Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s recently released “Straight To You Live” is the first concert DVD he’s unveiled in a career that now stretches back more than 25 years. But it’s not like he’s been trying to avoid doing such a project all of this time.
“The fans have been asking for a live DVD for decades,” Shepherd acknowledged in a recent phone interview. “We record audio every night, but we’ve done a number of shows with video as well. And for one reason or another, we just never felt like we had the right night.”
It’s possible this concert, filmed in Germany for broadcast on the legendary concert series “Rockpalast,” might have stayed on the shelf, too. Oddly enough, it was the Covid-19 pandemic that propelled its release.
“We started realizing that people are not going to be able to come and see us for awhile,” Shepherd said, “and they’ve been asking for a live concert for years. And we have this. The audio is great, the performance is great, the camera work is great. [We thought,] ‘Maybe we should put this together and get it out to them so they can watch it in the comfort of their own homes until we can get back out on the road.’”
It turned out the “Rockpalast” appearance came at a good time for the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, near the end of a European tour when the musicians —guitarist/singer Shepherd, singer Noah Hunt, drummer Chris Layton (formerly of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble), bassist Kevin McCormick, keyboardist Joe Krown, saxophonist Joe Sublett and trumpet player Mark Pender — were in top form.
Shepherd called it an honor to be asked to perform on the show and at a time when their performances were “on fire.”
“I mean, almost all the entire European tour was sold out, so we were on a really good run,” he said. “The band was just firing on all cylinders. The timing was great and we had no idea.”
After recording the show that night, Shepherd said they watched it back immediately. The band was in agreement: “‘Wow, it’s actually a really great performance,'” Shepherd recalled everyone saying.
The live show came near the end of a busy and productive period for the rock and blues outfit. A new studio album, “The Traveler,” had been released in May 2019. They were well into the touring cycle when the “Rockpalast” performance took place.
Shepherd and the band then went into the studio to record a new album, finished just before Covid-19 shut the world down. Originally set for release in 2021, the studio album was delayed.
It set up the pieces for “Straight To You Live” to premiere in late 2020.
The studio album is now tentatively planned to debut in coming months, though Shepherd said he will not play the songs live on his current tour until closer to its release date.
As he tours through Wilmington’s Kenan Auditorium at the end of the month, fans will hear tracks from his second studio album, “Trouble Is…” Released in 1997, the platinum-selling album gave Shepherd a signature hit, “Blue On Black,” also included on “Straight To You Live.” Shepherd has incorporated other songs from the DVD on the current tour.
The 45-year-old guitar virtuoso has grown into one of the leading artists in blues and blues rock. He exploded onto the scene at age 17 with his impressive 1995 million-selling debut album, “Ledbetter Heights,” followed two years later by “Trouble Is…”
He has continued to release albums at a steady clip with his skills as a songwriter and guitarist strengthening. Yet, he’s also revered all musicians who set the path before him, as seen on 2007’s CD/DVD release “10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads.”
Shepherd traveled to meet and collaborate with a host of blues veterans, including B.B. King, Henry Townsend, Cootie Stark and Hubert Sumlin. The film documented the trip and the album included songs Shepherd recorded with the blues masters.
Shepherd continues to collaborate with others in the industry, most recently heard on the 2021 release of “Hit ‘Em Back.” He worked on the track with blues singer/songwriter Shemekia Copeland, lap steel guitar player Robert Randolph and veteran blues drummer Tony Coleman.
Copeland (daughter of the late blues artist Johnny Copeland) reached out to Shepherd to write music to the lyrics she and co-writer John Hahn had completed. “Hit ‘Em Back” has a strong and multi-dimensional message. It calls out divisiveness that exists in today’s society overall and the blues community in particular.
“Everyone’s fighting / They takin’ sides / You just want to run and hide,” it notes.
Despite a quarter-century-plus history performing the genre, Shepherd said he had not encountered the kind of anger and divisiveness within the blues community that are referenced in “Hit ‘Em Back.”
“Frankly, I thought of the community having always been very inclusive just up until recently,” he said.
Coming out of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, increased political tensions and the growing awareness of systemic racism, he added, “things have been revealed to me that I just was unaware of, but have obviously been going on in the blues community for a while.”
The song calls for a united front built upon respect: “Some gonna say, ‘You’re weak’ / By turnin’ the other cheek / We can solve any problems we got / If we all give love a shot.”
Shepherd said the song’s muscular, soulful musicality, performed in a minor-key blues progression, was created to run parallel to a powerful message centered on love.
“We’re making a statement, and to transmit a message, you want to transmit it as loud as possible,” he said. “It addresses a lot of the complicated things that are happening in our (blues) world today — and in the world — but it’s also expressing a message of love and unity. It’s time to bring people together, which is what we were doing by doing the song and the way that we did it was by collaborating together.
“We’re all here in the same music community and we do ourselves much more of a service if we get along and appreciate one another than trying to draw lines in the sand,” Shepherd added.
The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band will perform on UNCW’s campus at Kenan Auditorium at 515 Wagoner Drive on Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $47 to $100.
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