Is 17-year-old Jonny Lang really the heavy dude bluesman in kid's clothing that he's cranked up to be? In the mad media rush to find the next wunderkind, any cocky crooner with a furious guitar finger could be the next big thing, as long as he's cute, white, young, and reasonably talented. Just ask old man Kenny Wayne Shepherd. That Jonny Lang (real name: Jon Langseth) can sing and play is a given. His monotone vocal scowl doesn't sound like a teenager, and his shrapnel-toned guitar-playing is also pretty potent. But when listening to Wander This World, does Lang do the blues any better than, say, Lenny Kravitz? Okay, so that is a cheap shot. But like Kravitz, who can pose as Sly without getting down in the dirt, Jonny Lang lacks the desolate hard knocks attitude that is part and parcel of the blues. Maybe that is a quality that an inexperienced 17-year-old can't possess unless he's grown up hard, fast, and poor. But Lang's overwrought Joe Cockerish vocals and his oddly back-of-the-mix guitar solos sound like overproduced blues cliches. His choice of tunes is forgettable, his props to past blues greats are negligible (aside from a cover of Luther Allison's "Cherry Red Wine"), and his brief guitar leads, which should be his claim to fame, typically meander like a ghost looking for a house to haunt.

You could pose the argument that Lang's success will bring MTV viewers (hey, that's you) streaming in to buy classics by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and maybe help garner new respect for Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray. But it didn't take a 17-year-old blonde to teach Mick Jagger and Keith Richards the blues back in the '60s. They knew Muddy, Howlin' Wolf, and John Lee Hooker were the real deal.

Jonny Lang does have what it takes to sing the blues ("Angel of Mercy" is stone cold scary). Give him 15 years, and he'll be ready to record them, warts, stubble, and all.

-- Ken Micallef