If you go
› What: Jonny Lang in concert.› When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6.› Where: Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St.› Admission: $37.50-$64.50, plus convenience fees.› Phone: 1-800-514-3849.› Venue website: ChattanoogaOnStage.com.› Artist website: jonnylang.com.
Considering he grew up two hours from the Canadian border on a farm outside Fargo, N.D., the only blues you might expect Jonny Lang to have been exposed to was on the tinted lips of wintertime skinny dippers.
But under the tutelage of his guitar instructor, he says, his 12-year-old self fell fiercely in love with the blues by studying the music of breakout artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins.
"A friend of my father's, Ted Larsen, told me he'd teach me to play guitar if he could teach the blues and nothing else," Lang says in an interview he conducted with Guitar.com. "I was a blues snob at 13 years old. For me, it was a trendy thing, just like wearing baggy pants.
"But I was totally open to it, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. In fact, as time went on I got to be a pretty hard-core purist, a jerk for a while, actually, because I wouldn't listen to anything else."
After conquering his local scene, Lang eventually moved with his father to Minneapolis, where he began gigging as a teenager. There, he was spotted by a representative of A&M Records, with whom he was signed in the mid-'90s. His major-label debut, 1997's "Lie to Me," achieved platinum certification for 1 million sales in 1998 from the Recording Industry Association of America.
"Like peers Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Chris Duarte, Jonny Lang is a technically gifted blues guitarist, capable of spitting out accomplished licks and riffs at an astonishingly rapid rate, which he indeed boasts on 'Lie to Me,'" wrote Stephen Thomas Erlewine in a review of Lang's debut record for AllMusic.com.
Lang received his second platinum certificate in 2000 for his next A&M release "Wander the World." Now boasting a catalog of six albums, Lang's is a familiar name on the Billboard charts, where five of his releases have broken into the Top 50 of the Billboard 200.
On Saturday, Feb. 6, Lang will make his way to Chattanooga to play the Tivoli Theatre as part of a mini-tour of the Southeast.
Hayley Graham, who describes herself as a "huge Jonny Lang" fan, says she first saw him play at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. He was still 16 and a textbook musical prodigy, and Graham says he was already singing like a much more experienced musician.
"I had seen him on a Disney Channel concert, and my dad and I were blown away by this kid, influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, that shredded the guitar and sang like an old, weathered blues man," she says. "I was totally in awe, and I have been ever since. I've tried to catch him every opportunity I could."
"I'm extremely excited for him to be here. Watching this skinny white guy from North Dakota get up onstage with this amazing gift is just magical to watch for me. I've loved every chance I've gotten to witness it."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.