Traveling backroads with blues greats

The genesis of Kenny Wayne Shepherd's latest project emerged when the young blues and rock guitar hotshot was making his last studio CD, 2004's

The Place You're In.

"As the album began to take shape, I started realizing this was going to be really a rock record," the 29-year-old Louisiana native recalled recently over the phone from Los Angeles. "I have such a big blues fan base, so we started coming up with ideas to give them something, too."

What Shepherd and his producer, former Talking Head Jerry Harrison, came up with is rather special - a CD/DVD documentary called Ten Days Out: Blues From the Backroads (****). Recalling the musicological field trips of Alan Lomax or Chris Strachwitz, Ten Days Out chronicles a 2004 journey through Shepherd's native South to jam with blues artists from world legends (B.B. King, at his annual homecoming show in Indianola, Miss.) to regional favorites (Louisiana's Buddy Flett and Bryan Lee, who both helped give the teenaged Shepherd his start). Stevie Ray Vaughan's famous rhythm section, Double Trouble - bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton - are along for the ride.

Nearly all of the featured artists are on the far side of 70, and since the film's completion, six of the 14 have died - George "Wild Child" Butler, Neal Pattman, Cootie Stark, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Henry Townsend and Etta Baker.

For Shepherd, that made the trip a bittersweet experience.

"At first I wanted this to be an opportunity for these people to have a second wind with their careers," he says. "And now it's become a project that's important in the sense that . . . it's the last opportunity you'll get to hear at least six of these people and their music. . . . They need to be appreciated."

The music will get further exposure when Ten Days Out airs on select PBS stations - schedule to be announced - and when Shepherd launches a tour this month that will feature some of the surviving artists. He's due April 21 at the Borgata in Atlantic City.

Ten Days Out runs the gamut from the electric stylings of King to the acoustic Piedmont blues of Baker. The venues are similarly varied, from kitchens to porches to an empty New Orleans club and the Shreveport, La., grave site of Leadbelly. With the musicians in their element, Shepherd plays the respectful accompanist rather than the guitar hero, helping to draw fine performances out of the legends.

Other than the segment with King, the only gig before a live audience occurs when Ten Days Out climaxes with a concert in Salina, Kan., featuring surviving members of the bands of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. They include Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, Calvin "Fuzz" Jones, and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.

That can be pretty intimidating company for a young player. "Some of these guys I hadn't met," Shepherd says. "Sometimes I run into this thing where they see this young, blond-headed white blues player who wants to play with the big dogs."

Shepherd sensed some of that show-me attitude in Kansas, but he was ready: At an impromptu jam session the night before filming, he says, "I won over their respect, and by the end of the night they were all patting me on the back and giving me hugs."

If you don't believe it, just ask Sumlin, the legendary Howlin' Wolf guitarist who has been the idol of everyone from Clapton to Vaughan to Shepherd. He speaks with the zeal of a religious convert.

"I'm going to tell you something - this youngster's got it, man," Sumlin, still sounding frisky at 75, says over the phone from his home in Totowa, N.J. "He showed me some things - oh Lord!

"He knows more than any guitar player I've ever played with. [And] he's got the soul - that heart, that feeling. He can be another B.B., anything he wants to be."

Sumlin will be among the musicians joining Shepherd to bring Ten Days Out on tour.

"Oh man, I can't wait," he says. "This guy is bringing out everything I ever did."