Much has changed in the five years since Jonny Lang released his debut, "Lie to Me."
His onetime lank hair has been sheared to a buzz, his musical chops continue to progress and inspire dropped jaws and he's a few weeks settled into married life. Oh, and he turned 20 in January.
Feeling ancient yet?

Lang, born in Minneapolis, reared in Fargo, N.D., and now burrowed in Los Angeles with new wife Haylie, is the type of musician whom other musicians love to slap on the back with pride. He's a blues guitarist with no concern for his age. Listen to him anonymously and see which names pop to mind - B.B. King? Luther Allison? Eric Clapton? Stevie Ray Vaughan?
All would be understandable guesses, because Lang is simply that good.

After the success of "Lie to Me" and its blues-funk-rock 1998 follow-up, "Wander This World," Lang took to the road - and he really hasn't left it much since.
Calling this week from a tour stop in Iowa, Lang is polite and still boyish, excitedly working in the news about his recent knot-tying and expressing voice-dropping remorse at the loss of one of his guitar idols, John Lee Hooker.
"I met him once," Lang says of Hooker. "I had a cool personal moment with him at a photo shoot. He had his guitar there - it was a Gibson 335 - and I looked at it and said, 'That's a great guitar.' He said, 'Carlos Santana gave it to me. You can play it if you want.' So I picked it up, and just to be funny, started playing 'Boom Boom.' He started singing, I started freaking and I stopped. But he said, 'No, no, keep playing.' It was just very cool."
Lang is the type of music fan who pulls out a record and listens to only that record for a month, gets tired of it and puts it back for a long, long time. He isn't listening to anything in particular now, except James Taylor and Stevie Wonder, who are always with him. He's also, as one might suspect, not a big radio fan, but not because of the music.
"I cannot stand the stuff in between the music, all of that Max Headroom noise," he says. As if Lang is even old enough to remember Headroom's New Coke commercials from the '80s.
Though it's been three years since his last album, Lang has been anything but idle.

Last year he played on a handful of tracks on Hanson's underappreciated "This Time Around" album ("I was flattered they asked me. Those guys are way into music for all of the right reasons," he says) and also on Willie Nelson's "Milk Cow Blues." In May, he appeared with John Mayall on the "John Mayall & Friends: Along for the Ride" album.
As for his own next foray, Lang is working with producer Marti Frederiksen, who recently assisted on Aerosmith's "Just Push Play," for an album planned for January.
"We've got four songs done, with six more to go," Lang says. "Some of it's a little more rock. It's a lot different than the last two, but I can't really explain it. We're recording it in Marti's garage and it's just us playing on it. It's more of a free-form recording process."
In addition to his guitar slinging, Lang plays piano on one tune. The verdict? "That's the good thing about studios. You don't have to be that good because you can fix it," he says with a laugh.
Lang will remain on the road sporadically through September, when he returns home to California and resumes work on the album.

Such an impressive work ethic - for someone who can't yet even legally buy a beer.