Batiste Legacy Session with Kenny Neal

Born into the very soil of the blues, Kenny Neal is one of the most compelling voices in modern Louisiana music — a second-generation Baton Rouge bluesman who learned the art at his father's knee and carries it forward with searing originality. When he takes the stage, the bayou breathes.

Kenny's father, harpist Raful Neal, was a titan of the Baton Rouge blues scene, rubbing shoulders with legends like Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo — who handed a three-year-old Kenny his first harmonica. By 13, Kenny was playing in his father's band. By 17, Buddy Guy had hired him as his bassist. The education doesn't get more authentic than that.

After a formative stretch leading the Neal Brothers Blues Band in Toronto and a celebrated signing to Alligator Records in 1988, Neal became one of the defining figures in swamp blues — the groove-heavy, humid, deeply soulful sound that belongs to southern Louisiana like no other place on earth. He cut four acclaimed albums for Alligator through the early '90s and even brought the blues to Broadway in 1991, performing acoustic settings of Langston Hughes' poetry alongside Taj Mahal in Mule Bone.

For one intimate evening as part of the Batiste Legacy Sessions, experience the raw electricity of live swamp blues in the room where it belongs — close enough to feel the slide of the guitar string, the cry of the harmonica, the rhythms of a tradition as deep as the Mississippi itself.