Kenny Wayne Shepherd was still in high school when he recorded most of “Ledbetter Heights,” the 1995 album that introduced a 17-year-old guitarist from Shreveport, Louisiana, to a national audience during grunge’s reign on rock radio. Signed at 16 by music executive Irving Azoff, Shepherd traveled between Louisiana and Memphis, Tennessee, for recording sessions while balancing school with a career that would soon take him around the world.
Thirty years later, Shepherd is returning to those songs with little interest in rewriting what worked the first time. His “Ledbetter Heights 30th Anniversary Tour” comes to Durham’s Carolina Theater on Wednesday and Knight Theater in Charlotte on Sunday. The shows follow the May release of “Ledbetter Heights (The 30th Anniversary Sessions),” a new recording of the 12 songs from his debut. “If I had felt like we got some things wrong with that record, then you’d hear a lot of big, huge differences between the two,” Shepherd told North State Journal. “But I didn’t feel the need to go back and reinvent it.”
The biggest change came with “Riverside,” the one song on the original album featuring Shepherd on lead vocals. Producer David Z brought it to him late in the original sessions, when Shepherd was still uncomfortable singing…