Juan with only a Gretsch White Falcon instrument on his back. “I showed up and stepped into Keith Scott’s equipment rig.”
Vancouverite Scott has been Adams’s lead guitarist since the 1970s. (He’s also worked with Cher, Tina Turner, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Tom Cochrane and Jann Arden.) Adams says Scott had a “sudden medical situation” that prevented him from joining the band for the tour dates.
Postponing the concerts was not considered. If they hadn’t found a suitable replacement guitarist, Adams (who alternates between bass and guitar) would have taken over on guitar, with keyboardist Gary Breit handling the bass parts on a synthesizer.
Adams was a supportive and encouraging taskmaster, according to Doucet: all hugs and high-fives one second, yelling at him above the din to play eighth notes instead of quarter notes the next. While the first handful of shows were “90-per-cent terror and 10-per-cent a blast,” by the end of the tour (through Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Colombia) the numbers were reversed. In Bogota, the tour leg was done.
“I told the guys if they ever needed a guitarist again,” Doucet says, “they know where to find me.”
Luke Doucet, right and Bryan Adams play Buenos Aires.Lorena Enzini/Supplied
He lives in Toronto. For now, the guitarist and his wife are readying Whitehorse for a string of Canadian dates this spring to support its latest long-player, All I Want Is All of It (out May 8). Doucet hopes the attention he gets touring with Adams or, say, appearing on NPR’s highly watched Tiny Desk Concerts series with McLachlan, helps build Whitehorse’s momentum in addition to raising his status as a guitarist for hire.
His heroes are Glen Campbell and Mark Knopfler, the type of session players with their own solo careers who help other artists in the studio and on the road.
“Can you show up on time? Can you learn the songs? Is your guitar in tune? Are you a nice person? I want to be able to say, ‘Yeah, I can do all those things.’”