In 1997 rock and blues music fans were impatiently waiting for the sophomore
release by, what the press still referred to as, a teenage phenom. On October 7th
that year the world finally heard Trouble Is… by the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band
and it demonstrated to the press and public alike that Kenny was an artist with a
boundless future ahead of him.
In 2022 rock and blues music fans have been able to see The Kenny Wayne
Shepherd Band perform Trouble Is… in its entirety in select markets around the
country and now, due to the enormous success of The Trouble Is… 25th
Anniversary Tour, more dates are being added in 2023.
After the wildly successful debut of his first platinum selling album, Ledbetter
Heights, Shepherd set out to write and record his second album. “No one was
expecting me to match the success of Ledbetter Heights, but when we got into the
studio and the album started coming together, we knew we had something really
special.”
Radio stations across the U.S. added song after song from Trouble Is… 25 years
ago to their playlists - in heavy rotation - and the fans devoured the music. Trouble
Is… went on to sell over a million copies in the U.S. and was certified Platinum by
the RIAA. It featured 4 top ten Rock hits, "Slow Ride", "Somehow, Somewhere,
Someway", “Everything Is Broken” and of course, the #1 Mainstream Rock hit
“Blue on Black,” spending an astonishing 104 weeks on the Billboard Charts.
Shepherd won two Billboard Music Awards, including for Rock Song of the Year,
and received his first of many Grammy nominations. Twenty-five years later,
Kenny Wayne Shepherd is still releasing groundbreaking music, accumulating
awards, touring the world and performing for ever-expanding audiences.
Trouble Is… was produced by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jerry
Harrison and was the beginning of a long-term collaboration between Harrison and
Shepherd. The album also features musical powerhouses including Chris Layton,
Tommy Shannon and Reese Wynans as well as James Cotton.
KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD is over two decades into a recording career that
began when he was just 16. He has sold millions of albums worldwide and, in
addition to his five Grammy nominations, he has won two Billboard Music
Awards, a pair of Orville H. Gibson awards, the Blues Foundation’s Keeping The
Blues Alive award and two Blues Music awards. He’s had nine #1 blues albums
and a string of #1 mainstream rock singles.