Three years ago, Kenny Wayne Shepherd felt a void in his life. Strange, considering that this fleet-fingered phenom summoned goosebumps when he debuted on a New Orleans stage at the ripe age of 13.
The rest is the stuff of lesser guitarists’ envy.
At 15, Shepherd sat in with B.B. King. Two years later, while most high schoolers were hammering out the oddities of puberty, 17-year-old Shepherd was producing his first album, 1995’s LedBetter Heights. Within a year, half-a-million copies sold. The next two releases, Trouble Is ... and Live On, garnered Grammy nominations. At last count, the Shreveport, La., native owned three straight number-one blues albums, a succession of radio hits and two Billboard Music Awards.
All this, with nary a formal lesson.
What else could Shepherd ache for? Wasn’t sitting atop the blues world enough? Much like Bob Dylan seeking out Robert Frost, Shepherd needed a link, a reason for why the blues vice-gripped his heart. Kenny Wayne wanted to seek the source of the music that strived to derail inner oppression. In June 2004, Shepherd—with a camera crew, the Double Trouble band and producer Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads)—embarked on a 10-day trip to play with his influences. The end result was the CD/DVD documentary 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads (Reprise Records).
The whirlwind trip led Shepherd down the humid highway through New Orleans, Hillsborough, N.C., St. Louis, and Salina, Kan. The players ranged from the world famous (B.B. King) to the relatively obscure (Cootie Stark, Wild Child Butler).
“I got to fulfill a lot of lifelong fantasies playing with these guys,” said Shepherd in a recent telephone interview. “There were guys like Hubert [Sumlin] and B.B. who I’ve looked up to my whole life, and also virtually undiscovered talent, like Cootie Stark. Most important, we portrayed these artists in their own light. It’s not like I showed up and let these people do a bunch of my tunes. I did their tunes.”
The prodigy was taking his first formal lessons of his career. The hardest day? When Shepherd played with 93-year-old Etta Baker as she schooled him in the art of Piedmont-style finger picking.
“Her style was so unique—country, blues, kind of bluegrass, almost ragtime piano on the guitar,” recalls Shepherd.
“It was something I wasn’t too familiar with,” he admits with a laugh. “It’s obvious in that segment that I’m trying to keep up with her.”
Baker, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Henry Townsend, Cootie Stark, Wild Child Butler, and Neil Pattman all passed away shortly after filming.
“It’s just a reminder of a generation of people that aren’t going to be around forever, and you have to appreciate them when they’re still around,” says Shepherd.
He realized that the language of the blues transcends age and demographics. His inner void was filled.
“I come from a different generation,” he points out. “Some of these guys talked about working on a plantation. However, I felt like when we got up on stage and we all played together, it was the one way we all could relate on the same level.”
Kenny Wayne Shepherd plays the Rock n’ Kiss Stage at Coxe Ave. 9:30-11 p.m. on Saturday.
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