Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Transcript

Kenny Wayne:
Guitar playing, to me, it's something that I do that is almost as important as breathing air. As far back as I can remember, being a little kid, four years old, I was running around with little toy guitars with nylon strings, just playing them and wearing them out until I got my hands on another one and then wore that one out. Then eventually, I got my first real guitar and really got serious about playing guitar. I would spend hours, every day, listening to music and trying to teach myself how to play guitar when all my friends were out doing the stuff that kids do.

Kenny Wayne:
From the moment I was born, I was surrounded by music because my dad was on the radio, he was a disc jockey and he managed radio stations. My first concert was Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker when I was three years old. I was introduced to music and the blues at a very early age. But there was something about guitar, as an instrument, I was always tuned into guitar and the drums. But there was something that pulled me towards the guitar. I think it was the emotion that guitar players are able to play with and the way you're able to communicate with that instrument, without words, which is an incredibly powerful thing. So guitar was the instrument for me.

Kenny Wayne:
When I was young, there was only one real music store in town, it was called Shreveport Music. I was trying to find the right strings for me, and I tried a lot of different brands, but the ones that I kept coming back to were Ernie Balls. For the longest time I would have to go into the store and, thank God, the guy had a big drawer full of singles. I was constantly trying to change the gauges of my strings to see, tonally, the effect that it had on that. So I would go in and buy a bunch of singles of different gauges until I found the right combination for me, as a player.

Kenny Wayne:
Writing songs, every song is slightly different, but 90% of the time it starts with the guitar for me. Technology is incredible nowadays. There's so many songs over the course of my life that never got finished because I would sit down and I'd have a great idea and I would have no way to record it or jot it down. Now, we have phones that you can record something in a drop of a hat. If I pick up the guitar and just noodle around for five or 10 minutes, the ideas start to flow. I have a catalog of hundreds and hundreds of rifts and grooves and things like that, that I've come up with over the past several years. Then when it comes time to write a song, I'll just start going through them on my phone and I go, that's a good one, let's work on that. 90% of the time it starts with the guitar. Sometimes it'll have a great song title or maybe a great hook line or a couple of lyrics, but usually it starts with the guitar.

Kenny Wayne:
I generally play the same string gauge on all my guitars, regardless of the tuning. Tonally, I have found that the sound that I'm going for, the gauges that get me the sound that I want the best are the gauges that I have right now. I've gone all the way up to 13's. I've used 13's. I've used 12's. But I found that the tonal difference between going from 11's to 12's and 12's to 13's is not that massive. But going from 10's to 11's is a huge jump in sound and overall fullness. I think the payoff is worth it to go from 10's to 11's, but I don't think the rate of return is big enough to go from 11's to 12's or 13's.

Kenny Wayne:
One of the best pieces of advice that I got when I was young was, focus on your vibrato. I think that's an afterthought for a lot of guys. A lot of guys want to know how to play licks. They want to know how to play fast. They want to know scales and stuff. But the vibrato is what gives your voice to your instrument. That's why guys like Eric Clapton, BB King, Albert King, those guys can play one note and you know exactly who that is, with one note, because of their unique vibrato.

Kenny Wayne:
I find that every time I pick up the guitar I'm still as interested in the instrument today as I was when I first picked it up, and I still have as deep of a connection, if not more so, because I've learned a lot over the years, performing and learning how to play. The thing that's changed is the industry itself. There's a lot of things that are different about the music industry today that didn't exist back then. But I find that guitar, as I've gotten older, when you're young man, it's like the goal is to show [inaudible 00:06:29], to prove yourself, which is great. It's like you want to show everybody what you can do, and I can do this too, and look at how fast I can play, and all that stuff.

Kenny Wayne:
For me, as an individual, as I've gotten older, it's become less about speed. I can play fast when I want to play fast, but it's become more about conveying a musical message and playing the right combination of notes. Usually one, two or three notes that are going to penetrate you right here and you're going to feel it in your soul instead of trying to wow people with how many notes I can play. It's like I want to wow people with, oh my gosh, I felt that in here when he played that note. that's where I've gotten at this point in my life.