Bobby Rush and Kenny Wayne Shepherd — Young Fashioned Ways

Bobby Rush—the Chitlin’ Circuit’s most revered gladiator with 10,000-plus worldwide shows and still very much counting—adds a new offering atop his mountain of 400-plus credited records. Guitar ace Kenny Wayne Shepherd—whose high-powered goods have hit the road with Buddy Guy to Van Halen and the Rolling Stones to the 2025 Experience Hendrix traveling circus—also has a new record out.

Both albums are one and the same: Young Fashioned Ways.

For 48 synergistic minutes, the Rush-Shepherd alliance combines quite the best of both blues worlds, jelling right off the bat as “Who Was That” contends with tracking down a back-door man. Bobby, the session’s vocalist as well as harpist, is just as persistent in the hunt as is the song’s unrelenting cadence. Horns spray their gleaming notes over top of the vigorous march; Rush occasionally joins them by huffing on harmonica for a more downhome touch. That’s also him playing rhythm guitar to Shepherd’s lead, which solidifies all that hellbent energy into a series of slashes, spirals and squalls. A gorgeously beaten-up 1961 Stratocaster, Kenny’s signature axe, is among the pageant of Fender and Gibson beauties bellyaching across the 10 original tracks. Bonded, the two Louisiana-born headliners double the potency.

On any given day, Shepherd typically shows up as a blues rocker. But rather than shred in the blistering style of 2020’s Straight to You: Live or the 2023/2024 studio tag-team of Dirt On My Diamonds, Vol. 1 & 2, he stays all blue and (somewhat) tempered here, like on 2007’s 10 Days Out (Blues From the Backroads) that collected audio as well as video during a road trip to play alongside bluesmen as colorfully named as “Gatemouth” Brown, “Wild Child” Butler and Cootie Stark, and ensembles as legendarily muscled as the Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters Bands.

But, of course, playing closer to the traditional vest does not imply a sense of safety in any way. Because, as with Elmore James’ 1951 “Dust My Broom” or the vastly more combative “Coming Home” from 1957, “You So Fine” likewise opens with an immediate face-smashing punch. Shepherd’s overdriven bottlenecked guitar is the culprit, swamping the senses with its deafening, forceful and gigantic persona that keeps right on galloping through to the end, except when intermittently blasting holes in Rush’s buttering-up come-ons. Yet demolition isn’t the sole means of getting the work done. Set to the back-and-forth pendulum swing Magic Sam used for “All Your Love,” “Young Ways”—a rally cry defiantly resisting age—machine-guns off a barrage of tremolo strumming that blazes even fierier when a massive string bend then rockets off. And that’s during the second bout of soloing. Even the short, dagger-sharp fills stabbed into “Long Way From Home” transmit their wincing grimaces straight to the listener.

Rush, for his part, comes to the session as the ultra-showman whose onstage spectacles are notorious for making hearts skip a beat and eyes bug out. So, deriving from someone who once penned such hot-blooded pieces as “Bowlegged Woman, Knock-Kneed Man,” “Booga Bear” and “Blind Snake,” “G String” would assuredly never pant over something as mundane as a part of a guitar. Nope, other things are on its mind.

“Make Love to You” is more direct, laying out its plan as plain as day, mincing not a word. Although Muddy’s own “I Just Want to Make Love to You” certainly shares intent, the songs are not the same. Here, lyrics distinguish, synchronized foot stomps and handclaps slap hard, and a wah-wah pedal quivers notes. Plus, Rush sells the body heat as only he can do, pushing up the temperature whenever his voice slows, thickens and deepens to drip with twice as much persuasiveness. Yet sex keeps him just as busy with its troublesome flipside, as when a stone-hearted lover launches a sequence of harpooning put-downs over the course of “What She Said.” But that only makes his Sonny Boy-schooled harmonica slurp all the bluer and an organ blurt out chords all the icier.

Bonded, Shepherd and Rush thump Young Fashioned Ways from end to end. The back-to-back-to-back driving rhythms could pound nails at 50 paces. Even when the amplifiers flip off, “40 Acres (How Long)” pulses insistently on a revolving acoustic guitar riff and a patting foot, nudging the music back to its rugged roots.

But rather than taking place in a shack, that piece got recorded, along with the rest, in a Memphis studio. Not just any Memphis studio, however. Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios: home of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain, Keith Richards’ Talk Is Cheap, and Boz Scaggs’ Memphis. The sound is accordingly full of vibrant presence.

So, when Shepherd’s haymaker of a slide guitar circles back around with its sights set on “Hey Baby (What Are We Gonna Do),” you can feel the earth quake under the havoc. Rush’s harp, this time roughed up by amplification, joins the fray, turning the narrative’s struggle with mixed signals into a hellion urgently looking for a juke joint to shake down.

Sometimes, the job calls for a double-barreled shotgun.

Label: Thirty Tigers/Deep Rush

Release date: 3/21/25

Artist websites: bobbyrushbluesman.com kennywayneshepherd.net

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski