Explore Steamboat Marketplace

Kenny Wayne Shepherd to close free concert series

Friday, August 15, 2008

Courtesy photo. Enlarge photo.

Blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd closes out the 2008 Free Summer Concert Series on Saturday.

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly

By Margaret Hair (Contact)

Courtesy photo

“Blues,” says guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, “is a 100 percent American music.”

Given that Shepherd, who is 31 years old, has been a celebrated blues recording artist for 15 years now and was memorizing Muddy Waters guitar licks more than five years before that, it’s fair to say he’s been steeped in American music in every way possible.

His most recent project, “10 Days Out (Blues from the Backroads),” places the nimble-fingered Shepherd in the backup band for blues legends known and obscure, including B.B. King and John Dee Holeman. Shepherd considers the compilation of field recordings and its accompanying documentary a historical piece, and he said he hopes his attempt to record blues in its natural environment — in small living rooms and front porches — will create and maintain a legacy for everyone involved.

“It’s what the blues is all about really,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s just stepping up to the plate. There are no rehearsals or anything. Whatever song we were going to do that day, we’d listen to it once or twice and just do it.”

On Saturday, Shepherd closes out the 2008 Free Summer Concert Series at Howelsen Hill. He spoke with 4 Points about playing with the legends, picking up the guitar as a grade-schooler and solidifying his sound by never learning to read music.

4 POINTS: What originally brought you to play the guitar?

KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD: I think that’s what I was meant to do. I grew up around all different kinds of music, and I was just naturally drawn to that instrument. …

I taught myself how to play. And I play by ear; I don’t read music. Those things combined make up the sound.

4 POINTS: Do you ever plan to learn to read music?

KWS: Not really. You know, I’ve gotten by this long without it, and I don’t really feel like I need it, and whatever I play comes straight out of me. … The idea is to play straight from the heart. And that’s the only source that I really tap into, is what I really feel like, coming out of me.

4 POINTS: You started recording about 15 years ago, when you were a teenager. How do you feel like you’ve come along since then?

KWS: As the years have gone by, I feel like I’ve matured a lot, just like most people. I play things a lot differently now than I did 10 years ago. I have the ability to understand when to play less and that sometimes it’s better to play less. And just developing my sound; 10 years earlier or 15 years ago I probably didn’t have as much of my own identity as I do in my music now.

4 POINTS: What do you think that identity is?

KWS: The idea is that when people hear my music and they hear me play guitar, if they can recognize that it’s me playing guitar within a few notes and they don’t have to be told, that’s the goal.

4 POINTS: So what do you do to establish that identity?

KWS: I just do what I do really. I don’t think anybody — I don’t think Eric Clapton or B.B. King sat down and said, ‘What can I do to make myself sound like me?’ I think it just happens. And I could try to play like Eric Clapton or B.B. King, but it wouldn’t sound the same. … I think the biggest part of it is just you being you.