In KWS's playing, I hear Albert Collins and Albert King and Buddy Guy and other guys like Bryan Lee and Buddy Flett just as much if not more than Stevie, along with guys like Billy F. Gibbons. It's just to the point that anytime someone does those wide bends, people hear Stevie. There were a couple of times on the 10 Days Out set that I thought KWS's tone was very strikingly similar to Albert Collins's.
That brings up another point, and I think Joe wholeheartedly agrees, and is partly why he doesn't plays very many Strats anymore: it's gotten to the point where every blues who sees a guy with a Strat must sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan.
And it does come back to the point that KWS's style may seem more limited to a shorter range because it is in fact. He is just way into the traditional guys, which means there's not as much room. You'll hear him mention SRV, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin. Those are all as close to pure blues as you can get. Then, we look at SRV, and his influences went past blues to guys like Kenny Burrell, Hendrix, and so on. But those are still pretty close to blues. Now, we look at Joe, who cites Joe Satriani, Danny Gatton, Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Green, and so on. So much diversity in the influences. Some of the stuff he does frankly stretches what blues is in my opinion, but it's all good. And with Kenny, those guys he listens to are more frantic, more raw, honestly. While Joe's influences tend to be more refined and smooth. I would make the argument however, that Kenny Wayne's music is more varied and different than people like to think. I mean, he went from Live On in 1999, very much a traditional blues-rock record, to 2004's The Place You're, which is a rock record through and through, to his latest project 10 Days Out: Blues From The Backroads, which is as traditional a blues record as you can make.
We need both Joe and Kenny in the blues world today. To me, personally, they go hand in hand, and that may be unpopular with some, but let me explain. Joe is very firmly set on the future of the blues, while Kenny is set on its past. With as history-based as blues is, without the past, guys like Joe forget their roots, where it came from. With guys like Kenny, if there is not a progression, they will get stuck in a rut. We need them both.
Again, I say, thank God for them both.
Now, if Kenny would actually get out there and do more, he and Joe would make a great tag-team to push the genre through the roof into the....dare I say.....mainstream marketplace. It needs two or three groups together to do it, i.e. SRV, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Robert Cray in the 80s.
