The guitarist who’s set to release a ‘more rocking’ new album brings his tour to State Theatre in Kalamazoo on Saturday, with Michigan’s own guitar sensation, Jake Kershaw, opening. The Local Spins interview.
Trusting His Instincts: That’s Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s M.O. (Photo/Kristin Forbes)
THE ARTIST: Kenny Wayne Shepherd wsg Jake Kershaw
THE MUSIC: Guitar-driven blues rock
WHERE YOU CAN SEE HIM: 8 p.m. Saturday at State Theatre, 404 S. Burdick St., Kalamazoo
TICKETS: $35-$85 at kazoostate.com
The best piece of advice blues-rocker Kenny Wayne Shepherd ever received was in the form of a message that Stevie Ray Vaughan signed onto Shepherd’s very first Stratocaster guitar when the future star was just 13 years old.
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“Kenny, just play it with all your heart,” the message read.
“That’s basically what I’ve tried to do every night since,” Shepherd said via phone from his California home earlier this week.
Shepherd, who has hit No. 1 on the blues charts with seven of his eight studio albums as well as his lone live release, will be headlining a show at Kalamazoo’s State Theatre on Saturday. Supporting him will be up-and-coming Marshall blues-rocker Jake Kershaw, who like Shepherd 20-plus years ago, started turning heads as a teenager.
Opening for an Idol: Jake Kershaw (Photo/Nate Purchase)
Kershaw, however, is still a teen, and has a long way to go before reaching the critical acclaim that Shepherd found when his first two albums, “Ledbetter Heights” and “Trouble Is …,” went platinum in 1995 and 1997. When asked what sort of advice the writer of “Blue on Black” would pass on to the 17-year-old blues whiz, or another young guitar slinger like Kershaw, Shepherd had the following to say:
“Always trust your instinct and don’t ever compromise your belief in what you want to do,” he said. “It’s inevitable that someone is going to approach a young artist and try to sway them into a direction that they think is going to make them more successful.
“I’ve seen lot of young artists that are up on the scene and they love blues and want to be a blues artist or whatever and somebody gets in their head and the next thing you know they are changing their sound and they are changing it again and then, they aren’t able to figure out what their identity is.”
STICK TO YOUR GUNS AND TRUST YOUR VOICE
When Shepherd was Kershaw’s age, he said, he was pressured to sing his own songs. But he decided against that, Shepherd said, which is likely a major reason he found success.
Swapping Vocals: Shepherd trades leads with Noah Hunt. (Photo/Greg Logan)
“My voice sounded like a child’s,” he recalled. “And the songs that I was writing, the depth of the material, didn’t match up with the sound of my voice. It just wasn’t right. I found somebody else to do it, and I stuck to my guns. Had I not done that I don’t think we would have had the success that we did.”
The vocalist Shepherd found, Noah Hunt, has been with him since. And while they now share lead vocal duties and have for the past decade-plus, it wasn’t until Shepherd’s fourth record, 2004’s “The Place You’re In,” when the band leader took the mic on lead vocals on any of the tunes that he wrote.
Nowadays, Shepherd, known primarily for his blazing guitar licks, takes leads only when he finds it “appropriate” or “important” for him to do so.
“We have two very different sounding voices, which is cool, because there is such a broader range of material we can cover. Plus, it gives me the luxury of singing (live) when I want to sing, or if I want to play guitar all night I can do that too … and we harmonize really well together”
LAYING IT ON DOWN
When it comes to sound, Shepherd has made his mark as one of the better blues rock players of his time, highlighted by vibrant, jaw-dropping solos reminiscent of and oft compared to the likes of Stevie Ray, Jimi and Clapton.
On his last album, 2017’s “Lay it on Down,” however, he took a chance, and dug deeper in a different direction, straying from the traditional blues approach with a goal of “making a more contemporary sounding album.”
“I don’t ever want to repeat myself,” he said, explaining the decision to get “rootsy.”
“I want each album to be different, but I also want there to be for my body of work to sound cohesive, so there’s all these elements of each album that relate to each other. This record I just wanted to really do something that was different. It draws more from a lot of the other musical influences I had growing up. While listening to a lot of blues, I also listened to country, rock, southern rock, R&B, funk. … This was just an opportunity to take a little bit of each of those genres and mix it with blues.
Shepherd’s next album, due out in 2019, will be “a bit more rocking,” he said. And while the recording is now finished, fans shouldn’t expect to hear any unreleased tracks on Saturday night, and you can blame that on your iPhone.
“You know, I’m totally fine with it, but half the audience has their cell phones out these days, recording the whole show,” he said. “But in that means, if we do new material then it gets out there and people’s first impression of a new song is from a cell phone recording, and it’s certainly not the best audio quality and maybe not the best representation of the song.
“I always like to get the album out their first and then start playing them live.”
Tickets for Saturday’s show, starting at $35, are available at the Kalamazoo State Theatre box office as well as at kazoostate.com.
VIDEO: Kenny Wayne Shepherd, “Lay It On Down”
VIDEO: Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, “Blue on Black” (Paste Studios)
VIDEO: Jake Kershaw Band
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