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About Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Catching Up With

Bluesman Kenny Wayne Shepherd balances past, present

by Jim Trageser
June 5, 2026

Blues guitarist, singer, composer and bandleader Kenny Wayne Shepherd is marking the 30th anniversary of the release of his debut recording with a national tour in which he and his band perform that album, Ledbetter Heights (Giant Records, 1995), in its entirety. They also re-recorded the album track-by-track with longtime vocalist, Noah Hunt, who only joined the band for the second release. It was only a few months after his 18th birthday that his debut came out, and ...

Album Review

Ally Venable: Heart Of Fire

Read "Heart Of Fire" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
February 27, 2021

The virtues so readily apparent on guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Ally Venable's last album, Puppet Show (Connor Ray Music, 2018), remain fully in evidence on her Ruf Records debut. It is telling, however, that for Heart Of Fire, the sultry poses she struck on the cover of the previous LP give way to those focusing on the way the blueswoman wields her instrument. Strutting her stuff with the guitar on the grinding opener/itle song, the stripped-down trio including Elijah Owings on ...

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Album Review

Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Ten Days Out: Blues from the Backroads

Read "Ten Days Out: Blues from the Backroads" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 9, 2007

When guitarist Shepherd does a blues tour of the American musical south, he does it right: Ten days with friends Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton (Stevie Ray Vaughan's longtime rhythm section Double Trouble), plus a mobile studio and documentary film crew; starting from the mouth of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, to Shreveport, up to Alabama, up into Carolina then west to Kansas; visiting and performing with guitarists B.B. King, Clarence “Gatemouth" Brown and Hubert Sumlin, pianist Pinetop Perkins, ...

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Album Review

Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band: Live On

by Ed Kopp
December 1, 1999

Whenever I hear another pimply teenager being hyped as a blues guitar god, I am skeptical. Fact is, most kids who shoulder a guitar strap can play a few blues riffs, but it's the rare teen who's capable of complex articulation with his instrument.Not to say that prodigies don’t arise every decade or so. Kenny Wayne Shepherd has been acclaimed by so many blues experts, including the venerable B. B. King, that my expectations were elevated for his ...