Some creative streaks are so hot, they can’t be satisfied by one album alone. In a rare career first for a multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated global superstar who has seen and done it all, Kenny Wayne Shepherd is set to release Part II of his Dirt On My Diamonds vision.

With the acclaimed Dirt On My Diamonds Vol 1 released only last November, Shepherd’s fans are still poring over that first slug of stellar material (“There’s no denying the impact,” wrote Classic Rock, “when he lets the blues off the leash”). But the Louisiana-born bandleader always had a bigger plan. Holding back a second set of songs birthed at the same writing sessions at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, he now presents a follow-up record that is a very different animal, with shared DNA.

“When I started writing all of these songs, I started to see two individual identities emerge,” explains Shepherd of Dirt On My Diamonds Vol 2, released 20th September on Mascot/Provogue Records. “You’ll hear the same spirit across both albums, but the songs, sounds and grooves are very different. Because of the way that people live and consume music now, we decided to stagger the releases – but it’s essentially a double album. We had creative momentum on our side, so we just wanted to keep it rolling.”

The truth is that Shepherd hasn’t stopped rolling since his first release, Ledbetter Heights. Born and raised in North Louisiana – and steeped in classic blues and rock ‘n’ roll by his radio-personality dad – his vocabulary took in Muddy Waters, Albert King, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The road became Shepherd’s classroom, and the back of the van his world, as he worked the circuit and wowed audiences at clubs that couldn’t legally serve him a beer. And after footage of the still-teenage guitarist tearing up a local festival made its way to Giant Records founder Irving Azoff, Shepherd found himself inking a multi-album deal with the Warner Brothers subsidiary. In 1995, Ledbetter Heights opened his studio account in style, followed by 1997’s Trouble Is… writing such startlingly mature hits as Blue On Black (62 million streams and counting). “It was vindication,” he says today.

As the millennium turned, there was no stopping Shepherd, who pinballed from 1999’s Live On to 2004’s The Place You’re In, before standing shoulder-to-shoulder with greats like B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin and Pinetop Perkins on 2007’s Grammy-nominated album/documentary Ten Days Out: Blues From The Backroads. “I always felt like I owed it to the great blues artists that came before me and the impact they had on me,” he says, “because otherwise you’re doing them a disservice.”

Twice in the past decade, he has ducked out for albums with his blues-rock supergroup The Rides (cofounded with Stephen Stills and Barry Goldberg). But Shepherd’s solo career has always been the main event, and having worked with Marshall Altman on 2017’s Lay It On Down and 2019’s The Traveler, the bandleader turned to him again to help to capture the “fresh, modern and current vibes” of the two-part Dirt On My Diamonds project.