Kenny Wayne Shepherd released ‘Ledbetter Heights’ as a teenager in 1995, emerging during a 1990s blues revival. Thirty years later, he’s revisiting the album on tour and reflecting on his career.
Author: Jack Austin
Jack Austin
Jack Austin is a Chicago-based music journalist covering blues and American roots music. He is a radio DJ (Electric Chicken) and co-founder of Crossroads Chicago Radio. A poet and bad guitar player, he writes with an ear for regional scenes, musical lineage, and the people who keep the blues alive.
Scott “Janky” Lindsey says God created music and there’s no music in hell.
Before the stages and decades of recordings, there was a kid in Memphis listening to street singers, picking up a harmonica and finding his way into the blues.
Bad Apple Blues Club owner Sean “Bad” Apple recalls learning from Mississippi blues masters while confronting the changing culture surrounding the music he loves.
Moses Crouch talks Hill Country Blues, trance-inducing grooves, musical lineage, and the traditions connecting North Mississippi, Memphis, and the blues of today.
Cam Kimbrough carries the weight of his family’s Hill Country blues legacy while working to keep the music of Northern Mississippi alive, relevant and moving forward.
The Spit Cup and the Jukes frontman discusses discovering Junior Kimbrough’s music at 45, studying with Robert Kimbrough, and preserving one of blues’ rarest living traditions.
A childhood encounter with Alan Lomax films and Junior Kimbrough records sparked a lifelong obsession. The Black Keys frontman discusses his enduring devotion to North Mississippi Hill Country blues, why the genre remains his musical home, and the records that became the foundation of the band’s sound.
On ‘Making Moves,’ Danni Nicholls turns a stretch of self-doubt, relocation, and upheaval into songs about rebuilding trust in her voice, her writing, and herself.
“We Got Our Own Book. We Got Our Own Tree.” The Hill Country guitarist discusses musical inheritance, the stories that forged him, and why no tradition survives by standing still.