Kenny Wayne Shepherd has been playing guitar since he was around seven years old.  By thirteen, he was starting to play on stage, alongside professional blues musicians.  In 1995, Kenny released his first album, Ledbetter Heights to great acclaim.  It spent 20 weeks on top of the Blues Album Charts.  The next year, Kenny released Trouble Is… which included the smash Blue On Black.  This song went to number one on the U.S. Main Rock Chart and established Shepherd as crossover charting star.

In 2017, Kenny Wayne Shepherd released Lay It On Down, his eighth studio album.  I caught up with Kenny to talk about this latest album as well as his tour.

After touring and playing countless shows to exuberant fans all over the world, I asked Kenny if he still gets the butterflies before a big tour.  Kenny says, “No, not really.  This is what we do.  I mean I still get excited, or right before we go on stage you get a surge of adrenaline going.  We certainly get excited to do what we love to do.  We make records so we can play concerts for people.  That’s like the essence of what we do.  We love being able to go out there and fulfill our purpose.”

I’ve seen Kenny play shows with a number of different people.  I was curious to know the size of the band he’s bringing for these shows.  Kenny explains, “We’ve got five people.  Bass, drums, keyboards, guitar and vocals.  Chris Layton from Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band on drums.  Scott Nelson on bass, who was my bass player for about five years a while back and now he’s since rejoined the band.  We’ve got Joe Krown from New Orleans, that played with blues legend “Gatemouth” Brown.  He played in his band for a long time and he joined this band about a year and a half ago.  Then we’ve got Noah Hunt on lead vocals and rhythm guitar.  When I’m singing lead, he’s playing rhythm.  So that’s the core, the band right there, and it works well.  What’s cool is that with my voice and Noah’s voice, they’re pretty different and that gives us a wide range of ground we can cover with the band.”

A great example of these two voices both getting to shine, is the latest album, Lay It On Down.  The first song, Baby Got Gone, features Kenny on the lead vocal whereas the song, Louisiana Rain, has Noah’s thick and bluesy voice at the front.  Both of which are two of my favorites tracks.  It’s such a contrast but man, it just works.  Kenny says, “Yeah, that’s cool!  I like the way it gradually and organically turned into this kind of situation, the more comfortable I got singing.  So we’ve got two completely different sounding instruments available to us.  It’s just cool and gives us the opportunity to do different things.”

I couldn’t agree more.  It definitely gives the listener that excitement and anticipation of what’s coming next.

There’s a song on the album called, Nothing But The Night.  It’s my personal favorite on the record.  It has an almost, 1983-84, blues vibe going on.  I could nearly envision it being played in a movie like, Color Of Money, with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.  I asked Kenny if he has any favorites on this album.  He says, “I like Nothing But The Night as well.  I think it has a unique sound.  Also, Diamonds and Gold, I think is a great song.  It’s very modern sounding.  The title track, Lay It On Down.  I think those lyrics are very significant.  Then there’s Louisiana Rain as well.   Fortunately, I try to make records that I like and would listen to, myself.  Depending on any given day, when I’m listening to that album, my favorites can change.  But the ones I just listed off to you, are consistently some of my favorites on that record.”

The band is coming back to the Detroit area on November 6th and playing the Royal Oak Music Theatre.  I’ve seen him play a lot of places but the Detroit crowd always seems to give a little something extra.  Kenny says, “Some of the best gigs we’ve ever played have been in Detroit.  Whether it be at the Fox Theatre or this other amphitheater, well there’s Pine Knob (DTE Energy Music Theatre), but this other amphitheater, (Freedom Hill) we’ve played as well. And they were all great.  The people there, the entire state of Michigan, I look forward to coming there.  And I say this when I’m doing interviews with people outside of Michigan.  It’s one of my favorite states to go to because the people there work really hard and then when it’s time to play, they play really hard too.  To a lot of people, music is really important and that’s how they cut loose a little bit and blow off some steam and kind of escape some of the other things.  So we just really feel that from the audience.  I mean, we get a lot of energy from the people there.”

You can really hear the excitement and energy in Kenny’s voice when he’s talking about playing live and performing in Michigan.  Their show at the Royal Oak Music Theatre is one that you aren’t going to want to miss.

I will see you there.

-Tommy Marz

Follow Tommy and SoundVapors on Twitter.

*Look out for the SoundVapors podcast which will include the rest of our interview.  We discuss another passion of Kenny’s: Cars.  We’ll also talk about his favorite guitar and future projects.*

You can get your tickets here: KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD BAND – ROYAL OAK MUSIC THEATRE

The Peterson Brothers will open the show.

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