Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s Blues Rock Experience (Brett Papa Online Course)

Blues Through the Lens of a Song

Playing the blues isn’t about knowing a bunch of licks. That is just a small part of it. The picture doesn’t fully come into focus until people can feel what you are playing. The emotional connection is what grabs people, draws them in, and leaves them wanting more. So how do we get people to emotionally connect with what we are playing?

For over 30 years, Kenny Wayne Shepherd has mastered the art of connecting with an audience, and now he wants to show you.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Kenny knows what it’s like to have the power of music grab hold of you, because it happened to him. As a seven year old, sitting at the side of the stage, he watched Stevie Ray Vaughan play with so much passion, intensity and raw emotion that it changed his life forever. This started a musical journey that led to being signed by legendary music executive Irving Azoff at just 16 years old and recording his debut album while still in high school.

Three decades later, he has six GRAMMY nominations, multiple gold and platinum records and his own Fender signature Stratocaster. He’s shared stages with Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Van Halen, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd, just to name a few. This is the first guitar course to feature him, built to hand you what all those years on stage have taught him.

The Notes Are Right. The Feel Isn’t.
You’ve put in the hours. You know your pentatonic boxes and a pocketful of go-to licks. But when a real song or the band kicks in, your playing still comes out feeling stiff and rehearsed; it sounds nothing like the records you love.

It’s the lick trap: the idea that the blues is three chords and a bag of phrases to memorize. Stay in that trap, and you’ll keep hitting the same wall, playing the same licks in the same box and wondering why your playing still doesn’t feel alive or sound the way you want to hear it.

The blues is the most honest music there is; it’s raw and dynamic, there’s attitude and swagger, and it’s gut-wrenching and moving; you can’t fake your way through it. The bottom line is, it’s not just “the what,” but “the why” you play something. If it’s not adding to the story of the song, it’s just useless memorized phrases with no context. Emotion and context are everything!

“All you need to do is figure out how to channel your feelings, good and bad, and just put it through your instrument. Make it go from your heart to your hands and out to the people so that they can feel it too.”

Learn From the Masters, Then Make It Your Own
Plenty of players learn one I, IV, V progression and figure they’ve got the blues figured out. You’ve got to dig way deeper than that. You have to cut your teeth on the blues masters. In this course Kenny starts off with his influences and the players you need to know to dial in your playing. These are the players and guitar fundamentals that helped shape his sound. This is where learning the blues really starts.

First, you’ll take inspiration from early blues masters like Jimmy Reed, Albert Collins, Albert King and B.B. King, the pioneers who helped forge the sound of the electric blues. Then you’ll move on to the players and bands who went beyond the blues, adding other styles like rock and funk: Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton and James Brown’s guitarists. Kenny will guide you through all the essential vocabulary and blues rock fundamentals, with techniques like picking, hand control, bending, vibrato, rhythm, timing, feel, and right and left hand muting. Then you can build from there so you’re ready for whatever a song calls for.

Build Your Sound onthe Songs That Built His
Kenny grew up in a radio family, so he was exposed to all styles of music, whether it was rock, blues, funk, or country, and he learned at a young age what songs would get radio airplay. As he developed as an artist and songwriter, he was able to write his own songs that would get played on the radio (11 Top Ten hits), and to this day, his songs are played worldwide. Now you get to learn those songs from him. You’ll get to dig in deep, from his very first album to one of his most recent.

Each one teaches you different aspects of blues rock guitar, timing, feel and phrasing you can carry into your own playing, and together through his songs, he will show you a complete picture of how it’s done. Blues rock guitar through the lens of a song.

9+ Hours of Course Content

• Kenny’s First Guitar Course: Learn straight from Kenny in the first guitar course to feature him, built from three decades as a performer and recording artist.
• 30 Performances: Thirty full performances to learn, with backing tracks, TAB, Guitar Pro files and scale charts.
• Real Album Tracks: Play over the actual tracks from Kenny’s albums, featuring world class players, with or without his guitar in the mix.
• Lessons, Breakdowns and Interviews: See the thinking behind the playing through Kenny’s lessons, detailed breakdowns and interviews.
• Kenny’s Gear, Tips and Tricks: Get a look at the gear behind Kenny’s sound, plus the tips and tricks he’s picked up over thirty years on stage.
• Standard TAB and Guitar Pro: No guesswork. Every performance is tabbed out, and you can slow anything down in Guitar Pro until it’s under your fingers.