In a Minneapolis dive bar in the mid-1990s, a 14-year-old who looked like a high school freshman stepped on stage and sang with the gritty, weathered voice of a 50-year-old blues veteran. Record executives who had flown across the country to see him signed him on the spot. Jonny Lang, born John Gordon Langseth Jr. in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1981, picked up the guitar at 12, took lessons from Ted Larsen of the local Bad Medicine Blues Band, and within months had joined the group, which was renamed Kid Jonny Lang and the Big Bang. By 14 he had relocated to Minneapolis and released the independent album Smokin’, and in 1996 A&M Records came calling.

This episode traces the multi-platinum run of Lie to Me in 1997 and the Grammy-nominated Wander This World in 1998, his cameo in Blues Brothers 2000, and his 1999 White House performance for President Bill Clinton. It then follows the pivot that could have ended his career: a sudden conversion to Christianity in 2000, after years of hostility toward faith, that led to the gospel-influenced 2006 album Turn Around and his first Grammy win. It also covers his marriage to Haley Johnson, collaborations with Buddy Guy, Willie Nelson, Herbie Hancock, Santana, and Cyndi Lauper, and the January 2021 announcement that a vocal cord condition forced him to cancel all touring.

• Why the late-1990s music industry pivoted from grunge to teenage blues guitarists like Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and Derek Trucks
• The story behind his barefoot performances, both as a way to feel the low end through the stage and as a tribute to the late Luther Allison
• How a single-pickup vintage Fender Esquire, handed to him as a prop during the Lie to Me video shoot, became an extension of his hands and the cover image of the album
• Later albums Fight for My Soul and Signs, and his sister Jesse Langseth’s run on American Idol
• The biological toll of singing gritty blues through puberty, the reported 2025 separation from his wife, and the question of identity when the instrument that defined you fails