10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads

It must have been great fun and an honor for Kenny Wayne Shepherd to work with all these blues legends. Too bad it's just an album with subpar versions of well known blues classics you can find on an abundance of compilations in better shape. It's nice to hear B.B. King, but as most of the contributors, he is var from his magnificent shape years ago. In the end it is ok as an album and nothing more.

Listening to the blues at this point feels to be approaching the territory of something like listening to chamber music; it may be a fine and traditioned thing but you're not likely to hear anything new. Of course not everything needs to be new. This was very good for what it was, and of course had a deep roster of featured singers and players. Just solid blues.

I appreciate the music but think this is more of a compilation of aged Blues Legends accompanied by some bloke I've not heard about than aything else. Why not have an album by one of the greats in their prime?

I'd never heard of this! Now I need to figure out where to watch the film. It sounds fascinating!

Lovely blues album

Blues baby.

Well I'll be damned. I thought this was going to be a chore - an overly long blues album. But this took me by surprise. Perhaps it helped that I have no real connection with the genre and therefore only knew very few of the songs, but this felt like a nice greatest hits record. A glaring omission is Hank Doyle with 'Me and the Blues'.

Excellent album. Would listen to again.

a very tasty album of blues songs and standards.

Sounds like it's from about 50 years earlier than it actually came out. Really shows the influence of the blues on country, and vice versa, and I really liked it. Thanks for the suggestion

The Blues isn’t something I seek out and I approached this like I would a book assignment in high school English class. I looked around a bit for the associated movie, but couldn’t find it anywhere without paying so I started up the audio. I have to say that like a lot of those high school book assignments, once I got into this I really enjoyed it. A great way to hear a lot of blues with great audio quality. That hour+ runtime flew by and I’m glad to have listened to this.

A pretty rousing album. Ya love to hear the crowd totally grooving with along with the energy of the musicians.

Good blues! More good, Wikipedia-ing this guy led me to a blues supergroup he was in with Stephen Stills. Badass

Pristine and pleasurable to hear (as far as the blues can be), though by-the-book renditions of blues standards and classics. And good to be intro'd to a few artists one didn't know (or not very well anyway). But is it really a KWS record or are compliations like this a bit of a cheat code? One assumes the recommender was trying to just increase the volume of blues within this project. Honestly, thought, one would prefer a record by Cootie or Pinetop or ... still, rounding up because this record's heart (and that of the recommender) is in the right place.

ok some late 2000s blues. This guy has chops. Its absolutely dance club and bigger venue blues. This was enjoyable!

Favorite songs: The Thrill is Gone, Born in Louisiana, Prison Blues, Tina Marie, Chapel Hill Boogie, Spoonful, Grindin' Man Least favorite songs: Honky Tonk 4/5

I went through a big blues phase in my early twenties, but since then I haven't listened much. So this was really good to refresh my love of the blues. Really strong stuff. 4 stars.

Unique and terrific sound. Cool collabs, outside my comfort zone but a solid addition to the list

I never really felt the blues myself, but I was quite intrigued by the concept of 10 Days Out. There are some mighty legends on this record, and I’m sure that I would have enjoyed the film even more - it must have been a thrilling ride producing this. The record? Just another blues record - albeit with some crazy features throughout.

Not as bad as I feared but absolutely too long

Hour-long blues digression

Basically what it says it is. I dunno, it's ok. 3/5.

This just felt a little strange to me. Going around and playing with blues legends is fine and all, but the main artist doesn’t really make an impression. It’s sort of just a compilation of blues musicians playing some of their best songs live. I enjoyed it. I think it’s an odd pick. 3/5

Blues rock. Le iba a poner un 4 pero al final me ha aburrido. Ni fu ni fa.

Bleh

Yep, it's a very good collaborative blues album, also documented through a film documentary that is probably a blast to watch, apparently. The sound is authentic, grassroots, sincere, heartfelt, you name it. "Honky Tonk" is a terrific acoustic cut, to take one example from a small group of highlights. Not sure what the project brings that would be pivotal to the overall genre, though -- even if I'm not a world expert, admittedly. Yeah, the cast is stellar. But it also points to the derivative nature of the whole accomplishment. Like, how many times do we have to hear the same frigging chord progression all over again? Case in point: the second track. Select key Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, BB King or Junior Wells albums and be done with it. Of course, you could probably say the same sort of thing about the two or three dozens of post-punk albums on my own list -- although they do harbor very different chord progressions from one LP to the next, mind you. Guess that subjective tastes have got to play a part at some point in the endeavor that gathers all here. 🤷 No shading on the sincere user who suggested this album, I hope. 3/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 8/10 for more general purposes (5 + 3) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 52 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 70 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 125 (including this one). --- Hey, Émile. Tu as déjà dû voir ma dernière réponse sous la review de *Young, Loud And Snotty* des Dead Boys ! J'essaie d'écrire la mienne bientôt

Not a big blues guy so I enjoyed the breadth you had with this record. Well worth the listen.

Love unappologetic country music

My first thought about this record is that it seems odd to call this a Kenny Wayne Shepard record when he’s not the vocalist or star performer on these songs. So when I went to allmusic.com to read their review, and they concurred, I cracked up a little. Here’s the opening sentence of their review: “10 Days Out may well be Kenny Wayne Shepherd's most important and intriguing album, even though the guitarist is hardly the featured artist on any of these tracks, working instead more as a sideman and facilitator for the impressive cast of venerable blues players who get a chance to shine here.” A bit of a back-handed compliment, no? The most important and intriguing record of Kenny Wayne Shepard’s career is one where he is not the focus? Ouch. I get their point, though. This record is more of an attempt to record and preserve the history of the blues and of the players featured on it, rather than a spotlight for Kenny Wayne Shepard. Fair enough. In that regard, it succeeds. The songs and performances are all fantastic. If you are into the Blues, I suspect this could be an important record - I don’t know for sure, though: I’m not really in tune with the intricacies of that musical scene and, maybe more importantly, Kenny Wayne Shepard’s status within it. So yeah, it was enjoyable for a blues outsider such as myself, but with in the realm of “must-hear” blues records, I’m not the person to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. I did enjoy the version of “The Thrill is Gone” included here - it was nice to hear a different take on the song than I’m used to. The band was cooking on that one, damn.

I wouldn't have minded some actual Kenny Wayne Shepherd on the list somewhere as I think his stuff is generally better than lots of the modern country offerings we've been given but 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads isn't the best way to bring him to wider attention. The concept is really good, bring a bunch of Blues legends together and do some classics with a bit of modern but stripped back production, and it's certainly nice enough to listen to, but they're not as good as the originals in any instance and it just lacks something that elevates it above a tribute act. 3/5, easy and gentle listen, but KWS is basically a logistics dude here, not the artist, and it's a compilation of merely okay.

Blues songs kind of sound the same to me but this was fine.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: The thrill is gone

Just an odd pick for the list all-around – Shepard inserts himself into some classics played by the all-time greats as a documentary soundtrack of sorts? Way better comps and actual blues LPs missing from the list that deserve an add. Not that this is a bad album per se, the greats are the greats for a reason, but this isn’t an artistic statement really - just a collection of tracks around a common theme produced as a byproduct of a film.

Interesting backstory that absolutely makes this a piece of musical history, but I'm also never really in the mood to listen to 50 minutes of worse and noodlier versions of blues classics. Cool submission though.

Jag gillar inte blues.

I love me a country album, but an hour and 22 minutes was a little intimidating. Also didn’t really stand out as anything more than country I’m sorry to say.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd, modern blues bigtimer, saw the writing on the wall back in the mid-2000s and realized that many pioneering blues legends would likely not be around for much longer. Leveraging his clout at the time, he organized a series of jams with a number of these blues oldtimers (most notably B.B. King) a recorded them over the course of 10 days. Shepherd also interviewed these legends for a DVD of the same name, but I'll only be listening to the album. 10 Days Out is a long, true-blues album. I recognize the desire to immortalize these great musicians on a single album, but the fact of the matter is that blues doesn't really have the same power that it did in the early-to-mid 20th century. So while listening to a blues album from 2007 is nice and all, I would much prefer to hear the classics in their original recordings. I do not think a blues revival will ever catch on as long as rock music still prevails, unfortunately. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: The list could use some more blues but I don't think this album would be a good fit.