10 Days Out: Blues From the Backroads

I have to lead with this: I have a genuine issue with how this is marketed. Naming Kenny Wayne Shepherd as the artist on this album feels bloody rich. The artists here are Neal Pattman, Clarence Brown, Bryan Lee, John Dee Holeman, and the rest of the legends and near-forgotten blues musicians he travelled the back roads of New Orleans, Shreveport, and Kansas to find and record, in juke joints and on front porches.
True, Shepherd deliberately stays in the background on nearly every track, no guitar showboating, no attempt to be the star. This is a field-recording preservation project he financed and organised, using his own name and platform to get these players heard and documented before they were gone. Five of them died before the album and documentary were even finished.

But that context matters, and I have a genuinely hard time rating this as a Kenny Wayne Shepherd record when it so clearly isn't one, in any meaningful sense.

But holy shit, is this good. The music itself is absolutely fantastic. This is an album I could listen to over and over, and I deeply appreciate what Shepherd actually did here, using his position to preserve something that would otherwise have been lost. My issue is entirely with the framing, not with what's actually on the record.

Five stars, and a genuine thank you to Jerry McCain, B.B. King, Henry Townsend, Etta Baker, and everyone else who made this what it is.

I was expecting cheesy country rock, but this is amazing! So many big names on one album, and you can just feel all the passion through the music. Beautiful and very human.

Has enough legends and great playing to be worth a listen

Saw a pretty boy singing the blues and immediately wrote it off. Then he just played and let the best blues singers in the business sing instead. Perfect. Cannot imagine a better blues anthology.

I really like blues albums and this seemed to be a good one, but I sort of wish it was just a great blues album from one artist instead of a pseudo-greatest hits album.

I imagine this would be pretty decent if you're into blues. Big confession time...I just don't understand the allure of blues. Every song sounds the same to me and even that sound is just mediocre. 2/5

This was fine, but blues music is blues music, and so I can only care for so much of it. The Thrill Is Gone was the best, and there was an hour of content after that.

Good fun blues album, while it appreciates the legends of the genre not sure I would come back to this over any of the orginal artists output.

Favorite songs: The Thrill is Gone, Born in Louisiana, Prison Blues, Tina Marie, Chapel Hill Boogie, Spoonful, Grindin' Man

Least favorite songs: Honky Tonk

4/5

ok some late 2000s blues. This guy has chops. Its absolutely dance club and bigger venue blues. This was enjoyable!

Sounds like it's from about 50 years earlier than it actually came out. Really shows the influence of the blues on country, and vice versa, and I really liked it. Thanks for the suggestion

Hour-long blues digression