Kenny Neal can’t say for sure which was the first instrument he ever played. It seems to him he’s always been a musician — growing up in Baton Rouge, La., he was surrounded by instruments and the people who played them. One childhood memory stands out: repeatedly taking his father’s guitar out of its case and plucking the strings. “We weren’t supposed to touch it,” Neal says, “But we did anyway.”

Neal learned the blues from his father, harmonicist Raful Neal, who played regularly with Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo. When Raful performed with his band, the Clouds, young Kenny tagged along as a backup singer and dancer.

“That was the time of my life,” he says, “jumping in the car and going to play some blues with my daddy.” Their relationship reminds Neal of the characters Andy and Opie on The Andy Griffith Show, which aired in the ’60s. “They went fishing all the time,” Neal says. “Me and my daddy went bluesin’.”

Neal started his music career at 17, playing bass for Buddy Guy. In 1988, Neal released his first solo album, Big News From Baton Rouge!! Since then, he has recorded 15 more, the most recent in 2022. His career has taken him to venues across the world. On Wednesday, July 9, Neal will perform under the Payomet tent with the support of his band, which includes his younger brothers Frederick and Darnell on guitar and bass respectively, Michael Harris on drums, Tom Fitzpatrick on saxophone, and Jimmie Reamey on trumpet. Neal is the lead vocalist. He also plays guitar — a now-weathered 1968 Telecaster that he’s had for 40 years — and dabbles in harmonica, lap steel guitar, and bass.

Neal, who still lives in Baton Rouge, plays the “swamp blues.” The style is a mixture of Cajun, Zydeco, New Orleans, and Mississippi Delta, he says. The result: a horn-heavy, funky, jazzy, groovy “gumbo” of sound that seems to require head-bopping if not outright dancing.

“A lot of the old blues songs are always crying, ‘My baby gone and left me, and I’m all alone,’ ” Neal says. As a songwriter, he tries to deliver a more positive message, like in “Let Life Flow,” recently re-released as a single after he first recorded it in 2005. “Just when you think you got it all figured out,” Neal sings in a gravelly, conversational voice, “here comes something you never dreamed about. Life is so unpredictable. That’s the way it is. But one thing I know for sure: you got to let life flow.”

Neal also often sings of the generational aspect of the blues. The final track on his Grammy-nominated 2016 album, Bloodline, is called “Thank You BB King.” The blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, who died in 2015, was one of Neal’s close friends.

“He paved the way for all of us,” Neal says. King is mentioned in Straight From the Heart, Neal’s 2022 album, as well. “Don’t touch a string until you listen to some BB King,” Neal advises prospective blues players in “Mount Up on the Wings of the King.”

Honoring the past is especially apparent in the title track of Bloodline. The song starts with Neal wailing on a harmonica. Then he starts to sing, his deep voice a sharp contrast to the nasal wind instrument.

“Down in Louisiana, where the blues bloodline run deep,” Neal sings, “Grandpa was a preacher — apple don’t fall far from the tree. Daddy sang the blues, and the bloodline run through me.” The song has a gritty, down-to-earth feeling intensified by the power of its lyrics.

When Neal plays the blues, he might interpret an old song in his own way, he says. He covers Junior Parker’s 1962 “Someone Somewhere” on Straight From the Heart. Neal “enhanced the song with big horns,” he says, but he kept its original feeling.

“I kept the ingredients of the roux,” Neal says. A roux is a thickening agent made of equal parts flour and fat, often used in Cajun food. “Every time you cook,” he says, “the roux is made of the same ingredients. But then you can expand from that and make it your own by adding stuff to it. That’s what I do with my music.”

His music has resonated with audiences around the world, Neal says. “Even if they don’t speak the language, they understand the music. They can feel it.” That’s what he loves about the blues, he says. “It’s what makes it worthwhile.”

In the second stanza of “Bloodline,” Neal sings, “Grandpa died, Daddy gone. Now I’m here to carry on bloodlines.” His music is imbued with the history of the blues; his passion speaks to the next generation of music makers. Neal puts it plainly: “You’ve got to know where you come from before you know where you’re going.”

 

Roots and Roux

The event: Kenny Neal performs the blues
The time: Wednesday, July 9, 7 p.m.
The place: Payomet Performing Arts Center, 29 Old Dewline Road, North Truro
The cost: $20 to $40 at tickets.payomet.org