On a late Tuesday morning in New York City, Stephen Stills digs into an egg white omelet in the Tea Room of the tony Carlyle Hotel and talks about how playing with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the modern blues guitar star who also happens to be 32 years his junior, is having an effect on how he approaches making music.
"I used to try to make more noise," he says. "I would play a lot dirtier, and I'd try to make smaller amps sound like a stack of Marshalls. With Kenny, I'm trying to concentrate more on composing on the guitar instead of just ripping. He's changing my playing, and I'm changing his – that's the way a band should work."
Likewise, Shepherd, seated across from Stills and nursing a breakfast smoothie, says that trading licks with the veteran guitar legend is causing him to re-evaluate his own playing style. "Playing with Stephen is so inspiring on a lot of levels," he says. "One of the big things is how he's making me look at my rhythm playing, especially when we're singing. He knows the pockets to fill, so that's what I'm looking for them. There's a nice give and take that we've established. There's no egos in this band."
"That's right – we already know we're great," Stills says, smiling broadly, then quickly adding, "No, wait… that's the other band."
Both men break up at Stills' sly reference to Crosby, Stills & Nash. Barry Goldberg, the former Electric Flag keyboardist who has teamed with Stills and Shepherd to form the blues band The Rides, shakes his head and smiles. "You never know when Stephen's joking," he says. "And when you think he's joking, he's actually being serious."
On the heels of the release of their debut album, Can't Get Enough, Stills, Shepherd and Goldberg are in town to kick off a month-long tour at the city's hip Times Square hangout, the Iridium Jazz Club. We talked with the three men about the new LP, what Stills thought about working with a former Talking Head, how a couple of blues vets tackled The Stooges – and, of course, things always have a way of ending with Hendrix.
So the idea here was to revisit Super Session [the 1968 album on which both Stills and Goldberg both performed] in some fashion.
Shepherd: "That was the original concept that was presented to me. Not that we were going to redo Super Session, but 'inspired by' sounds about right. We were inspired by the Super Session record. Both Barry Stephen were on that, and it featured another great guitar player –
Mike Bloomfield.
Shepherd: "Exactly. But the difference is, we wanted to get together and write songs for this record; those guys didn't write songs together for Super Session. This evolved into a different thing. And the chemistry was really right between us – it was all pretty effortless. Making the record, we began to realize that we were forming a band, and the project we were involved with was our debut record.
[To Stephen and Barry] Now, you guys didn't actually play together on Super Session, did you?
Stills: "No, we missed each other by a day. Bloomfield and Barry started it out, and Al Kooper was the producer. Bloomer lasted about a day out in Los Angeles. I don't know what the problem was; Mike being from Chicago – that's just as intense. Anyway, he ran away. So I got a call out at my little house in Topanga from Al Kooper: 'Stephen, we're doing this little blues record – you wanna come?' I said, 'OK, Al, how long was your list, and how far down was I?' And Al went, 'Not long, and you're exactly near the top!' [Laughs]
"With this record, what happened was, my manager, Elliot Roberts, and a record executive were talking about Super Session, what a marvelous record it was and how it was made quickly and cheaply. Of course, the secret to that is having good players, simple songs and good, one-take recordings."
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE BY STEPHEN STILLS AT GONZO
 | The Lost Broadcasts DVD - £9.99 |
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