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Jonny Lang
Bringing new blood to a timeless style, Jonny Lang is one of the leading lights of the wave of young bluesmen to emerge in the '90s. He was leading a hard-touring blues band at the age of 14, had a major record deal by 15, opened shows for the Rolling Stones at 17, and was recently nominated for a Grammy Award - at 19!
He's appeared in a film (Blues Brothers 2000), opened shows for Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and blues legend B.B. King, and also headlined around the world. He swept the category for Best New Guitarist in Guitar magazine's readers' poll in '97 (the year his major label debut was released), and was named to Newsweek's Century Club of the 100 Americans expected to be influential in the next millennium.
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Not bad for a kid from Fargo, North Dakota! That's where the Jonny Lang story begins.
Lang's prodigious musical career owes a lot to an extremely supportive family.
Like a lot of teen success stories, his prodigious musical career owes a lot to an extremely supportive family. Both of his parents are musically inclined and passed on as much as they could to Jonny. "I have great parents," he says. "They've had an important impact on everything I'm doing today. My dad used to play drums in a country band, and my mom is an incredible singer. When I was younger, she went down to Nashville and made some demos and tried to get into [a career], but never really did - she had four kids to raise!
"My parents had a huge pile of records - vinyl! - that I loved, especially the Motown stuff, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding. I always knew I wanted to be a musician. My dad was good friends with the Bad Medicine Blues Band - one of the only blues bands in Fargo, as you can imagine! He took me out to see them play when I was 12 years old and I was really inspired by their guitar player, Ted Larsen. I was playing sax at the time, but when I saw him playing guitar it just struck a chord inside of me - ouch, that was a cheesy joke! - but it just invigorated me and I loved it. My dad got me a guitar for my 13th birthday and I took lessons from Ted for about three months. Then about a year after I'd first seen them, they asked me to join."
Didn't his age ever cause problems?
It's practically a Frankenstein story: not only was he leading the band at 13, but, "eventually they figured that because I was the lead singer they'd rename the band, so we became Kid Jonny Lang and the Big Bang." Over the next three years, they played literally hundreds of gigs around the upper Midwest, giving Jonny more hard-boiled road experience than many musicians twice his age, and in places that wouldn't have let him through the door were he not holding a guitar. Didn't his age ever cause problems? "No, not at all. I don't think they really minded if you were performing. I remember my dad always had to be there when I was 13 or 14, but after that they didn't really care."
Jonny, his family and the band relocated to Minneapolis when he was 15, and shortly after, the group released their first album, Smokin', in 1995. They put out the album on a small local record label, and it took off - eventually selling 25,000 copies, a phenomenal amount for a small independent release - and soon, the big labels came knocking. Jonny signed with A&M Records in 1996, and released his second album, Lie To Me, the following year. The album debuted at #1 on Billboard's New Artist chart.
While he was working hard before, the excitement and pressure of the major record deal "definitely changed things," he says. "It tightened my focus on business matters and scheduling and things like that, and I also see how important it is to have my records played on the radio - on a smaller label that's not as much of a big deal. It was also a great learning experience for me, in terms of [learning more about] the world - getting to see how people act when they're trying to kiss your butt, as opposed to when they're really truly cool people. It really broadened my intuition of people, I think."
Jonny also has to be on top of every business aspect of his career, as well. "...it doesn't seem like work to me at all, because I know it's all contributing to what I love doing..."
As if it isn't difficult enough to be a performer, creator, and recording artist, Jonny also has to be on top of every business aspect of his career, as well. "My state of mind was always very serious about [my career] -- I've been full-bore with it ever since I started. I've always had a place inside me that's been purely 'take it or leave it, if you're gonna do it, do it all the way.' I have a few great people that handle [management and other business] stuff for me - my manager James has been with me since a few weeks before I got my record deal, and my dad was our road manager until two years ago - but I always stay apprised of all that stuff, because it just makes me sleep better. But it doesn't seem like work to me at all, because I know it's all contributing to what I love doing, and what I've always want to do, so it never seems like a hassle."
Although the music half of songwriting comes pretty easily to Jonny, the lyric half doesn't. "I have way too many songs that have music but don't have lyrics," he laughs. "I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that. But maybe it can be a learned thing. Sometimes I'll get a burst when I write lyrics, it usually happens in 20 minutes and I'll write the whole song, and that's really the only way it feels comfortable."
His most recent album, Wander This World, found his music branching out stylistically, away from straight-up blues and into more R&B-flavored terrain. "That's always been the stuff I really loved to sing, and it's a little easier for me and I have more fun doing it," he says. "But I don't know if I'm gonna stick toward that side of things. I think the next record's gonna be pretty different. I really don't know which direction - I've been writing some different stuff, I don't know what you'd call it, it's kinda folky rock but has soul music in it too. I don't know what it's going to come out like!"
"I think you have to know exactly what you want. . . after that, your parents' support is absolutely the most important thing.."
When you've done as much in as short a time as Jonny Lang has, you probably wonder what the next five years could possibly have in store. Asked if there's anything he wishes he'd learned earlier, Jonny answers with a resounding "NO! I'm glad I didn't know certain things earlier, because then it wouldn't be any fun. I think my favorite thing is the mystery of life - it makes you feel that much better about accomplishing something. I'm glad I've learned what I've learned when I learned it."
And as for advice for budding fellow musicians and songwriters, he just says, "I think you have to know exactly what you want. Whether you want to be a guitar player or a musician, you have to be really focused on it if you really want to do it. And after that, your parents' support is absolutely the most important thing: without it, there's really nothing you can do before you're 18. I see a lot of parents now who are really supporting their kids playing music."
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