Returning just a year after the Trouble Is… 25 set, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and his band offered up eight glorious tracks in the form of Dirt On My Diamonds (given a stellar review here). Mixing up the usual genre influences with elements of hip hop and rock. Kenny’s claim that the album is “all killer no filler” is entirely justified, and the record is a joyful experience filled with light and life.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Kenny, who dialled in from his home, to discuss the album, the long road back to normality from out of the pandemic, and his thoughts on the state of the blues in 2023.
[Turns on camera] There you go; how’s it going?
Very well thank you, it’s a pleasure to speak with you.
Yeah, you too, thanks man.
We spoke previously around the time of Lay It On Down, and it”s really cool to be able to catch up with you again and see how you’ve been after one of the longest and weirdest periods that we’ve been through as a generation. So, I’d like to just very briefly start off with that, ’cause although we’re well past the pandemic, in the UK it feels like a lot of what we went through is still rumbling on. So, in that context, I was wondering if during that period of enforced down time, you found that being able to step away from the band gave you an opportunity to explore creativity in different ways?
For me, what happened was right before COVID happened we were actually working on this record, Dirt on My Diamonds. We had started and we had made a significant amount of progress, but we hadn’t finished the record, so I had just been doing a lot of studio work and a lot of song writing prior to COVID happening. So, when that happened, I actually didn’t feel the need to write or record any more, because recording was… I mean nothing was happening for a while, because nobody could be in the same room together. But, once things started inching back in that direction, we were more focused on getting back out and playing concerts then going into the studio.
So, what I focused on during that time was family time, because I’m married – I’ve been married for 17 years, and my wife and I have six wonderful children, and so, you know, it was kind of this unknown situation where we didn’t know when it was going to end or what it was going to look like from day-to-day. So, we just decided to make the best lifelong memories that we could make out of that, you know ’cause it was two years almost uninterrupted time off, and I have never had that kind of time off since I was a teenager – that’s when I first signed my record deal at 16 years old – so, I never had that kind of time off before. So, we tried to make the most out of it with our kids and really focus on family at that time.
It was it was such a strange time for everyone and, of course, coming back out of that there felt like there was a kind of initial surge where everyone wanted to kind of go to shows. However, here in the UK, that seems to have kind of tailed off a little bit. How do you feel that the musical landscape has changed?
A bit like you said – in the beginning, everybody was going to concerts. I mean things were sold out everywhere and people were so hungry for it, and I think two things happened simultaneously. I’m not sure which one had the biggest influence, but one was that a lot of people had finally got to go see a lot of bands play and maybe they have kind of reached their… “quota” if you will. But also, the economy started changing – the war in Ukraine started happening, and now you’ve got this other war, and there’s so many things on the political landscape. And the – around the world is still feeling the ripple effects of COVID, and all the things that happened during COVID, and the way they were sort of propping up communities. So, all of these things have started to come to a head now financially, and so people are feeling the strain of that, I think.
So, it’s been a little bit of a perfect storm, bringing the attendance down from the initial post COVID reaction where a lot of people got to see their favourite bands and they were like “OK, good I got that out of my system!” And then, you know, you have other people who maybe want to see your show, but they’re trying to keep that money in the bank right now.
But, regardless, the shows for us – we we’ve had a really great couple of years since we got back to work. The majority of the shows were sold out and, if they weren’t sold out, they were incredibly close to being sold out. Just generally packed houses everywhere, and the fans giving us a great reception, and us trying to reciprocate by giving them a great performance.
One of my favourite releases that came out, I think, just after the pandemic was the live package that you put together – Straight To You. Did you have to go through a whole bunch of shows to find one that you felt was representative, or did that did you to have that one always in mind as something that you wanted to bring to the fans?
I remember when we did that, they were filming it and then, as soon as we’d played the show, I was given an opportunity to watch it back and I remembered that it was a pretty great performance. The band sounds great, you know, the camera work is great and, at the at that time, I had no intention of releasing it as a live concert; but then, when COVID happened, and I realised that we were not going to be able to finish these records that we had started… and, actually, I knew from the beginning that it was not going to be a good idea to even try and release an album of new material, because there was no telling when we would even get to play that music for anyone – and I thought, you know, nobody can go see concerts right now, so this would be the perfect time to give people a live concert DVD so they can experience it in the comfort of their own home. And immediately that show popped into my mind, and so we just went back and made a few small tweaks. They were an incredible camera crew, and the whole production crew that did that show was top notch, and so there was very little that needed to be done to make it right, other than mixing the audio and stuff like that. But it was ready to go pretty much the way that it was.
It was the right thing at the right time, I think.
Yeah, it landed at the right time for sure, and it felt like a gift – being trapped at home, not seeing anything live. And the live stream gigs that a lot of artists did were really cool, and I enjoyed some of them, but there’s something about the energy between the crowd and the band, and the way that you feed off one another, and that show just looked sweltering and intense.
Yeah, it was good, and I also like the idea that people can buy it, they can own it and watch it as many times as they want. The live streaming thing was a window of opportunity, but yeah actually having the audience being a part of that broadcast I think was a lot cooler. I mean we didn’t really do any of those. By the time we live streamed anything, it was kind of after that that whole fad had happened. It was the 25th anniversary of my second album, when we did a concert, and the concert sold out so fast that we decided to make it a live streaming event so that people who couldn’t fly into Louisiana could watch it from home. But our reasoning wasn’t the same as the initial live streaming experience – some of those things felt more like inside an actor’s studio, or maybe even more like a rehearsal. But, for us, I want to hear the crowd’s reaction. You want to hear them scream and cheer applaud and that exchange of energy between the band and the audience.
So, yeah, I agree with you, I think that was one of the great things about the Straight to You Live, and the whole live DVD experience.
You mentioned Trouble Is. Going back in and re-recording that album – how did it feel trying to engage with songs that you wrote and recorded quarter of a century previously? Did you try to recapture those emotions and that that sense of who you were, or did you look at it from the perspective that you love the music, and you want to bring your sense of self as you are now?
Initially it was an experiment. We went in and we started to record two different versions – one was a faithful recreation of the original, but 25 years later; and the other was how the song had evolved over the past 20-25 years in the live concert setting. So, we tracked two different versions. We only finished the one version that we released because, when I compared the two (I was trying to figure out which one are we going to finish and release), I realised that the live versions of those songs in the studio didn’t translate as well. It was like starting to lose the vibe of the original song on the original album and, really, one of the things that made that record so special was the vibe on the records.
So, all these things that we had messed with gradually over the years meant the songs had evolved into something different, but it didn’t necessarily make them better. So, we focused on the version that sounded closest to the record and, yeah, it was kind of like here’s us – almost the same characters doing the same music 25 years later, but we can still bring it and, maybe in some instances, even bring it a little bit better. So, it’s a testament to the longevity and the quality of the music that we wrote and recorded 25 years ago, and it wasn’t hard to connect with that stuff ’cause a lot of the songs I’ve been playing for the past 25 years on and off in the shows, right? So, I still feel very much connected to that music, and all the music I ever created, even when I was young – it felt like it was pretty mature for a guy my age, so it’s not like I was having to like put myself in the mentality of some kid, because the music we were writing and recording was beyond that… you know, it was it was relatable and palatable to all ages.
The one difference is that you included your cover of Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man, which I think, in previous interviews you said you really didn’t feel comfortable putting on the original record because you thought it was a bit too out-of-the-box for your audience then. With hindsight, do you think it was a mistake to leave it off the first time, and what made you feel better about it this time around?
I don’t think it was a mistake, as I don’t think we would have gotten any more by including it. We did two Bob Dylan songs – we did Ballad of a Thin Man, and we did Everything Is Broken. I chose to put Everything Is Broken on the record, and we actually released that song as a single – like the very last single from that album. So, if we would have put Ballad of a Thin Man, then Everything Is Broken would not have been on the record, and I don’t think we would have gotten any more out of out of that song than we did out of Everything Is Broken. And, actually, I don’t think we would have ever released Ballad of a Thin Man as a single, whereas Everything Is Broken was considered and released. So, no I don’t think it was a mistake, but I do think it was a compelling thing to do by including it on the anniversary version, because it’s one of those songs… I don’t know that that we ever really talked much about the fact that we had recorded that song for that record, so it’s something that most of the fans who have loved that album for 25 years never knew existed or that it was intended at one point to be on the record. And so now we included it on this version, and I think it’s kind of an interesting thing to do.
Obviously, the Blues has a great tradition of kind of reinterpreting covers and connecting them to the artist’s own personality, and I think it’s always really interesting when you choose something a little bit out-of-the-box. On the new album you’ve got a cover of Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, which for me is a great song and it’s funny, because Elton rocks on that track, whereas a lot of people know him as the ballad guy.
I know, yeah… one of the things I like about him is how musically diverse he is. You know, he’s done it all; and probably I don’t know his entire catalogue… but I’ve listened to a lot of the songs over the years, and I’d be willing to bet this is probably his hardest rocking song. It felt right up our alley, and I just wanted to show my appreciation for him as an artist – you know, who he is and what he’s done. And his guitar player, Davey, is a good friend of mine, and I really admire him and his playing, and who he is as a person. So, it was cool to kind of play those parts and, you know, I told him I’m we were covering this song, I hoped I didn’t wreck his guitar parts! Like, at one point, I was considering begging him to come in and play it, just so that I knew they would be right. But I figured I’d take a stab at it, and I think we did a good job.
It is one of those songs that lights up the album, and I think it sounds like you had real good fun playing it, and those falsetto vocals – it’s just a little bit different to kind of everything else on there.
Yeah, well that’s the point. This album is all about the music sounding like – you hear it and you’re like “yeah, that’s the Kenny Wayne Shepherd band”, but each track is surprising. You know? And, to me, that means it’s interesting because it’s not predictable, but in a good way. Because there’s no filler on this record – every song is great. I think every performance is great, and there’s interesting things happening in each and every song… and, I think, if you tried to predict what the new Kenny Wayne Shepherd album was going to sound like before you heard it, I don’t think you could have predicted this record; and that, to me… that’s a job well done and it keeps it interesting for us and for the fans.
Yeah, absolutely and, on that note, could you please tell me a little bit about Sweet and Low, because the production on that is fantastic, and it sounds it’s got kind of a hip hop influence in the little scratches and samples.
I mean I grew up with, and my generation witnessed the birth of hip hop, right? So, if you’re my age or younger, then you know all this – you can immediately identify those elements of that song that influence the sound. I grew up listening to everything – I grew up listening to country, rock, blues, jazz, R&B, gospel music, and hip hop and rap – I mean it was my generation. So, you know, inevitably all those different things find their way into the music that I write and record sooner or later. And so, on this, we went with a little bit of the hip hop vibe and, like it or not, Blues music is directly part of the lineage that led towards hip hop music. So, it’s all connected anyways, and we just had fun doing it, and some people are like “hey what’s that? What is that sound on there?” and then I know that, when they say that, they’ve gotta be at least ten years older than I am! But that’s fine ’cause we have fans that are from seven years old to seventy years old, and we love them all!
And it’s also lovely to hear the brass back on the title track – there’s something about having a brass section that brightens up the sound. Did you have them all come into the studio to play live, or were they brought in after?
No, they come after but, you know, I started using the horns on the last record – The Traveller – before that, we just had horns on a song here and there on different albums over the years, but never on a whole record until The Traveller. This is a continuation of that. It’s just something that maybe just makes it a little more interesting, a little bit different. I mean there’s not a lot of people using horns nowadays and so, you know, if everybody’s not doing it, I’ve generally been one of the guys that’s not doing what everybody else is doing.
But, aside from the wider overdubs, are you still very much getting the whole band into the studio as a starting point?
Absolutely, yeah, we try and capture the live performance as much as possible everybody plays in the same room. We’re not emailing files back and forth across the country and having guys put their parts on after the fact. We all play together as a band, and I try and do the least number of overdubs as possible – to get a great sound that essentially sounds like everybody is playing together like a band. It’s how music like this is meant to be played.
With songs like Sweet and Low, did you have to use any kind of grid – working off a click or anything like that – or did you just sort of drop the samples and stuff in sort of organically afterwards?
I think most people would nowadays use a click track at the studio because it makes editing so much easier. We’ve done a couple of records intentionally without using any click track whatsoever – we did one album, called Going Home, which was like a traditional blues cover album that we did, and we used no click track and no auto tune or tuning of any vocals whatsoever on anything. So, that was the nature of the of the album but, I think, most people making records (including us) use click tracks, because it makes editing a whole lot easier for sure.
You worked with Marshall Altman again, but I believe you’re very hands-on with the production and, on this record, it really sounds like you had a lot of fun trying to create the sound of the album.
Yeah, absolutely! I mean, if you’re not having fun making music, then why are you making music, right? And so, yeah, we have a great time and it’s like we challenge each other. You know, Marshall tries all kinds of random things that, a lot of times, work out to be really cool. And he has a different skill set to me, and we bring those together and exciting things happen! That’s why we continue to work together. So, you know, we definitely had a great time making this record for sure!
One of the things I really enjoy about your sound is that it seems like you’re always happy to kind of step back and serve the song. Is it sometimes challenging to tread that line between virtuoso and songwriter, or is that something you’ve always gravitated towards?
My approach to writing, recording, and performing; but in particular the writing and recording processes; is to do what is best for the song, and if that means less or more or whatever then that’s it. And, I mean, the proof in that is no more apparent than the fact that I didn’t sing lead vocals on my first three records.
I sang one song on my first album, but I had somebody else doing the singing because my voice, in my opinion (event though I’m the bandleader and the namesake of the band); my voice was not appropriate for my music at that time. So, I did what was best for the songs and what was best for the music and that meant somebody else had to do that, because I wasn’t up to the task at the time.
And so, going all the way back to day one, that’s always been my approach. So, not every song is an opportunity to create a platform where I could show everybody every note that I know how to play! I mean, it’s like I’m really just trying to portray emotions and evoke feelings in people, along with telling the story, and, at the same time, play some guitar that, you know, hopefully sounds good.
My final question for you, because I know you’ve probably got them stacked up today, and thank you for your time, is to do with the relationship you have with your fans. You’re known for being ambassador for the Blues and supporting, particularly younger kids coming up through the ranks; and I think that was the relationship you had with your father; so, my final question is how do you see the state of the Blues at the moment? Do you still see younger audiences and find the space to encourage people to follow this path?
Yeah, there’s no shortage of young people stepping up in this genre and trying to make a name for themselves or blazing their own trail. There are a lot of ladies, like Samantha Fish, Larkin Poe, and Ally Venable; and then, you know, young gunslingers like Kingfish and Solomon Hicks, so there’s a lot of young guys and girls that are making a name for themselves and doing it and infusing new life into this genre; and that is what is going to be key to continue moving it forward. It’s good to see.
Amazing! Thank you very much for your time today, it’s been a real pleasure speaking to you it’s always a pleasure to listen to music. Cheers!
Thanks so much, man.
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