Well, I don't know really how to start off saying in this article what i want to say, but I'll try my hardest anyway.
Jonny Lang is, to me, what a father is to a child. Let me start here... I have been a guitar player since I was the age of four. I played a lot of oldies...mostly Buddy Holly and a lot of that older stuff because that's what my father had gotten me into. Then one day we were at Iron World(Minnesota), and we were just bumming around, looking at all of the different stuff, when we heard that there was a concert going on. I actually didn't want to go to it all that badly...I was crying and screaming for some reason but I don't exactly remember why. We went. and there was the new teen sensation blues guitar player/singer Kid Jonny Lang and his then-band The Big Bang.I went through it and was changed at the age of nine years old. Something went through me during that concert. I'll never forget the way it felt when i saw the look on his face when he came into the bleachers and stood right in front of me. And he looked at me and smiled as he was playing his awesome riffs. I knew right at that point what I wanted to do. I wanted to make people feel the same way he made me feel that day. And I wanted to go home and tell everybody what this teen-age boy had done to me.
I worked on it day and night...night and day. I loved his music and I have not to this day ( about 6 years later) stopped listening to his music nor have I stopped playing the blues. I am only getting steadily better with time. I owe all of this to Jonny, and I owe my Blues and my musical life to him. If I ever saw him. I'd just say thanks to him. He is the reason I play the guitar now. and I have been brought to many other successful blues people because of him.Stevie ray Vaughan...Buddy Guy, B.B King...and a newer teen-blues sensation Shannon Curfman, Who i might add...is a wonderful musician.

Ryan Verthein