Itโs been just over six months since Kenny Wayne Shepherdโs last album, โLay It On Down,โ dropped, and heโs already thinking about the follow-up.
โWeโre trying to get ahead of the curve,โ the namesake of the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band said last week from a concert stop in San Juan Capistrano, California, as he made his way across that state and into Arizona for a show this weekend at the Rialto Theatre.
Yes, he acknowledged, thatโs a pretty fast turnaround for him; โLay It On Downโ came three years after his 2014 studio record, โGoinโ Home.โ
โItโs unusual, but what Iโm trying to do is keep it going,โ said the 40-year-old blues guitar phenom whose career dates to the mid-1990s when he was still a teen. โI wrote a bunch of songs for the last record and had some new collaborations, new songwriters that I was working with and enjoyed working with them. ... All of the creative processes, playing live, recording, all that stuff, Iโm trying to keep it going.โ
Shepherd will likely go into the studio sometime before his heavy-duty touring season kicks off in late spring/early summer. We get him as part of his annual winter West Coast run through his home state of California and Arizona, where he also will play a concert at Scottsdaleโs Talking Stick Resort on Friday, March 9, before his Rialto show on Saturday, March 10.
โItโs nice because Iโve been living in Los Angeles so itโs all relatively short travel and that makes it convenient,โ said the father of five. โMy family gets to come out to some of the shows. We always look forward to this time of year.โ
Shepherd and the band โ heโs on guitar, Noah Hunt on vocals, Chris Layton on drums and Joe Krown on keyboards โ will draw heavily from โLay It On Downโ as well as his seven other studio albums that started with the first, his 1995 โLedbetter Heights,โ recorded when Shepherd was 18 years old.
โItโs still fun for me to perform that stuff,โ the veteran bluesman said. โWhen youโre doing newer stuff it can be entertaining and sometimes, especially when itโs really new, youโre waiting to see how itโs going to turn out.โ
โLay It On Down,โ released in August, is arguably one of Shepherdโs most commercially accessible records, and that was by design in some ways. Shepherd described the album as โa contemporary recordโ of all new material with no covers.
โWe kind of took the blues and pushed it in a couple different directions,โ he said. โWe took some other genres and tried to meld them together and create some new songs and some interesting things.โ
Those interesting things include straying a bit from the core of his blues roots. He adds a little country vibe on the title song and the deeply soulful โHard Lesson Learned,โ and veers into Top 40 pop radio territory with โNothing But the Night.โ The album has plenty to satisfy Shepherdโs diehard blues fans including the straight-up blues rocker โSheโs $$$,โ but he seems to be having a lot of fun dipping his toes into a broader genre pool including adding a little Southern rock twist to โBaby Got Gone.โ
โWe focused heavily on songwriting quality and melodies and lyrics and things like that,โ he explained. โI think the end result is a very diverse album thatโs been well received by the fanbase and also by the press. Itโs been doing pretty good for us.โ
Shepherd has been a regular to Tucson since his debut here opening for Bob Dylan at Centennial Hall in 1996. He returned the following year to play a sold-out headlining show at Rialto Theatre.
โWe have a solid fan base there that supports us. โฆ Thatโs why we come back,โ he said.
