Kenny Wayne Shepherdoriginally from Louisiana, at the age of seven discovered the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan and replaced the plastic guitar he had played with since childhood with a cheap Yamaha on which he began practising as a self-taught musician. The boy showed such perseverance and talent that at the age of thirteen he was invited to perform on stage by blues musician Bryan Lee. Soon afterwards, he started playing at various festivals, getting noticed by Irving Azoffhead of Giant Records, who offered him a contract. Starting in 1995, Shepherd released seven singles that entered the US Top 10, earned five Grammy Award nominations and won two Billboard Music Awards, two Blues Music Awards and two Orville H. Gibson Awards. In 2007, the acclaimed "10 Days Out: Blues From The Backroads" (Reprise Records), a CD and DVD set documenting Shepherd's journey across America to meet legendary bluesmen such as B.B. King, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Cootie Shark; the work won two Grammy Awards nominations and a platinum disc in the USA. Further confirmation of the bluesman's talent came from the well-known guitar brand Fender, which in 2008 launched the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Signature Series Stratocastera model designed by Shepherd himself.