Lang builds on blues foundation
Time has a way of sorting out careers.
At age 31, Jonny Lang has already been in the music business for close to 20 years. After taking up guitar at the age of 12 and making it onstage a year later the kid from Fargo, N.D. got his own band, a major label contract, two multi-platinumselling records, and his first Grammy nomination by the time he was 18.
Along the way he also got typecast as the new blues music whiz kid. The last time Lang played Edmonton in 2004 he was still sorting out his real musical identity from the star image, suggesting in an interview with the Journal that he was “just a white kid who liked soulful music, all kinds of music.”
Eight years later Lang still loves the blues but his psyche is a lot more relaxed when it comes to being himself musically.
“I haven’t really been doing it purposefully, but for me things have been getting a lot more different than just blues music,” Lang offered in a recent phone interview.
“For quite a few people there’s always going to be the handle from their first impression of me. Blues music and blues guitar players will always be a part of my inspiration, which is a wonderful thing and I’m glad I had that musical foundation. I’m not trying to get away from it but the songs that come out of me naturally are different.”
Lang’s last studio album, the Grammy-winning Turn Around (2006), featured some marvellous tracks that delved into contemporary gospel and funk, while his last release, Live At The Ryman (2009), continued that evolution from blues guitar hero to a singer and balladeer with a wider scope. It still came with plenty of rocking, wailing guitar, too, but the fans seem to have embraced his broader approach.
“To me, music is just music. Now, when I go into the studio, I play the song for everybody on acoustic guitar or piano and let them interpret it and see what happens. If it ends up being a blues thing that’s great, and if it turns into a folk thing that’s cool too. I just enjoy the process of letting it unfold without nudging it in a specific direction.”
Early exposure to his parents’ Motown albums still pops up when he plays covers in concert, and he continues to be a big fan of Stevie Wonder and James Taylor. Given all that, Lang hasn’t forgotten that his passport to fame came in the blues. He is, after all, in another long round of touring with one of the greatest living practitioners of blues guitar, Buddy Guy. Guy and Lang will take separate sets with their own bands in Edmonton Tuesday before they get together for a few tunes and what Lang calls a “blues guitar duel” at the close.
He says sharing the stage with Guy “is a blast,” adding that the blues veteran was one of his original mentors along with the influences of other guitar greats on record. The first of their several collaborations on disc happened on one of Guy’s albums in 1998.
“Being the icon of his genre that he is and to be so gracious toward me as a young guy, and him being so supportive and wanting to record with me, man, that put me on cloud nine. I have a lot of gratitude toward Buddy.”
The first time they met was at Guy’s original Legends club in Chicago when the rising star was just 14 with his first band, billed as Jonny Lang & The Big Bang.
“I was nervous and hoping he didn’t come down to watch. Then I was onstage and looked over to see him sitting there. From that point forward in the set I completely lost focus and I don’t remember anything. I met him after.”
Lang says he’s still learning things being on tour with the 76-year-old blues great.
“Just the fact that he’s still passionate about it all at this point in his life is very, very inspiring. I think the greatest thing I’ve learned from him was that it’s OK to be reckless, to just totally let it all go. If there are some bad notes in there that’s hardly the point. It’s more about what you’re projecting, about letting that passion out. When you watch people watch him they’re so caught up in the moment they’re not worried about critiquing the musicality of it all. That really freed me up.”
Is there any chance that Guy has ever learned anything from Lang? “That’s probably a big no,” Lang laughs, “but I can say he is a friend of mine after all this time and it’s an honour to know him.”
Along with a couple of generations between them in age there aren’t many parallels to their careers. Guy’s upbringing as a sharecropper’s son in Louisiana in the 1930s and ’40s and his later rise to fame in the postwar Chicago scene playing for the likes of Muddy Waters is a stark contrast to the story of Lang’s youth, growing up in North Dakota, and then Minneapolis after fronting a band took him there at 14.
While both have had their share of fame, chances are Lang never guessed he would wind up opening for the Rolling Stones or B.B. King, or playing the Clinton White House for that matter before he turned 30. Guy spent years in the shadow of Chess Records stars like Waters and Howlin’ Wolf before he really began to get the recognition he deserved in the 1990s with his signing to the Silvertone label.
Maybe the fact that Guy and Lang do enjoy each other’s company onstage and off is another testament to how the universal experience of the blues brings people together.