Kenny Wayne Shepherd (born Kenny Wayne Brobst; June 12, 1977) is an American guitarist. He has released several studio albums and experienced significant commercial success as a blues rock artist.[4]
Shepherd was born in Shreveport, Louisiana.[5] He graduated from Caddo Magnet High School in Shreveport. He is "completely self-taught", [6] and does not read music. Growing up, Shepherd's father (Ken Shepherd) was a local radio personality and some-time concert promoter, and had a vast collection of music. Kenny received his first "guitar" at the age of three or four, when his grandmother purchased a series of several plastic guitars for him with S&H Green Stamps, which he has said he would "go through like candy".[6]
Shepherd stated in a 2011 interview that he began playing guitar in earnest at age seven, about six months after meeting and being "pretty mesmerized"[6] by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Labor Day weekend in 1984, at one of his father's promoted concerts. His self-taught method employed a process of learning one note at a time, playing and rewinding cassette tapes, using "a cheap Yamaha wanna-be Stratocaster ... made out of plywood, basically",[6] and learning to play by following along with material from his father's record collection.[6]
Career
Blues musician Bryan Lee invited the then-13-year-old Shepherd to play guitar onstage. He subsequently made demo tapes, and a video was shot at Shepherd's first performance at the Red River Revel Arts Festival in Shreveport. It was this video performance that impressed Giant Records chief Irving Azoff enough to sign Shepherd to a multiple album record deal.
From 1995 on, Shepherd took seven singles into the Top 10, and holds the record for the longest-running album on the Billboard Blues Charts with Trouble Is.... In 1996, Shepherd began a longtime collaboration with vocalist Noah Hunt, who provided the vocals for Shepherd's signature song, "Blue on Black". Shepherd has been nominated for five Grammy Awards, and has received two Billboard Music Awards, two Blues Music Awards, and two Orville H. Gibson Awards.
In September 2008, Fender Musical Instruments Corp. released the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Signature Series Stratocaster, designed exclusively by Shepherd. In 2007, he released a critically acclaimed and two-time Grammy nominated DVD–CD project, 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads. This documents Shepherd as he travels the country to jam with and interview the last of the authentic blues musicians. As they tour the backroads, Shepherd, with members of the Double Trouble Band, play with a host of blues greats including Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Bryan Lee, Buddy Flett (with whom he jams at Lead Belly's grave), B. B. King, blues harp master Jerry "Boogie" McCain, Cootie Stark, Neal Pattman, John Dee Holeman, Etta Baker, Henry Townsend with Honeyboy Edwards, and a concert session with the surviving members of Muddy Waters' and Howlin' Wolf's bands, including Hubert Sumlin, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, and Pinetop Perkins. In 2010, Shepherd was nominated for a Grammy for Live in Chicago, which featured performances with Hubert Sumlin, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, Buddy Flett, and Bryan Lee. In 2011, Shepherd released his seventh CD, titled How I Go, on Roadrunner Records. In 2014 he released "Goin Home" on Mascot Label Group in Europe and on Concord Records in the US and the rest of the world. In 2015 Shepherd released "Something From the Road Vol. 1," a live special release for Record Store Day in the U.S.
Shepherd (right) and Stephen Stills perform as The Rides in Boston, 2013
In January 2017, the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band went into the studio with producer Marshall Altman to record a new album of all newly written songs titled Lay It On Down and released the album on August 4 (July 21 in Europe on Mascot Label Group). Lay It On Down is the eighth record by the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart.
Shepherd made his Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival debut on 16 July 2019.[7]
In March 2021, the Blues Foundation revoked Kenny Wayne Shepherd's 2021 Blues Music Awards nomination for Best Blues/Rock Artist. According to a statement from the organization, the decision was made over Confederate flag imagery displayed on Shepherd's The Dukes of Hazzard "General Lee" car replica. Shepherd acknowledged the offensiveness of the flag on his car and said he had permanently covered it some time ago. "Years ago I put that car in permanent storage and some time ago, I made the decision to permanently cover the flag on my car because it was completely against my values and offensive to the African American community which created the music I love so much and I apologize to anyone that I have unintentionally hurt because of it." The organization also asked Shepherd's father, Ken Shepherd, to step down as a member of its board of directors. Ken Shepherd declined to comment on being asked to step down.[10]
On December 2, 2022, Shepherd released Trouble Is... 25, a complete re-recording of his sophomore album for its 25th anniversary. The album includes a never-before-heard cover of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man."[11]
On January 15, 2011, Shepherd performed a live set for "Guitar Center Sessions" on DirecTV. The episode included an interview with Shepherd by program host, Nic Harcourt.[6]
Shepherd appeared at the Experience Hendrix tribute concert in Mesa Arizona on May 23, 2011.
Shepherd opened for BB King in Atlanta's Chastain Park Amphitheater on July 4, 1999.
Trouble Is... 25th Anniversary Concert at the Strand Theatre, Shreveport, LA February 12, 2022
Paul Bernard Rodgers is an English-Canadian singer, songwriter and musician. He was the lead vocalist of numerous rock bands, including Free, Bad Company, the Firm and the Law. He has also performed as a solo artist, and collaborated with the remaining active members of Queen under the moniker Queen + Paul Rodgers, from 2004 until both parties parted ways in 2009. A poll in Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 55 on its list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In 2011 Rodgers received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.
Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Ledbetter Heights is the debut album by American blues solo artist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, released on September 19, 1995, when Shepherd was 18 years old. The album's name refers to a neighborhood in Shepherd's hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. It also featured lead singer Corey Sterling on vocals.
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Hubert Charles Sumlin was a Chicago blues guitarist and singer, best known for his "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions" as a member of Howlin' Wolf's band. He was ranked number 43 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Joseph Leonard Bonamassa is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. He started his career at age twelve, when he opened for B.B. King. Since 2000, Bonamassa has released fifteen solo albums through his independent record label J&R Adventures, of which eleven have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues chart.
Jimmy D. Lane is an American electric blues guitarist.
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JW-Jones is a Canadian blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He is a Juno Award nominee (2015), Billboard magazine Top 10 Selling artist, and winner of the International Blues Challenge for "Best Self-Produced CD Award" for his release 'High Temperature' in 2017 and Best Guitarist in 2020.
Quinn Sullivan is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist from New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States.
10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads is a CD/DVD and is the fifth release from American blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd. The documentary film was directed by Noble Jones and produced by Phillipa Davis. It was executive produced by Kelly Norris Sarno, Devin Sarno, Ken Shepherd, and Kristin Forbes. It was edited by Mark Morton. The CD was produced by Jerry Harrison. Tour still photography, CD, DVD, and LP photos by Amanda Gresham. 10 Days Out was nominated for two Grammys, Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video and Grammy Award For Best Traditional Blues Album at the 50th Grammy Awards and won the 2008 Blues Music Award for Best DVD and the 2008 Keeping the Blues Alive Award under the category of Film, Television or Video.
"Blue on Black" is a song by American blues rock group Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band. Written by Shepherd with Mark Selby and Tia Sillers, it was originally released on their second studio album, Trouble Is... (1997). In 1998, the song was released as a single and reached the top position on the US Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
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