NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Kenny Wayne Shepherd, backed by The Roots, will be guesting on NBC’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, November 10.
The appearance is just a few hours before Kenny Wayne appears on stage with the all-star line-up of players for a scheduled Experience Hendrix Tour stop at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
The concept behind the Experience Hendrix Tours, dating back to 2004, is to connect contemporary musicians and audiences with the musical legacy of Jimi Hendrix. In recognition of this, Kenny Wayne Shepherd will be playing the same white Fender Stratocaster guitar that Jimi Hendrix played on the morning of August 18, 1969 at the Woodstock Festival. It’s the same instrument on which Hendrix played “The Star Spangled Banner,” the recording of which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009.
Jimi Hendrix purchased the guitar in 1968 and played it at many concerts including the 1969 Newport Pop Festival and his final concert at the Isle of Fehmarn on September 6, 1970. The guitar was acquired by Experience Music Project (EMP) in 1992 and has been in the Seattle-based museum’s permanent collection since that time. EMP has consented to bring the guitar to New York, accompanied by two curators, in support of Experience Hendrix’s continuing efforts to bring the music of Jimi Hendrix to successive generations.
After the Fallon taping wraps, the 'Woodstock Strat' will be transported to the Beacon Theatre and played for the first time in more more than 40 years in front of a live audience.
Hendrix was left-handed and because left-handed guitars weren’t readily available at the time, he would often play right-handed guitars upside down, restringing them so that the strings would still be in the standard order. This white Stratocaster was originally a right-handed model, adjusted for Hendrix. Kenny Wayne Shepherd is right-handed and will play the guitar strung appropriately.
Experience Hendrix, in association with Sony Legacy, is releasing West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology, a 4 CD/1 DVD box set on November 16. The career-spanning box set tracks Hendrix's journey from little known R&B sideman to international stardom through an unprecedented assemblage of previously unavailable recordings.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd was hugely inspired by Jimi Hendrix and, over the course of his career that began when he was only 15 years old, he has closed every one of his performances with Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).”
The current edition of the Experience Hendrix Tour features Steve Vai, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph, Jonny Lang, Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, Eric Johnson, Ernie Isley, Living Colour, Mato Nanji of Indigenous, Chris Layton of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble and The Slide Brothers a/k/a Chuck and Darick Campbell of Sacred Steel and, of course, Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
Experience Hendrix Tour dates:
11/9 – Hershey Theatre – Hershey, PA
11/10 – Beacon Theatre – New York, NY
11/11 – Hippodrome – Baltimore, MD
11/12 – Landmark Theater – Richmond, VA
11/13 – Caesars Casino – Atlantic City, NJ
11/15 – Center for the Arts – Buffalo, NY
11/17 – Taft Theater – Cincinnati, OH
11/18 – Fox Theater – Detroit, MI
11/19 – Star Plaza Theater – Merrilville, IN
11/20 – Murat Theatre – Indianapolis, IN
— Crystal Lynn Huntoon
