New Music Review: The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band - Goin’ Home

                Kenny Wayne Shepherd is one of the best guitarists of his generation, and his vocalist, Noah Hunt has a quintessential “blues voice”.  Because of this, any album that the two put out is required listening.  The fact that Goin’ Home is just fifteen blues cover songs and no original material doesn’t really hurt this as much as you would expect.  The band masterfully recreates the songs by such blues contemporaries as Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughn and BB King. 

                Not only does the band perform admirably, they also bring in guest musicians to work with them including Robert Randolph, and one of my personal favorites Warren Haynes.  “Breaking Up Somebody’s Home”, the song with Haynes, is by far the standout on the entire album.  The interplay between Shephard and Haynes on the guitar and Hunt and Haynes with the vocals is incredible, enough to make me wish that these artists would collaborate more.  An entire album from this particular pairing would be the standout blues album of the year, if not the decade.

                The musicianship is exactly what you would expect out of this group, with Shepherd’s guitar work being a particular highlight (as expected).  Hunt’s vocals on the classic blues tunes give them a more modern feel while keeping with the original spirit of the songs.  Beyond that, there is not much more to say.  For an album that was thrown together because the band apparently had an eleven day break in their touring schedule it comes through as polished as an album that took years to complete.  This is a great album to add to your Kenny Wayne Shepherd collection, or to a basic blues playlist as it has everything you could want.  Hopefully within the next year or so we get some more original music from this band, as well as hopefully that collaboration with Warren Haynes I mentioned earlier.

New Music Review: The Rides – Can’t Get Enough

                What do you get when you take a rock industry legend, the greatest blues guitarist of his generation and one of the most highly regarded, and well-traveled blues keyboard players in music history and put them all together?  You come up with The Rides, and Can’t Get Enough.  This is, by far, one of the better albums I have heard all year.  I wasn’t sure what my reaction would be considering hearing Kenny Wayne Shephard without Noah Hunt (his vocalist and longtime collaborator) would be a little odd, and I’m not completely sold on Shephard the vocalist anyway. 

                What I got instead was a true, honest-to-goodness blues record by three guys that obviously know what they’re doing.  The musicians are all at the tops of their games here (as you would expect) and the album is something that can be played on continuous rotation, it's just that good.  While Kenny Wayne Shephard as a vocalist is not something that I am really too enthused about (and never have been) he does a great job here of working with the music and not trying to do too much.  His higher pitch provides adequate vocal work that is a decent contradiction to the older, scratchier voices of his contemporaries as well.  The best parts of the album are the new songs that were written for the album (especially “Don’t Want Lies” which has a strained vocal that actually adds to the desperation of the song and singer himself and completely avoids making it sound silly – and you get this in both acoustic and electric form if you buy the Best Buy exclusive pack).  Where those originals excel far beyond where I even expected them to, the covers of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” and Iggy and the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” fall a little flat.  They were inspired choices that just didn’t carry through on the promise of quality.  With the rest of the album so heavily influenced by the blues and embracing that influence wholeheartedly, those two tracks in particular just feel out of place.

                That being said, when the band actually gets the bat on the ball, so to speak, they hit it out of the park.  This is probably one of the best blues albums I have heard since Kenny Wayne Shephard’s last release a few years ago and it is, by far, near the top of the list for best rock albums of the year.  Though I doubt this partnership between these three will last beyond this one album as they all have their own projects to get to, it was a welcome divergence on all their parts and one that they should absolutely consider making again.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Standing Room Only at the Palace Theater

            It’s been quite a while since my last concert review (September to be exact) and it was definitely nice to get out and see some live music again. 

For my father’s birthday this year, I got tickets for us to go see Kenny Wayne Shepherd at the Palace Theater.  We have both been fans of Shepherd’s music for a while now, but had not seen him in concert yet, basically just living off of the various CD releases.  By chance, I wandered on to the band’s website a couple weeks ago and saw that they were playing a show, right here in Syracuse!  Sold!  Tickets were relatively inexpensive, especially given the accommodations, and so I scooped up two to be used as his birthday present this year. 

            First, something needs to be said for the Palace Theater in Syracuse, NY.  This is one of the best venues I have ever seen a concert in.  The seating is comfortable and there is plenty of leg room in case you want to sit down.  The whole theater is small, no bigger than a school auditorium (and in many cases, probably smaller) and the stage is equally small.  I am used to seeing shows at amphitheaters around here because it’s hard to get good, well-known bands to visit smaller venues, but I actually prefer a smaller atmosphere.  This was perfect.  There wasn’t a bad seat in the house.  The tickets were general admission so my father and I sat dead center about twenty rows back.  The acoustics took a second to get used to as it was very loud, but after that slight adjustment period, it was actually quite enjoyable. 

            The sound guys for Shepherd’s band did an excellent job as well.  It is not an easy task to get the sound balanced just right so you can hear all parts, including an organ, while playing indoors.  There were a couple hiccups where the sound dipped and got really quiet, but they were momentary and were quickly corrected.  I have been to outdoor shows where the balance was not this crisp, and I would argue that it is probably easier to manage sound outdoors than in.  Anyway, a huge pat on the back to the sound guys for their spot on, professional work.

            Okay, enough of the technical stuff, on to the performance itself.  Kenny Wayne Shepherd can play the shit out of a guitar.  His backing band was exceptional, and Noah Hunt has a voice perfectly suited to not only the blues, but to Shepherd’s band in general.  In all honesty, it would not be a Kenny Wayne Shepherd CD or concert without Noah Hunt.  I would go out on a limb and say that with Hunt’s versatility as well as just the overall power of his voice that he is one of the better vocalists out there in any genre.  Seriously, put him up against any male vocalist and I guarantee that he would be at least in the top five if not the overall winner.  But people go to these shows to see Shepherd play, and people turned out in droves for this one.  The show was sold out and people were standing in the aisles in order to see the band.  They were absolutely rewarded for that diligence as Shepherd was on all night long.  There was no opening band, so the action started right around eight o’clock and didn’t let up until a quarter to ten.  The band even stayed on stage instead of going off for the obligatory encore break.  This gave us all three more songs and about another half hour of music from the band. 

            I’ll be honest, I usually get tired at concerts.  I feel like an old man, and I have a bad back and usually at the end of a concert, there is more relief for me than there is any kind of elation.  Not here.  I was absolutely ready for more when it came to Shepherd and his band and could have stayed and listened to them for a few more hours.  From start to finish there was no let-up, no weak point.  In many other shows, when you see the lead singer leave the stage so that a musician can take a turn doing either a guitar or drum solo, you can kind of go to sleep a bit.  Sure, some of the guitar and drum solos can be interesting at times, but many of them are just unnecessary masturbatory material to showcase that specific musician.  They drag on too long and wind up being a little too self-indulgent.  Here, Noah Hunt left the stage at least three times, and each time, the quality of the show was just as good as before he left.  Shepherd had solos during the course of the regular songs, but only after Hunt left did Shepherd really cut loose, showing that bluesy rock guitar that comes straight from the Stevie Ray Vaughn school.  His solos are not just solos where he is plucking away at the guitar, experimenting with a sound.  Shepherd knows his sound and he plays it well, so these solos are actually fully written and realized songs (many of which wind up on his albums).  The fact that Shepherd slowly builds to a deafening crescendo in his solos works wonders at keeping the crowd engaged.  There were many times throughout the set, and even mid-song where the crowd would jump to its feet mid-song after a particularly fierce guitar part that was expertly executed. 

            I guess my only real complaint is that it rocked too hard (if you can call that a complaint).  Shepherd has a vast catalogue of music, not to mention years of blues songs that he can cover.  A good portion of those songs are slower, dare I say ballads that are among some of the best.  Not once did he dip his toe in that water this night.  While I can’t complain with the songs that he did choose, and I honestly wouldn’t be able to pick a song to replace as they were all excellent, it would have been nice to take the intensity down a bit at some point with the softer touch that Shepherd and his band really excel at.  That being said, it is a minor complaint, one that is overshadowed by the overall quality of the performance.

            Also, it doesn’t hurt any blues show when you close it out with a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile (slight return).

            If you like the blues, rock music, or just live music in general, you owe it to yourself to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd play.  If you can see him in the confines of the Palace Theater, than you are in for a treat.