Interview: Kenny Wayne Shepherd

The blues has always been the kind of genre that’s relied on younger generations carrying the torch forward so newer fans stay clued into the shoulders of which giants current artists are standing on. Guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd has fiercely embraced this standard ever since he met the late Stevie Ray Vaughan backstage in 1984 when the Louisiana native was only seven years old. 

Six months after that fateful meeting arranged by his father, a promoter who booked Vaughan and Double Trouble to headline the Louisiana Music Festival, young Kenny Wayne started working on his six-string craft. At the forefront of it all was paying homage to those elders -- the way Muddy Waters did for Big Bill Broonzy, Jimi Hendrix did for Waters, and Vaughan did for Hendrix.

“I’ve always felt that you’ve got to give credit where credit is due,” Shepherd said in a mid-January interview. “And it’s an example that was set before me. A lot of my heroes always talked about the people that inspired them and paved the way for them to be able to do what they do. I think everyone should do that. I’m just trying to show that respect.”

That need to acknowledge the elders continues this year, as the 47-year-old father of six has quite the full touring dance card. He’ll be hopping on and off the Experience Hendrix Tour, which will find him sharing a bill with a number of other storied guitarist,s including Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Eric Johnson, Zakk Wylde, Ally Venable, Marcus King, Dweezil Zappa, David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas from Los Lobos, Devon Allman and Samantha Fish. In addition, Shepherd will shoehorn dates promoting “Dirt On My Diamonds, Volume. 2,” the 2024 companion release that followed 2023’s “Dirt On My Diamonds Volume 1.” Rather than release a double-album set, Shepherd acknowledged putting out two separate releases made sense in an era where streaming defines how most folks listen to music nowadays.

“I’m always trying to look at different ways of doing things instead of the same old thing every time,” Shepherd explained. “Double albums in today’s world don’t really work. Or they don’t make sense to put both records out at the same time, because everybody is competing for everyone’s attention. I like the idea of a double album, but I thought we’d stagger the release and do volumes one and two and hopefully we can retain peoples’ attention and get them engaged in what we’re doing. We’ll stand a better chance of their hearing all the songs on both records that way.”

Written in pre-pandemic times at Muscle Shoals’ legendary FAME Studios and recorded out in Los Angeles when Shepherd and his family were still living in California, these 15 total tracks bubble over with crying B.B. King-flavored riffs (“Ease My Mind”), brassy horn-kissed jams (“Sweet & Low”) and gritty stompers (“I Got a Woman”). Throw in an Elton John cover (a balls-to-the-wall reading of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”) and a nod to ZZ Top (a Texas shuffle-fueled take on “She Loves My Automobile”) and you’ve got the creative recipe Shepherd has been dipping into throughout his career. 

“I’m always trying to create music that will hopefully be timeless and that people can listen to decades from now and it still sounds okay,” he said. “There’s a difference between creating timeless music and music of the time. I’m trying to create music that stands the test of time. If you’re doing that, then it’s okay that we recorded it and then it sat for a year or two before it came out because we’re not following a trend. So what we’re doing didn’t go out of style and it still sounds good. We didn’t miss a window there, because we’re making music that will hopefully last for decades.”

With a deep catalog to draw from, Shepherd promises his live show will include plenty for fans old and new. Throw in the fact that his 1995 debut “Ledbetter Heights” turns 30 this year and his sophomore bow, 1997’s “Trouble Is…” passed the quarter century mark a couple of years ago and concertgoers can expect to hear a number of favorites alongside the man’s newer jams. 

“People come and want to hear ‘Blue on Black’ or ‘Deja Voodoo’ and of course, we love playing those songs,” he said. “I’m very fortunate because I never record a song that I didn’t actually like. I don’t mind playing any of my songs, even if they’re 30 years old. But we do get excited to play new material because it’s just something different. I’m excited to integrate some of the songs from (“Dirt On My Diamonds) Volume Two” into the show, so you’ll hear some from “Volume One” and some from “Volume Two.” It should be a good balanced set list full of songs that people are very familiar with and hopefully songs that they’re getting familiar with.”

Only three when he attended his first concert, a double bill of Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker the elder Shepherd was promoting at the time, staying close to his roots is still very much a thing for Shepherd. A forthcoming project he’s working on that’s set to drop in March is “Young Fashioned Ways,” the latest album by 91-year-old, Grammy Award-winning bluesman Bobby Rush. Shepherd not only plays on the album, he produced it and is set to take his fellow Louisianian out on the road to promote the new album.

“I’m real excited about this new album because It’s just straight-up, real deal, 100 percent authentic, killer blues,” Shepherd said. “We’re actually bringing Bobby out and at that point, the show is going to shift a little bit and it’s going to be like ‘An Evening With…’ experience. I haven’t got the whole lineup for the show yet, but Bobby and I are going to be performing together and performing some songs from the new (album). Then me and my band are also playing together, so it’ll be a mixture of Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Bobby Rush and then also the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band.”

With future plans in place to release a 30th anniversary track-by-track re-recording of “Ledbetter Heights” and a rock covers album that will include songs by Genesis, Billy Idol and Pink Floyd, not unlike the concept behind his 2014 release “Goin’ Home” (“…that was more the soundtrack of my childhood as far as blues goes,” the guitarist said), Shepherd is staying two or three albums ahead of himself, which has served him quite well up to this point. 

“What it always comes down to is that I’m continuing to try and find things that I haven’t done before to keep it interesting for both us and our fans,” he said.