Live On

1	In 2 Deep 3:15
2	Was 4:00
3	Them Changes 3:19
4	Last Goodbye 4:33
5	Shotgun Blues 4:49
6	Never Mind 3:58
7	You Should Know Better 4:12
8	Every Time It Rains 3:46
9	Oh Well 3:37
10	Wild Love 3:42
11	Losing Kind 4:31
12	Live On 4:35
13	Where Was I? 3:30
14	Electric Lullaby 3:12

Barnes & Noble

There are dozens of 20-something guitarists inspired by the late Texas blues rocker Stevie Ray Vaughan but only Kenny Wayne Shepherd has opened for B.B. King, the Eagles, and Dylan, been featured in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone fashion spreads, and captured the No.1 spot on the Billboard blues charts for two years straight. Rock-star looks and attitude can only take you so far when it comes to blues credibility though, and on LIVE ON Shepherd comes through with the goods big time. "In 2 Deep," "Never Mind," and "Losing Kind" all come straight from the Vaughan/Hendrix school of guitar with Shepherd drawing on feedback and psychedelic riffs to put across a raging roots sound. Stinging slide guitar and chugging rhythm make "Was" a crazed kind of swamp rock while the title cut and "Shotgun Blues" cling to the verities of classic '60s electric blues. Shepherd has a lot of help on LIVE ON: Blues harp ace James Cotton, Primus' Les Claypool, former Allman Brothers guitarist Warren Hayes, Third Eye Blind bassist Arion Salazar, and even Stevie Ray Vaughan's old rhythm section all make appearances. While Noah Hunt, the Shepherd band's singer, handles things more than ably, it's Shepherd who's leading the charge, taking the sounds of vintage blues rock into the new millennium. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

Being a teenage blues guitar prodigy is a double-edged sword. Stunning technique brings attention, but also criticism that it's all style and no soul. This criticism plagued Kenny Wayne Shepherd since his popular debut album, Ledbetter Heights, and it's warranted to a certain extent. It didn't help that Shepherd so strongly recalled Stevie Ray Vaughan. It also didn't help that some of his material was a little too slick, appealing as much to album rock as to blues-rock audiences. By the time of his third album, 1999's Live On, he had begun to reconcile these two sides of his personality, but the best thing about the record is that it's tougher and stronger than its two predecessors. There's still a fair amount of crossover -- a Hendrix cover and a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" -- but Shepherd not only seems to be developing a style of his own, the playing of his band has become grittier, or at least it's being captured better on record. Shepherd can still fall prey to excess, but not as often as he used to. He's figuring out how to restrain himself, and his music is all the better for it. Stephen Thomas Erlewine