He pulls into a West Hollywood hotel looking like a man who's got the blues.There's a guitar slung across one shoulder, an untucked T-shirt hanging over his baggy blue jeans, a bleary look in his eyes. He rubs those eyes, and he yawns. "I've got a  cold," says Jonny Lang, "and I didn't sleep, and I'm miserable."
 He's been on the road for months now--across the United States, over to Europe and  recently on a cross-country jaunt with those veteran bad boys of rock 'n' roll, Aerosmith. So when he says he hasn't slept much lately, you figure he's got some wild   stories he can tell. No doubt he's been hitting the towns with his rock-star pals, doing crazy rock-star things in exotic locations. Locations like . . . "Burbank," he says.
Right. Burbank. All of 20 minutes away, just the other side of the Hollywood Hills. Burbank, where he spent yesterday shooting a special for the Disney Channel, working, he says, for Mickey Mouse.
 In other words, it's not rock 'n' roll excess that has put that fog in Jonny Lang's eyes--it's family entertainment. But then, that shouldn't come as a complete surprise when you consider that this guitar-slinging bluesman is all of 16 years old (he'll turn 17 late this month), with teen-idol blond hair and a touring entourage that at this stop includes his mother and one of his three sisters.
      When you think of the blues, you may think of a grizzled vet like John Lee Hooker singing "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." But Lang, who's years away from legally sampling any of those intoxicants, has brought the blues to an entirely new audience via MTV and pop radio. This is not completely unprecedented: Over the years, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and more recently Robert Cray have all helped bring blues into the mainstream. Lang, however, is at the forefront of a crop of kids (including Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Monster Mike Welch) who are determined to carry the legacy to a different generation. His debut album, Lie to Me (A&M), is nearing the platinum mark, the song of the same name has racked up substantial video and radio play, and Lang shows no signs of stopping: He's been on back-to-back tours, opening for Aerosmith, Blues Traveler and, this month, the Rolling Stones. (Keith Richards, they say, is a fan.)
      "There is no way I would ever have dreamed this," Lang says softly, sitting on the roof deck of the hotel and looking out at the hills, while his manager heads downstairs to fetch him a Coke and a bag of doughnuts. "It's pretty dang cool."
      Lang doesn't like it when people make a fuss about his age, but it's inescapable when you combine his teen-angel looks with the flashy chops and the (seemingly) whiskey-soaked voice of a more mature musician. Maybe you should borrow a phrase from one of Muddy Waters's most famous, and fearsome, songs: Call him a Mannish Boy.
      "I can't help it that I'm 16," Lang says. "I don't personally try to capitalize on that. You know, 'Check this guy out, he's only 16, come see the freak.' "
      He laughs. "I can't help what people think, but I don't treat myself like a novelty act. If I did that, I wouldn't be around for a very long time. 'Cause all of a sudden I'd be 18, and then you wouldn't have the novelty anymore. I'm in it for the long term."
      The long term began when Lang was just a toddler, growing up on a farm in Castleton, North Dakota, near Fargo. His family was musical--his mom, he says, is "an incredible singer," all three of his sisters sing, his father used to play drums in a country band--and his path was clear. "I always knew, ever since I can remember, that I'd be a singer," he says. "I just always knew."
      Exposed to his parents' favorite music, Lang developed a particular passion for Motown, soul and rhythm and blues. "I wanted to be Michael Jackson when I was three," he says with a grin. "I wanted to be Michael Jackson and Mr. T."
      So did he stand in front of the mirror and practice Michael's moves? "Um, yeah, I think so," he says hesitantly. Then he laughs and fesses up. "All the time, actually. Trying to moonwalk." A shrug. "I still cannot do it. I don't get how he does it."
      Lang's musical tastes took a turn at age 12, when he went to see his first concert, given by a local blues band. He loved the show, loved the music--as a Stevie Wonder and James Brown fan, he recognized that the blues was at the heart of their music as well--and decided he wanted to play guitar. He took lessons from Ted Larsen, the guitarist in that band, who immediately informed his pupil that their lessons would be restricted to the blues. Lang, who was also a fan of alternative-rock bands like Stone Temple Pilots, reluctantly agreed. "He basically told me, 'I'm gonna teach you this, or I'm not gonna teach you,' " remembers Lang, who quickly became a passionate fan of masters like B.B. King and Albert Collins.
      What followed was a simple regimen: "Practice. All day. Every day." Within a year, Lang was good enough to be invited to join his teacher's band as a lead singer; within two, after his family moved to Minneapolis, he was recording a demo tape and fielding offers from record companies. He opted for A&M, went into the studio with former Prince sideman David Z and recorded an album that mixes straight blues with more soulful and rocking songs and runs the gamut from new tunes to covers of songs by Sonny Boy Williamson and Ike Turner.
      He also found himself acclaimed by the likes of the late blues veteran Luther Allison and sharing stages with such idols as Buddy Guy and B.B. King--the encounter with the latter being, he says, "probably the thrill of my life.We did 'The Thrill Is Gone,' two other songs. I didn't care what I was playing. I just wanted to take lessons."
      So this is Lang's new life: He plays concerts around the world and sits in with his heroes, while his friends back home sit in high school classrooms. (He left school after the ninth grade but plans to take the GED test and graduate this year.)
      "The road is my favorite thing," he says. "I love the feeling of knowing that nothing is ever planned out for you. Meeting new people all the time, seeing the world, doing what you love to do--I don't think there's anything to complain about."
      Several hours later, Lang takes the stage of the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion, an hour and a half east of Los Angeles, and quickly wins over the Aerosmith crowd. Wearing a red tank top with his guitar slung low, he shakes those locks and spits out squalling blues riffs, all the while shouting out his songs. Those songs are a rock-oriented mixture of styles, rooted in but not wholly dependent on the blues; in fact, the moments when he seems most at home, and most original, are the times when he's least wedded to the blues form.
      "There's Gotta Be a Change," for instance, is his most imaginative arrangement, a funky groove over which he lays some playfully showy guitar licks. Lang stands and listens to his band play a few solos, then leans back, shakes his head and cranks the song into overdrive. As soon as it ends, he tears straight into "Lie to Me," during which, unbeknownst to him, his mother and sister sneak onstage to sing backing vocals. When Lang spots them, he laughs out loud, then turns back to the mike and finishes singing the chorus.
      The performance is energized and enthusiastic--and when you throw in Mom and Sis, it also pretty much sums up Jonny Lang. He's not a novelty act, but he is a novel blend: a little bit of rock 'n' roll, a lot of the blues and a hefty helping of good ol' family entertainment. *