Concert Review: Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band Feat. Bobby Rush

 
Concert Review: Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band Feat. Bobby Rush July 18, 2025, The Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

By Simon Green

Kenny Wayne Shepherd usually visits the UK once a year playing a handful of select dates, so it’s always nice get the London date ringed in the diary in anticipation of a guaranteed five-star performance. Spoiler alert, this evening in west London was another spellbinding evening of musicianship in which the mercurial playing of Kenny Wayne Shepherd (KWS) took centre stage. There are a lot of talented people that can play guitar exceptionally well but very few that have a distinctive style created from both the way they have grown up playing and the type of music they play. KWS is one of those. His playing has an authenticity, which combined with his technical playing ability, makes watching him play totally compelling. His playing is an extension of his personality, the individual guitar phrases seemingly flowing out of him naturally without filter.

His band are a well-oiled machine behind him. Faithful retainers, the cap wearing Kevin McMormick on bass and the professorial Joe Krown on keys kept a low profile stage right, while legendary drummer Chris Layton did his stuff at the back with the minimum of fuss (there was no drum solo nonsense going on). Given his background playing with SRV, there is no more logical gig for him than occupying the drum stool behind KWS, given the stylistic similarities in their playing. Noah Hunt is the perfect foil and vocalist for the band; he radiates a cheerful charisma and commands centre stage with ease, without taking away anything from the blonde guitarist that everyone has come to see. He knows instinctively when to leave the front of stage to the main man and when to shimmy in for the hands around the guitarist’s shoulder for those, look at us, aren’t we having a good time moments.

The show kicked off with the very catchy ‘Woman Like You’ from the Traveler album, which has become a live favourite and epitomises the winning combination of marrying a bluesy beat with more commercial melodic hooks. It kicked off with a crash, the horns blasting out (Charlie Dupuma and Doug Woolverton on sax and trumpet were excellent, up on their riser stage left) before settling into the chugging groove and rising chords of the verse. The horns played a big part on other songs at the start of the start, including standout tracks from KWS’s most two recent albums Dirt On My Diamond’s, Vol 1 & 2, ‘She Loves My Automobile’ and the title track (from Vol 1). Like a lot of his recent material these are upbeat grooves with swinging horn lines and riffs that could make a frozen toe start tapping. The benefit of starting his career at a young age and, more importantly, maintaining consistently high quality output is that KWS is able to compile a set list from new and old material and keep everyone happy. It helps that the new material mentioned already sound like live faves. The guitarist introduced ‘Deja Voodoo’ from his first album Ledbetter Heights, incredibly, enjoying its 30th anniversary, with a promise that the band would be back in future to play the album in full, rather like they did with ‘Trouble is…’ a couple of years back to great acclaim. ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’ from the same album followed with Kenny pulling out a variety of tasty blues licks that hit the proverbial sweet spot every time.

The big treat for this particular tour was the addition of the incredibly youthful 91 year-old Bobby Rush, resplendent in a snazzy jacket and a wolfish grin, who joined mid-way through the set to play songs from his recent collaboration with KWS, the excellent Young Fashioned Ways album. As Kenny had described it when Rock & Blues Muse interviewed him earlier this year, it then became the Bobby Rush show. The veteran musician has the sort of twinkling charm that could beguile teenage girls as well as their grandmothers to turn giggly. He and the band rattled through several fine numbers from Young Fashioned Ways, ‘Long Way From Home’, ’40 Acres (How Long)’, ‘You So Fine’, ‘Uncle Esau’ and ‘Who Was That’, with the old timer moving and playing harmonica like a young man Wham bam, it was a short masterclass in showmanship, an exercise in stylish class, a wonderful meeting of different generations of bluesmen.

After Bobby Rush had left the stage and normal service had been resumed KWS announced, midway through a rocking version of ‘King Bee’, that a young guitarist he’d met after seeing him on YouTube, 17 year-old Londoner, Rhys John Stygal, would be joining him on stage, which he duly did. This was an incredibly generous act of encouragement, but while the young whippersnapper acquitted himself admirably, it felt a little like an ad break appearing at a crucial stage of a movie. The evening ended, inevitably, with two encores, the absolute classic ‘Blue On Black’ and a mega long version of Voodoo Chile, during which KWS ripped solos and runs from his Strat’ like a blues magus summoning up the spirit of Jimi and countless other departed guitarists while the audience watched spellbound. A superb performance.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band website