Lang’s Powerful Playing Not Matched by Emotion

Jonny Lang sings the blues without tears. The 18-year-old guitarist is a formidable player, with the energy and desire to make the blues his own. But for all his stomping and emoting at the Wiltern Theatre on Tuesday, Lang too often failed to make a real emotional connection with his material and his audience.

Lang is another prodigy from the Stevie Ray Vaughan school of Texas blues. And while his playing chops are powerful, he wisely resisted any urge on Tuesday to show off for its own sake. Backed by an able four-piece band, Lang kept things focused and tight.

He opened with his high-powered rock radio hit, “Still Rainin’,” giving it his knee-buckling all as he groaned into the microphone, though somehow without enough wind to fill the room in a satisfying way. The intense, humid atmosphere of a club would seem more appropriate to his current repertoire.

Lang writes little of his own material, though his tear-jerker “Walking Away” (written with Jerry Lynn Williams) showed real feeling and promise. Unfortunately, other mid-tempo songs performed at the Wiltern seemed strangely conservative for so young an artist.

Even his hero Vaughan recorded with the likes of David Bowie and surf king Dick Dale. The blues is where it all started, but it’s not where it needs to end.