By K.D. Norris
It’s a cliche story often told — 15-year-old blues guitar prodigy’s debut goes platinum — but it has been 20-or-so years since Jonny Lang first invaded headphones and loudspeakers with the album Wander This World and its earworm single by the same name.
Now, at age 36 and with his latest of six studio releases on the streets, 2017’s Signs, Lang is, as Muddy Waters once sang, “a man, I’m a full-grown man, I’m a man, I’m a rollin’ stone.”
Jonny Lang will be rollin’ into Grand Rapids to play 20 Monroe Live on Friday, Aug. 10, at 7 p.m. Tickets are still available.
“I got married, had kids, and that arc has been recorded on albums along the way,” Lang describes his life and music, in supplied material. “There is a lot of personal history in there, and also some things that relate to world events.”
With Signs, he says, he is not merely returning to his guitar-based beginnings, but an embodiment of an even more elemental sound. Beyond focusing attention on his soloing prowess, it is about recapturing the spirit of the early blues, where the guitar was front and center, “leaping out of the speakers,” he says.
“A lot of my earlier influences have been coming to the surface, like Robert Johnson, and Howlin’ Wolf,” Lang said in supplied material. “I have been appreciating how raw and unrefined that stuff is. I had an itch to emulate some of that and I think it shows in the songs. Still, I let the writing be what it was and that was sometimes not necessarily the blues. … Some of the songs are autobiographical, but not usually in a literal way.”
Now a year into his living with taking Signs onto the road, some of the songs have made their way into his set lists, most notably “Signs” and “Bring Me Home”, but a scan of his latest concerts on setlist.fm show he looks backwards, forwards and sideways on a nightly basis.
Lang also reportedly breaks out the slide guitar for “Signs” — maybe my favorite single instrument — and blurs a personal story with the strange, strange events of today’s America and world.
“I try to disregard politics as much as I can, but it seems like every day when you wake up there is something else crazy going on — not normal crazy, but more like movie script crazy,” he said in supplied material.
20 Monroe Live is located at 11 Ottawa Avenue NW, in downtown Grand Rapids. Tickets range from $35-$60 and can be purchased at livenation.com .
