Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Bobby Rush - Young Fashioned Ways (2025) CD-Rip

Blues-rock guitarist and songwriter Kenny Wayne Shepherd first achieved success at a young age, and since the mid-'90s he has released a string of popular albums that show off his aggressive and hard-rocking country-blues style. His 1995 debut album, Ledbetter Heights, garnered massive radio airplay and media attention on its way to topping the blues charts and being certified platinum. Several of the albums that followed zoomed to the top of the blues charts and a number of singles, like 1998's scorching "Blue on Black," have been hits. 2014's Goin' Home not only hit number one at blues but landed inside the Top 100 on the U.S. album charts. Shepherd had a string of number one albums on the Billboard Blues charts into the 2020s, a period of time where he honed and expanded his sound, leading him to the soul-injected 2023 set Dirt on My Diamonds, Vol. 1. The following year he teamed with 90-year-old funky blues legend Bobby Rush to record 2025's Young Fashioned.

Shepherd was born June 12, 1977, in Shreveport, Louisiana. He began playing at the age of seven, figuring out Muddy Waters' licks from his father's record collection (he has never taken formal lessons). At age 13, he was invited on-stage by New Orleans bluesman Bryan Lee and held his own for several hours, after which he decided on music as a career. He formed his own band, which featured lead vocalist Corey Sterling, and gained early exposure through club dates and, later, radio conventions.

Shepherd's father/manager used his own contacts and pizzazz in the record business to help land his son a major-label record deal with Giant Records. Ledbetter Heights, his first album, was released two years later in 1995 and was an immediate hit, selling over 500,000 copies by early 1996. Most blues records never achieve that level of commercial success, much less those released by artists still in their teens. Influenced by (and having played with) guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert King, Slash, Robert Cray, and Duane Allman, Shepherd is a performer who thrives in front of an audience. Ledbetter Heights is impressive for its range of styles: acoustic blues, rockin' blues, Texas blues, and Louisiana blues.

Released in 1998, Trouble Is... earned a Grammy nomination and Live On followed a year later. In 2004, The Place You're In was released on Reprise Records, and was the first album to feature Shepherd taking on the majority of lead vocals (singer Noah Hunt handled the lead on the previous two albums). Shepherd's next project saw him traveling the American South with a documentary film crew and a portable recording studio as he backed up several veteran blues players on their home turf. The resulting album and film, 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads, appeared in 2007, and Live! In Chicago followed in 2010. That November, Shepherd joined Jimmy Fallon's house band on TV for an evening, performing with the same Fender Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock.

Although Shepherd stayed busy in the intervening years, 2011's How I Go was his first studio album proper in seven years. In an attempt to revive the success of 1998's Trouble Is..., he once again recruited Noah Hunt on vocals, as well as former Talking Heads keyboard player and guitarist Jerry Harrison, who had produced the sessions for that platinum-selling album. Shepherd followed How I Go with 2014's Goin' Home, a tribute to his musical heroes that featured contributions from artists such as Ringo Starr and Keb' Mo'. The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band returned in 2017 with Lay It on Down, a record cut in Shreveport, Louisiana's Echophone Studios and his eighth to top the blues charts.

In late 2018, Shepherd entered a Los Angeles studio with his band, vocalist Noah Hunt, drummer Chris Layton (ex-Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble and Johnny Winter And), bassist Kevin McCormick, and keyboardists Jimmy McGorman and Joe Krown. A pre-released single, "Woman Like You," was issued at the end of March 2019, followed by the full-length The Traveler at the end of May, his first for Provogue. Shepherd made his debut at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival later in the summer. The following year brought the live CD/DVD combo Straight to You Live recorded in Germany.

Shepherd celebrated the 25th anniversary of Trouble Is… with Trouble Is..25, a revisiting of his 1997 album with the original producer. He quickly followed the record with Dirt on My Diamonds, Vol. 1, a soulful session largely recorded at the fabled FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

In 2024, Shepherd teamed with legend Bobby Rush for an album-length collaboration. Recorded at the famed Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, the set was titled after a Willie Dixon-penned Muddy Waters' tune. They covered the song as "Young Ways," re-recorded four Rush originals, and threw in a small handful of co-written new songs. Released in March, the set's first single, "Who Was That," was released in January; it was included in the film Flight Risk starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace. ~ Steve Huey & Richard Skelly
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The creator of a singular sound that he dubbed "folk-funk," vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Bobby Rush is among the most colorful and enduring characters on the contemporary chitlin circuit. While his early singles were raw blues, by the '70s his music had evolved into a swampy, cocky hybrid of blues, soul, and funk." Rush recorded singles for 14 years before releasing his first album, 1979's Rush Hour. Stripped-down '80s efforts like Gotta Have Money found Rush in more diverse and laid-back settings. He accomplished some of his strongest work in the 21st century on albums including Folkfunk and Raw. At age 83, Rush won a Grammy Award when 2016's Porcupine Meat was named Best Traditional Blues Album. He replicated the achievement in 2021 when Rawer Than Raw took home the award, as did All My Love for You in 2024. In 2025 he released Young Fashioned in collaboration with guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Born Emmit Ellis, Jr. in Homer, Louisiana on November 10, 1933, Rush's earliest musical influence was his father, a pastor who played guitar and harmonica. After his family relocated to Chicago in 1953 for his father's pastorate, Rush emerged on the West Side blues circuit in the '60s. He played gigs with Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and many others, and fronted his own bands that included guitar luminaries Luther Allison and Freddie King. Rush made his recording debut in 1967, cutting a single for Chicago's Checker Records, "Sock Boo Ga Loo" b/w "Much Too Much." However, as Rush began to develop his own individual sound, he detoured from the blues market, which was beginning to follow the whims of the rock audience, in favor of targeting the chitlin circuit, which offered a more receptive audience for his increasingly bawdy material. Rush notched his first hit in 1971 with his Galaxy label single "Chicken Heads," and later scored with "Bow-Legged Woman" for Jewel. He appeared on a wide variety of labels as the decade progressed, culminating in his first full-length album in 1979, Rush Hour, produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff on their Philadelphia International imprint.

During the early '80s, Rush signed with the La Jam label, where he remained for a number of years; his work there became increasingly funky and comically eccentric, with records like 1984's Gotta Have Money and 1985's What's Good for the Goose Is Good for the Gander often featuring material so suggestive he refused to re-create it live during his endless string of club dates. During the mid-'90s, Rush moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and struck a deal with Waldoxy Records, heralding a return to a soul-blues sound on LPs including 1995's One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, 1997's Lovin' a Big Fat Woman, and 2000's Hoochie Man.

In April 2001, while Rush and his band were en route to a date in Pensacola, Florida, their tour bus crashed, injuring several bandmembers and killing one, Latisha Brown. Rush was hospitalized for a short time, then returned home to recuperate. But the unstoppable Rush returned to action in 2003, releasing the studio set Undercover Lover and the concert souvenir Live at Ground Zero (a CD and DVD set), both on his own label, Deep Rush. Another studio album on Deep Rush, Folkfunk, followed in 2004. Rush released two albums in 2005, Hen Pecked and Night Fishin', and continued his prolific activity with 2008's Look at What You Gettin', which offered a mix of ballads, soul, and bluesy double entendres.

Between 2009 and 2014, the prolific Rush released four albums while gaining a mainstream audience and attracting a following among fans of contemporary soul and blues. In 2015, Omnivore Recordings released Chicken Heads: A 50-Year History of Bobby Rush, a four-disc box set that skimmed the highlights from Rush's career as one of the hardest-working men in soul and blues. In 2016, Rush signed a deal with the respected roots music label Rounder Records, which released the funky and eclectic Porcupine Meat, featuring guest appearances from Joe Bonamassa, Dave Alvin, and Keb' Mo'. The album earned enthusiastic reviews, and it won him a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. 2019 saw Rush revive his Deep Rush label (this time with distribution from Thirty Tigers) with the release of Sitting on Top of the Blues, a session that put the emphasis on his impassioned vocals and wailing harmonica work. That same year, he appeared as himself in the Eddie Murphy Netflix film Dolomite Is My Name. Rush returned with Rawer Than Raw, a sequel of sorts to 2007's Raw, in August 2020. The album became his second to win the 2021 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. Rush eased into a reflective mode on All My Love for You, a 2023 LP featuring the semi-autobiographical single "I'm the One." The album was once again honored as Best Traditional Blues Album at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in 2024; Rush was 91.

In March 2025, Rush released the collaborative Young Fashioned with guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd. The title reflected a vintage Willie Dixon composition for Muddy Waters. Recorded at Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, the set showcased redone versions of four classic Rush tunes, as well as a cover of the Dixon song, retitled "Young Ways" for the album. ~ Jason Ankeny