ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Dirt on My Diamonds,’ Kenny Wayne Shepherd Puts Out a Blues Buffet
Grant Britt
Posted On November 16, 2023
It’s been a while since Kenny Wayne Shepherd was a child prodigy. In 1995, at age 18, Shepherd’s debut, Ledbetter Heights, sold half a million copies, and the follow-up, 1997’s Trouble Is …, earned him a Grammy nod. Now 46, Shepherd has a thick folio of blues rock material that keeps him booked up on the road and inspires him in the studio.
FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals was the birthplace of Shepherd’s latest offering, Dirt on My Diamonds Vol 1. Although it wasn’t entirely recorded there, the guitarist and his band fleshed out song ideas and turned snippets of melodies into rough mixes that would be polished and finalized in a friend’s Burbank studio. But the record maintains a Muscle Shoals rattly rocker soulful feel.
The title cut is a bigfoot, horn-heavy proclamation that’s part grunge, part Lenny Kravitz psychedelic blues/garage stomp. “I like a little dirt on my diamonds,” Shepherd moans, “A little chip in my paint / A little scratch on the finish / A little sinner, little saint.”
It’s a collection of originals with the exception of Elton John’s head-bustin’ blue-collar pub rocker “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.” It’s an exact copy, but in the liner notes Shepherd says he wanted it that way as a homage to longtime John guitarist and friend Davey Johnstone, whom he almost asked to play as a guest on the track. But Shepherd delivers the guitar goods as strongly as Johnstone’s original, walloping it like a mashup of The Who and Chuck Berry, all liquored up and ready to rumble.
Shepherd gets his bow-wow box barkin’ on “Sweet and Low,” stomping his wah-wah pedal to smithereens on an upscale name-checking frenzy that muses about decking out his darlin’ in Gucci after searching for her in vain in Bel Air and in Monte Carlo, finally locating her in Colorado getting high on mountain air.
“I’m the kind of guy your mama warned you about,” Shepherd advises his paramour of the moment on “Bad Intentions,” getting back to his muddier blues roots with some fiery string pulling, his guitar chomping ferociously like a junkyard dog on a trespasser’s trail. It ain’t high-toned romanticism, just the facts, getting right down to the basics: “We can park in the woods and kill the headlights / Or I can sneak out the back door middle of the night.”
Shepherd’s done it again, putting out a chewy spread of grown-up blues for fans of all ages.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s Dirt on My Diamonds, Vol. 1, is out Nov. 17 via Provogue Records/Mascot Label Group.
