Getting chosen to go out on a tour with Van Halen is quite the honor. For Kenny Wayne Shepherd, he can say he was honored twice over.
Shepherd, who supported Van Halen on two different tours – one in 1998 (with Gary Cherone) and again in 2015 (with David Lee Roth), talked about those experiences as a guest on the My Weekly Mixtape podcast.
“We did the final Van Halen tour in 2015. We did that entire tour with those guys, and I spoke with [Eddie] every day,” said Shepherd. “Every single day he came and found me, and he’d come give me a big hug and we’d sit down and talk and hang out, you know. He was always very gracious and very generous with his time when it came to me.
“You know, [we have] two very different styles of playing,” he continued. “But I think that’s one of the reasons why it worked as a lineup, and that’s why we did it more than once, you know, Van Halen, Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Because, my music is guitar-based, guitar-centric, guitar driven. And for the first couple of albums in my career, I was just a guitar player and didn’t really sing in my own band. So, a lot of similarities in that regard, but the genres are different, but still, they’re connected because, you know, blues and rock go hand in hand. So, it just works really well. And, it was an honor to know him and to be part of those tours with him.”