At the tender age of 15, Jonny Lang was plucked from his Minneapolis
home,
hailed as a blues guitar prodigy by a record company marketing machine,
and
sent across the country to play 200 dates a year, often in bars he
wouldn't
be allowed in if he weren't the entertainment.

In a business where youth is masticated for all its juices, it would be
easy
to feel a tad worried for little Jonny Lang.

Young entertainers who are constantly told what geniuses they are by
sycophants and toadies tend to transform into egomaniacal monsters
devoid of
the skills to navigate adulthood.

But Lang, performing Thurs-day at the Embassy Theatre, isn't so young
anymore. He turned 19 in January.

He has emerged a little jaded but relatively unscathed from the
hypeicane. He
frequently laughs in the midst of sentences, overcome by the absurdity
of
discussing himself, and he has developed a finely calibrated B.S.
detector.

He says he's a little more seasoned than he was four years ago, but
he's by
no means a music industry vet.

"I guess when you get to the point of seeing all the corruptive sides
of the
music business, that's sort of indicative of having been in there a
while.
I've seen most things go down. But I'm not a veteran." Lang has
retained a
humility about his talents and his place in music history that is as
surprising as it is admirable. One of Lang's favorite stories is a good
illustration. "This little guy came up to me after a show -- he had to
be
like 7 or 8 years old -- and he said, `I went out and bought a B.B.
King
album and I like it better than yours.' " Lang howls with laughter.
Lang
worships King. And despite the fact that Lang has a lifetime to
improve, he
says he will never be as good a blues guitar player as B.B. King.
"(King) was
nice enough to let me get up and play with him a couple times. It was
great.
It wasn't about playing guitar at all, and that was just the coolest
realization. It was about, this is how musicians should treat each
other on
and off the stage. He's such a good guy. I feel embarrassed being
around him.
He's just a beacon of light." Lang loves it when fans like that little
boy
are able to break through the press-kit superlatives and see that he's
just a
guy who loves music and works hard at it. Not someone whose name should
be
mentioned in the same breath as, or even in lieu of, the legends of the
blues. Lang says he frequently is reminded of how much he has to learn.
He
freely, even proudly, admits that backing musician Paul Diethelm is a
much
better guitarist than he is. "I have always kind of played with
musicians who
kicked my butt." Asked if he's ever had an emerald-with-envy blues ax
fanatic
come up to him and say, "I'm better than you are," Lang responds:
"Isn't that
what the Grammies are all about? Not for me personally, but . . . well,
let's
skip that one." It's hard, Lang believes, for listeners to see the
musician
for who he really is through the haze of sales patter. "It's never
about who
you are as a person. It just isn't. I don't see that changing in my
lifetime,
which is sad. "The people who listen to the music, they like to guess
who you
are, who you might be. It's sort of a game, trying guess who's behind
all the
marketing. They (record companies) don't focus enough on who you really
are
because other things sell so much easier." Lang's goal of having as
many
people as possible listen to his music runs contrary to other
instincts.
"Unfortunately, to get a massive amount of people to listen, you have
to make
a pact with a huge money machine. There's a real weird war going on
inside
myself. I'm having trouble sorting it all out -- if it's wrong or
right.
Whatever. It's that way for lots of artists. "Especially now. It's
getting so
ridiculous. All these mergers. Twenty years from now, it's all going to
be
one corporation." Lang laughs again. "I hope the president of my record
company doesn't read this article." One of the ways Lang has managed to
keep
such a level head is by maintaining strong ties to his family. In the
early
days (meaning a couple of years ago), he always traveled with one or
more of
his parents. Lately, however, he has been on his own, and he's not
entirely
comfortable with it. His dad is traveling with him on this tour. Dad's
the
manager of opening act The Keller Brothers out of Fargo, N.D., Lang's
birthplace. Unlike many young men his age, especially young men who
have
accomplished as much as he has, Lang has nothing but praise for his
parents.
"My parents have always been so incredibly supportive. I mean, I try to
see
myself as a dad, and I don't know how I could deal with what my dad
dealt
with, or my mom. That's incredible faith in your child just to say,
`OK, if
you want to do this, you have to do it 100 percent.' To trust your
kid's
sense of what he wants like that." When he looks back at the last
handful of
nomadic years, Lang says he sometimes wishes he'd had a little more
time to
hang out with friends and be less purposeful, but a stronger impulse
dominates. "Man, I go home for three days and I just go stir crazy."
Lang
loves to perform. He says he treats every show as a practice, trying to
get
better every night. "You can learn a lot if you set your mind in that
mode,
paying attention to the things you did before and building on those."
Lang's
fans are multi-generational, but Lang -- like all teen icons,
regardless of
genre -- does tend to attract a few of those archetypal screaming
teenyboppers. Lang is flattered by such pogo-sticking swooners, but he
says
they tend not to know or care very much about the music. They're
responding
to surface rather than substance. Lang sounds sincere when he says he
is much
more pleased when he makes converts to the blues cause. "Some places
are like
that. Most of the time, though, it's pretty . . . I don't know what to
call
the response little girls have. It's pretty real for the most part, not
just
meltdown. "I think by the end of show, if they didn't come in with a
real
appreciation for the music, they leave with it. I love to catch them
with
their eyes closed swaying back and forth." For now, Lang says, the
swaying is
satisfaction enough. Lang doesn't think too far in the future. He says
he's
not sure he can envision himself still playing the blues when he's an
octogenarian. "I don't know, man. I'm keeping my options open. When I'm
80,
maybe I'll be retired and living on a golf course or something." He
says he
wants to keep branching out. On disc, this has meant forays into soul
and
funk. In life, who knows? Maybe a wife and kids. "It's kind of funny.
That
kind of instinct has been popping in my head these days. But not any
time
soon. Not with what I do."
Blues show