Imagine a Saturday afternoon with a few guys
from the neighborhood looking under the hood of a classic muscle car, let’s say a ’69 Dodge Charger. The proud owner explains the tricked-out components of his engine.

But instead of a 440 Magnum, picture an electric guitar. And the narrator is Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
“The profile of the neck is basically the same shape as my ’61 Strat,” Shepherd says. “I worked with them a year and a half developing the pickups that are in the guitar to get it to sound exactly the way that I wanted it, and I like to have the big jumbo frets. I used Graftech graphite saddles which basically eliminates string breakage.

“I put a satin finish on the back of the neck to help give you a little more free- flowing action because I think a clear coat that’s like a gloss finish can restrict you a little on the neck.”

Shepherd was describing his Signature Series Stratocaster he designed. It is built similar to his favorite guitar, a 1961 model he found in a guitar store in Los Angeles. The previous owner reportedly was Ben Harper.

The ’61 Strat until recently stayed with Shepherd where ever he went. But he’s having the guitar replicated. The original version is going to be displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Shepherd is not a typical blues star. He’s also a rock star who has appeared on all the late-night shows: Jay Leno, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel. He’s made a documentary film, “10 Days Out: Blues From the Backroads,” which earned a pair of Grammy nominations. He signed his first record deal when he was just 16 years old. And, yes, he does own a ’69 Dodge Charger — the same model as the General Lee on “Dukes of Hazzard.”

Now 32, Shepherd, who leaves next week to the Mexican Riviera on the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise, is slated to appear at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Saturday, Oct. 10. He spoke with Lake Tahoe Action earlier this week.

Q: What do you like more, cars or guitars?

A: That’s a toss up. I’m a huge car buff and obviously I’m very passionate about guitars as well. I’ve been into cars since I was a little kid. I used to wander around and in every pocket of my outfit were Hot Wheels. In art class all I used to draw was cars. Both of them I’ve been passionate about for as long as I can remember. I have a modest collection of both. I have four vintage cars.

Q: How did you get so successful at such an early age?

A: It’s kind of amazing looking back upon it. It all just fell into place. The first time I got onstage I was 13 years old on Bourbon Street with Bryan Lee. Soon after that I got in the studio with some musicians and recorded my first demo. Word just started spreading. I put my band together when I was 15 years old and I started doing gigs in the Louisiana-Texas area. Word just literally spread across the country and eventually reached the West Coast and New York, and all these record companies started calling offering me a record deal. By the time I was 16 years old, I’d signed with a major record company. I was recording my first album my senior year of high school. I put my record out and the rest is history. A lot of people move to Nashville or New York or L.A. to pursue a music career but it all came to me when I was living in Shreveport.

Q: Was your music blues based?

A: My music is all blues based but it’s not all traditional blues. It was still like that back then but it was more bluesy. I was doing a lot of cover tunes but it was always obscure blues tunes. You would never come to my shows when I was 15 and hear “Stormy Monday” or “Kansas City” or anything like that. I was never one to play all these standards. Even though I didn’t have my own repertoire of music when I was that young, people were coming to my shows and it was almost as if they were hearing original material because it was obscure blues songs that I was doing.

Q: You must have had a great instructor.

A: I taught myself how to play. I play by ear. I can’t read music. I just sounded stuff out one note at a time. I took guitar classes as an elective in middle school but they were trying to get me to read music and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that, so I would just memorize the songs by ear with the sheet music in front of me and pretend like I was reading the sheet music.

Q: What music inspired you to play guitar?

A: Obviously the blues, but I like everything from Hank Sr., Hank Jr., Willie Nelson, George Jones, Conway Twitty, stuff like that. James Brown and gospel music, Southern rock, ZZ Top, Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, a little bit of jazz, Kenny Burrell. But when I played guitar I wanted to play the blues.

Q: Your 1997 single “Blue on Black” was a mainstream No. 1 hit. How did that change your life?

A: It was No. 1 for 17 weeks. At that time it was the longest a song had been No. 1 on the Billboard rock charts. It opened some eyes and ears and opportunities. It’s one of the most recurring songs on rock radio. It’s become like a song that you hear on classic rock radio now, as if I’m old enough to create a classic. It’s one of the most played singles in the last 20 years. I think it’s one of those songs that 20-30 years from now it will still sound great. Really as a musician, that’s what you want to strive for, is create that timeless music that people are willing to enjoy years from now.

Q: Weren’t blues purists critical of that song?

A: There’s going to be criticism no matter what you do. Anybody wants to find fault in something, if they look hard enough, they can find something to support their opinion. Really, on my fourth album (“The Place You’re In”), it was a straight-ahead rock album, so that was probably the furthest departure from the blues out of everything I have done. There was definitely some people who were like, “Hey what’s going on?” But at the same time I did my fourth record I did the “10 Days Out: Blues From the Backroads,” project, so I knew I was going to follow that up with the most traditional blues thing I had ever done. So all the people who were concerned, all their concerns were put to ease the moment we released that. It was just my way of saying, “Look, I’m an artist exploring opportunities. I like to try new things. I don’t ever want to just be pigeonholed into doing the same thing over and over again because that can get too predictable sometimes. I don’t want to put out a record and have everybody know exactly what to expect before they ever put the disc in. There will be some people who will have opinions about that and there will be people who love it no matter what I do because in the blues especially, the fans are lifelong loyal fans and they’ll be with you through the up and downs and through the successes and the questionable decisions as well.

Q: What did you learn from the bluesmen in “10 Days Out”?

A: They are the ones who paved the road that I am traveling today. It was a real pleasure, and amazing experience and I made some lifelong friends. What’s important is we got a lot of these musicians before they passed away. We were trying to create and preserve a legacy for some of these musicians. ... Hubert Sumlin has become like another father to me.

Q: I hear you are working on an album to be released in 2010.

A: I’m working on two new records. We’re mixing a live record with some artists in the movie — Bryan Lee, Buddy Flett, Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. We recorded a couple of live shows. That should be released sometime soon. And I’ve been writing songs for the last year and a half in preparation for the next studio record, so I’m hoping to get in the studio in the next few months.