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The making of a guitar PRODIGY
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 3/10/2000
Guitar prodigies are made, not born. Just ask Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the 22-year-old phenomenon from Louisiana. He's winning accolades right and left these days - blues god B. B. King has even mentored him - but Shepherd put in the hard work to get there.
"At one point, I was playing seven to eight hours a day," says Shepherd, who signed his first contract at age 16.
Shepherd, who has electrified the blues and rock worlds with his playing, knew from his early boyhood that he wanted to pursue guitar. As a 7-year-old, he saw Texas blues great Stevie Ray Vaughan perform at Veterans Park Amphitheatre in Shreveport - and that fed Shepherd's dedication.
"I'd been listening to blues through my dad," says Shepherd, who headlines Avalon on Thursday. "So I knew who Stevie Ray was. Then when I saw him, that was it. He had a very profound impact on a young kid."
Shepherd's father worked in radio as a program director, so he was able to get his son backstage to meet Vaughan at the time. And Shepherd met him again a month before Vaughan died in a helicopter accident in 1990.
"He signed my guitar that time," says Shepherd. "He wrote on it, `Just play with all your heart."'
Shepherd has been doing that ever since. He has released three albums, the best of which, "Live On," came out late last year. It contained the scorching rock hit "In 2 Deep," the blues hit "Was" (with a surprise acoustic country-blues intro), and a riffing cover of Peter Green's "Oh Well," from the days when Green was in the '60s incarnation of Fleetwood Mac.
The authority that Shepherd brings to his playing - and the incendiary licks that he dispenses - have earned him two Billboard Music Awards, a Grammy nomination, and platinum record sales. And he's still, in the bigger picture, just starting out.
"I take things day by day," he said during a recent cell-phone interview from his tour bus, as it passed through New Jersey. "The main thing is that I want to find myself still doing this when I'm 40 or 50 years old. I want to make a career out of it. I want to leave my stamp. I don't want to be a flash in the pan."
Shepherd has been leaving his stamp through 200 to 250 gigs a year. "We like to tour. It's one of the things we do best," Shepherd says of his band, which includes singer Noah Hunt, drummer Sam Bryant, and bassist Keith Christopher. (They also anchored the latest album, while joined by special guests Double Trouble - Vaughan's backup band - and Les Claypool of Primus, Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule, Dr. John, Arion Salazar of Third Eye Blind, and Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson's band.)
The pitfall of all this touring is that "you miss your family," says Shepherd, who gives his family credit for keeping him centered, even as he's been labeled a flavor of the month.
"My family has definitely been there and kept my head on the ground," says Shepherd, who also has two sisters - one a teacher, and one studying to be a lawyer.
As for his own schooling, he says, "I've thought about going back. Right now, I'm going to the school of life."
Basically, he's just trying to stay humble through it all. "I'm the same kid I was growing up in Shreveport," he states.
While growing up, he was also (and this won't come as a surprise to anyone who has heard him play) a huge Jimi Hendrix fan. "I liked the early Hendrix stuff," he says. "I liked what he did with the Band of Gypsies, the bluesy stuff he did with them, but I mostly liked the early, crazy stuff like `Are You Experienced' and `Axis."'
His early devotion to Hendrix and Vaughan shaped his approach to guitar - and fed his absolute love of the blues.
"I like the raw emotion and the passion in the blues," he says. "You don't find that emotion in a lot of other music."
You certainly don't find it in some of today's manufactured pop fodder. One of Shepherd's pet peeves is the "disposable" music he hears all over the airwaves.
"I don't like it when you know that it's disposable music, and yet people are making millions of dollars off of it," he says. "And you know that a year from now, nobody is going to be listening to it."
Shepherd is part of a young breed of rising blues-rock stars that includes Susan Tedeschi and Jonny Lang. "I've met all of them and we're good friends," he says. "There's no competition between us."
In the future, Shepherd hopes to upgrade his singing voice ("I've been known as a guitar player. I do background vocals and I sang one song on my first album, but I'd like to improve.") and just keep making a name for himself on the road.
"I've got youth on my side," he says. "I can grind it out. I'm taking the opportunity now to work my butt off, then hopefully slow down as I get older. Maybe I'll let up in 10 years, but not now."
This story ran on page D15 of the Boston Globe on 3/10/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
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