Kenny Wayne Shepherd Comes Home
Tulsa’s historic Brady Theater is the place to be July 1 when guitar genius Kenny Wayne Shepherd brings his band to town. Three years shy of 40, Shepherd is a five-time Grammy nominee and a veteran performer with two decades of touring and recording behind him.
Shepherd’s latest release, Goin’ Home, hit the streets May 19. It’s a tribute to the blues musicians whose music first moved him to pick up the guitar as a young boy. Recorded in his hometown of Shreveport, La., the album features contributions from famous and talented friends like Ringo Starr, Robert Randolph, and Warren Haynes.
“Basically, the concept of the album, in a nutshell, is returning back to my musical roots and paying tribute to the musicians who inspired me to play guitar in the first place, when I was a kid,” Shepherd told me in a recent interview. “I was going through all this music, and it was bringing up all these vivid memories of when I was a kid sitting in my living room teaching myself how to play guitar…I started thinking the most appropriate place to record would be in my hometown where this all kind of started for me.”
The album was recorded at Blade Studios in Shreveport. It’s owned and operated by drummer, producer, and Shreveport native Brady Blade who has worked with artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Dave Matthews. “Essentially, Goin’ Home is a return to my musical roots and also me going back to my hometown to record my first ever album in my hometown…It was great being surrounded by my family, and we assembled a team of people who I’ve been around and who have been part of my life from the very beginning, and part of my career. It was one of the most enjoyable recording experiences I’ve ever had.”
“There’s a tradition in blues music,” Shepherd told me. “All the people that I know that have become successful in blues are always very quick to give credit where credit is due, to their influences and the musicians that they have learned from and the ones that they appreciate…This is just a continuation of that tradition.”
Shepherd noted that this album was not an all-inclusive list of his own musical heroes. “The list would be longer than just the musicians that are included on this album and whose material we recorded,” he commented. “I was looking for songs that I thought were great songs and also had great lyrics and didn’t sound dated. Sometimes blues music, the lyrics can be very period correct for the time they were written, so I tried to find songs with lyrics that could have been written yesterday. They still sound lyrically relevant to today’s listeners, just different grooves and different textures and different feels.”
Shepherd knew he wanted this album to have a particular sound. “Our musical approach was to maintain the spirit and the integrity of the original recordings while applying our own personality to these songs. And that was across the board, from the interpretation of the original versions to the recording techniques.” To achieve this sound, the musicians recorded together in one room. “Everything was recorded to 2 inch tape and we didn’t use any Auto-Tune and we didn’t use click tracks, or anything like that,” Shepherd explained. “We just went in there and played the blues.”
Even from a very young age, Shepherd knew there was something special about this music. “To me, it was just the honesty in the music. I feel like blues music is about playing from the heart and tapping into your soul and putting it out there in your music…That’s something that transcends age. When somebody’s tapping into such an organic place, trying to play music straight from the heart…that’s something I think everybody can feel regardless of age.”