Bobby Rush & Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Artist Information

Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s life was galvanized and his musical sensibilities awakened by “Hard Again,” an iconic 1977 album by Muddy Waters in collaboration with guitarist/producer Johnny Winter. 

Now a five-time Grammy nominated blues legend himself, Shepherd, the multi-talented singer, songwriter and guitarist reflects, “When I heard those guys together, it sounded like a bunch of friends just playing their instruments, unaware they were creating one of the greatest blues albums of all time. Every time I listened, I imagined, what if I were Johnny and that were me playing with Muddy Waters? Writing and recording ‘Young Fashioned Ways’ with Bobby Rush is my own personal ‘Hard Again’ moment. You don’t find albums this 100 percent, real deal authentic every day.” 

Mark Twain once famously said “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” This witticism proved true when Shepherd and Rush – born about 44 years apart - joined forces at Royal Studios in Memphis for the heart and soul-transforming sessions that led to “Young Fashioned Ways”’ 10 stunning tracks featuring Shepherd’s electrifying trademark guitarisma and Rush’s soulful vocals, rhythm guitar and down-home harmonica playing. The animating spirit driving this raw, gritty, truly mesmerizing album by the two Louisiana bluesmen is captured in the first line the 91-year-old Rush sings on the title track retitled “Young Ways”: “Well I may be getting old, but I’ve got young fashioned ways.” 

The lead single from “Young Fashioned Ways,” the fast and funky, high-octane someone done me wrong romp “Who Was That,” will appear in “Flight Risk,” a film starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Mel Gibson that releases in January 2025. Subsequent single releases will include the fiery and gritty electric guitar and harmonica driven “Hey Baby (What Are We Gonna Do)”.  

While Shepherd got as close as he could ever imagine to his Muddy Waters-Johnny Winter fantasy jam, Rush surely felt like he was back in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where as a teenager he had to don a fake mustache to play in local juke joints with his first band, Bobby Rush and the Four Jivers. Having signed his first record deal with Giant Records at 16 and releasing his Platinum-selling debut album “Ledbetter Heights” at 18, Shepherd has addressed issues of age many times before. 

“With me and Bobby collaborating on a project, our age difference is of course going to be part of the initial conversation and makes for good headlines and clickbait,” Shepherd says. “But at the end of the day, he’s an incredibly talented musician and amazing human being who loves the same kind of music I do. We start playing together and all of a sudden, age has nothing to do with us. We were speaking the same language and there was a level of acceptance about truly joining together on the same page with the blues, coming from the same place, spiritually, musically and of course, geographically.”      

To that last point, Shepherd was born in Bossier City and raised in Shreveport and Rush hails from an hour up the road (via I-20 and US-79 N) in Carquit alongside Homer and Haynesville. They also have lots in common when it comes to their impact on a genre that’s always been in their DNA. They’ve each won Blues Music Awards - Rush a whopping 16 out of 56 career nominations. At 83, Rush received his first “Best Traditional Blues Album” Grammy award for “Porcupine Meat,” and he’s been on fire ever since, winning the same category in 2021 (“Rawer than Raw”) and 2024 (“All My Love For You”). He’s also been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame and Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. 
In addition to his multiple Grammy nods, Shepherd has received two Billboard Music Awards, two Orville H. Gibson Awards which honors the world’s greatest guitarists, a Blues Music Award and a Keeping The Blues Alive Award. He’s also scored eight Top Ten singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart shares the record with B.B. King and Eric Clapton for the longest running albums on the Billboard Blues charts with his second album “Trouble Is…”

In addition to his 15 solo albums (recently including two volumes of “Dirt on My Diamonds”), Shepherd also recorded two albums as one third of The Rides in the mid-2010s with Stephen Stills and Barry Goldberg from Electric Flag. Meanwhile, Rush has released over 30 solo albums since the late 70s.

Considering the passionate tight-knit community of blues musicians, it’s not uncommon for artists of different generations to be booked on and interact at the same gigs and festivals. Shepherd remembers seeing Rush perform on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise a few years before he reached out to book him at his annual Backroads Blues Festival on a couple dates in the Pacific Northwest. After his set, Rush returned to the stage to join Shepherd’s band on a few songs. “We were talking backstage and getting along so well,” Shepherd says. “Sometimes you just have a feeling about people, and you make important decisions in your life based on those. At one point, we looked at each other and I told him I think we should do a record together. Bobby said, ‘Man, I was thinking the same thing.’ It was just a matter of clearing a space in our busy schedules to make it happen.”

Besides time and logistics, one of the key decisions in the making of “Young Fashioned Ways” was tracking the sessions at the iconic Royal Studios in Memphis with prolific co-owner and engineer Boo Mitchell. Interestingly, Shepherd’s choice was less about the facility’s storied and roll call of classic artists (Al Green, Chuck Berry, Ike & Tina Turner, Buddy Guy, Bruno Mars & Mark Ronson) than the fact that both he and Rush had recorded there earlier in their careers and were familiar with the environment. “The more comfortable artists are,” Shepherd says, “the more freely the music will flow. Royal also made sense as a halfway point between where I live in Nashville and Bobby lives in Jackson, Mississippi.”  

Considering the stellar results, one of the most fascinating aspects of the “Young Fashioned Ways” experience was the fact that neither Rush nor Shepherd knew what songs would be on the album when they first walked into Royal Studios in December 2023. They wanted everything to emerge as a spontaneous surprise. Shepherd says, “We believed that between each of our unique talents, we could walk in there not knowing what was going to happen but totally confident it would be great.” Rush came in with a huge satchel of lyrics – so many that the guitarist jokes that if they had recorded everything he wrote, they would have 10 albums! 

As a leaping off point, “Young Fashioned Ways” includes colorful re-inventions of four classic Rush songs – the hypnotic historical family drama “40 Acres (How Long),” the plucky, humorous acoustic gem “G String,” the vibey and atmospheric, celebratory declaration “Make Love to You” and the New Orleans Second-line stomping character narrative “Uncle Esau.” The original collaborations either found Shepherd specifically writing licks and melodies to Rush’s compelling, witty and insightful lyrics, or the guitarist coming up with a riff or melody and Rush reaching into his satchel and pulling out lyrics that fit perfectly. They recorded all the pieces acoustically to start. If they felt certain songs would sound better with a full band, they had the best veteran blues and R&B cats on tap to flesh them out live in the studio – Steve Potts (drums), Charles Hodges (keyboards and B-3), Darryl “DJ” Pruitt” (bass), Doug Wolverton (trumpet) and Charlie Di Puma (saxophone). 

“I think we both had something to prove to each other with ‘Young Fashioned Ways,’” Rush says. “I’m glad I could help bring Kenny back to that Muddy Waters moment in his childhood. There was a moment where I was walking in the hallways at Royal and broke down in tears because as an older man who has spent many years trying to keep up with trends, I so appreciated him letting me in this door to do what I knew I could do. Just as music keeps me young, so does learning something new every day. It’s like he said, this kind of album is a rare thing, and when it comes to the blues these days, you can’t get much better than we have done it. Nobody who is my age is still doing it like this, and no one Kenny’s age can do old-style blues better. We’re both looking forward to doing a lot of shows together to support this.”