Crossroad Blues has become synonymous with blues guitarists ever since it was first recorded back in the 1930s by Robert Fulton. Since then, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and young gun Kenny Wayne Shepherd has performed and recorded the soulful tune about making a deal with the devil at that barrren Mississippi crossroad in order to play the blues. Well, thanks to the Xtreme Lee, Kenny Wayne Shepherd's not in the mood for making any deals, and if the devil shows up at that crossroad, he's gonna' get his ass toasted by the most radical General Lee Charger ever built. Put your trays up and make sure your seats are in the full upright position, the Xtreme Lee is ready for flight.
    If you saw TLC's popular show "Rides" back on January 26, you were

treated to an up-close and personal look at blues/rock guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd's new age '69 General Lee Charger. For those of you who have the collector's edition DVD of that episode, pause it from time to time and you'll see Rob Wolf hiding in the background. You'll notice a lot of our t-shirts being worn in that episode (yes, you too can look like a television celebrity), but quite correctly, the show focused on the car itself and the thrashing effort it took to get the car done in time for its public debut at the 2004 SEMA show. What wasn't divulged within the confines of that one hour television program were all the incredible details that went into the construction of this charger or the wild chain of events which led to its being.
    In March 2004, long time MCG friend Bill Cooksey gave Rob a call informing

him guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd was looking to either buy a General Lee clone or a legitimate car from the series. Since Kenny's a Louisiana home boy and we're big time into blues/rock ourselves (Rob used to be a decent drummer and your truly was a below average rhythm guitar guy in an '80's hair band) Rob took this call quite seriously. The Spring Fling was not far off, so he was soon out in Los Angeles meeting with Kenny Wayne and introducing him to Shannon and Sean Hudson at Redline Gauge Works. We were working on an article at that time about Andre and Renaud Veluzat, who built most of the General Lee Chargers for Warner Brothers when the series was in production (March 2005). Redline Gauge Works has a close tie with the Veluzat brothers because Shannon married Renaud's

daughter. These guys know the original Generals inside and out, so the first logical step in the parade was to put Kenny Wayne in front of the principal original players. That meeting in April set into motion a rapid fire chain of events.
    The initial plan was simply to build an accurate General Lee clone based on the information and photos supplied by Renaud and Andre. That went out the window almost immediately. Being a creative guy, Shannon started thinking it would be better to build a modern state-of-the-art high-tech General Lee instead of just

another clone. Before long, the name "Extreme Lee" had been concocted by Redline, which was then shortened to simply "Xtreme Lee."
    Since Kenny Wayne was busy launching his new CD "The Place You're In" and preparing for a huge concert tour, it was obvious he couldn't sit still and handle the construction of the car himself, so Shannon and Sean were tapped to be the overlords of making this car happen. They found a decent '69 Charger in Idaho in June, and the phone calls were flying back and forth from Cali to MCG and back. Movie car builder and muscle car

fanatic Ted Moser was tapped to be the man to do most of the work even before the stock Charger arrived in Los Angeles.
    Being that everything was happening right there in Tinseltown, Hollywood wasn't going to let the construction of such a cool car for such an up-and-coming musician go unnoticed. TLC's "Rides" show decided to cover the construction of the Charger start-to-finish, then came the bombardment of high-tech parts from manufacturers coast-to-coast eager to participate in in the project. What started as a friendly acoustic jam session at the Melody

Ranch Studios to build Kenny Wayne the General Lee look-a-like turned into a major ordeal to build a driveable show stopper that would be ready to make its debut at the 2004 SEMA show in Las Vegas alongside the finest custom cars in the world! And it all came from a simple phone call looking for a Charger last April. It's amazing how things like this can snowball in a heartbeat.
    The starting point was a 318 two barrel '69 Charger finished in pale yellow with a dark green interior and a black vinyl top. Yep, you've gotta' wonder who picked that combination! Once Ted and crew media blasted the stripped down shell, a host of poorly repaired rust problems revealed themselves, which led to the replacement of both quarter panels. The floors were surprisingly good and so were most of the other panels, so aside from a little body filler to handle minor problems, making the Charger's skin slick wasn't overly difficult.
    Chris Hickman drew the initial artwork for the Xtreme Lee in August of '04, but soon even this was modified to make the graphics more radical. Ace airbrush artist Pat Ceo had

the idea of making all the graphics three dimensional and in the spirit of a true rebel, to give the flag and graphics a distressed, tattered look. This would give the car the illusion of speed even while sitting still and help provide Kenny's car with its own unique personality.
    If you watched the Rides episode, you'll recall the biggest factor in building the Xtreme Lee was that the clock was ticking. The Charger was committed to be at SEMA 2004, and that's a dance you just do not miss once you've agreed to be there. The bodywork and paint put the project behind schedule from the outset, largely because of the unexpected quarter panel rot problems. David "Bama" Daffron applied the gorgeous custom mixed orange at Ted Moser's shop, while across town, Richard Nedball was busy building a monster stroker wedge that would be dependable with enough power to uproot trees if called upon to do so.

    The wedge in Kenny Wayne's Charger has more tricks than a $40 girl on the wrong end of Bourbon Street. Tucked inside the block are JE pistons on Eagle rods. You'll find a Comp Cams cam to provide a wicked torque curve, then there's the obvious stuff like the Edelbrock manifold with fuel injection, Edelbrock aluminum heads, a billet water pump, custom machined billet aluminum "KWS" valve covers, and don't go looking for a distributor, this one's fired with a direct crank triggered ignition system.
Richard Nedball did his homework well on this bay. The motor cranks instantly, idles smooth, and dyno'd at 585 horsepower with 614 ft. lbs. of torque which peaks right around 4,500 rpm and remains in that neighborhood even as the rpm go up! This thing's going to go through a lot of tires!

    TTI Exhaust fabricated a complete system for the Charger utilizing their stainless pipes front to back. Street and Gear provided fast ratio steering, Randy's Ring and Pinion sent all new guts for the 8-3/4" rear, Cope Racing Transmissions built the car's TorqueFlite, utilizing a PTC torque converter.
    Parts were flying into SoCal for the project and arms were flailing every day. Throughout the process, Shannon and Sean acted as the nervous co-chairmen of the board to get things done. With one eye on the calendar and another on the pile of parts, nobody wanted to think about how close SEMA was looming.
    Rob Wolf flew back and forth to Cali several times to keep an eye on things as well, snapping photos of the whole process and putting in his two cents worth of ideas and advice. Whenever Kenny Wayne was there to be shown something new about the car, usually Rob was there to make sure our homey was happy with the direction things were going.

    With less than a week to go before SEMA, the elaborate paintwork was done, the engine was in place, so the Charger was rushed over to Custom Auto Trim for the luxurious leather and suede tan interior to be installed. This is way past anything an original General Lee ever dreamed of. There was a non-stop trash job at Custom Auto Trim, which resulted in the Charger being in-and-out in less than 24 hours!
    Then came the intense job back at Redline Gauge Work of installing fifteen miles of wiring in the car, along with some serious state-of-the-art electronics. Budnik Wheels came by with their custom made new generation turbine-style wheels for the Lee, 18x18s up front and 19x10s for the back. The offset on the rears wasn't quite right, so they went back to Budnik and were returned the following day machined to perfection. For the better part of two days, Sean and Shannon labored to install their custom made white faced analog Redline gauges, and Ace Customs installed the incredible Eclipse stereo system with CD changer, and Eclipse on-board navigation system, and most of the Charger's wiring harness.

    Now comes the big surprise that's going to make everyone appreciate the wonders of how television shows are edited together. If you watched Rides, you saw Xtreme Lee at SEMA with Kenny Wayne and enjoyed watching Kenny cruising up and down the road in the finished car. The story seemed to have a fairly tale ending - the guys had pulled it off after all. Well, not really. Despite superhuman efforts by everyone involved. It became obvious a couple of days before SEMA that the unholy complicated Charger couldn't possibly be finished in time.
    The tough decision was made to get everything mocked up so it could make the show and be on display, so work turned toward getting everything cosmetically perfect. Rob flew out to SEMA, met up with Shannon and Sean, and they spent the day before the show primping the Xtreme Lee for its big debut. Still not running, we're pleased to say Rob pitched in his muscle power to push the Charger into the Gear Vendors booth. The Charger had made it to SEMA and no one aside from those who pushed it into the hall ever knew it wasn't a running, driving, car. Interestingly, we were pleased to see this same thing occurring with a number of other cars at SEMA, so while everyone was bit disappointed at having not finished in time, at least we knew a lot of other car builders had run into the same problem - there simply wasn't enough time.
    Once SEMA was over, the Xtreme Lee went back to

Redline's shop where the finishing work could progress without too much hassle. With Rides scheduled to come film Kenny's first drive in his new car, Shannon and Sean discovered a fresh problem. The backing plate on one axle was bent, which made the passenger's side rear wheel fit askew. The Hudson boys noticed that right away, so with the Rides cameras rolling, they had the car on the lift outside the shop doing a last minute axle change. Rob was snapping pics, the film cameras were rolling, and Kenny Wayne was on-site ready for his drive - nothing like a little pressure, eh?
    The job was finished, all was cool, then came the shake-down cruise you saw on television with Kenny Wayne making passes up and down the street near Redline's shop. The General Lee seen in the Rides episode is owned by Dave Stitzinger, who's a friend of Renaud's. This is the General Lee that was shown in our February 2005 issue in our feature on Renaud and Andre and the Melody Ranch Studio.
    The story does indeed have a happy ending. The shakedown cruise by Kenny Wayne in mid-December was a full bore success. The Xtreme Lee runs like a champ, drives like an SCCA sports car, and is way extremely fast. Is Kenny Wayne pleased with his new ride? Wouldn't you be? We were glad to see him smiling big time that afternoon - all the hard work had definitely paid off.
    Since he was busy with his concert tour at that time, the

Xtreme Lee remained at Redline's shop after the filming of that episode, and since that time the boys have spent their spare time improving on the Charger ever more. When this orange rebel makes its debut to the Mopar faithful at the 2005 Mopars at the Strip event in Las Vegas, all the bugs should be completely worked out. Following the 'Vegas show, the Charger's going home to Kenny's garage. Throughout the process, Kenny's been adamant that he wanted this car to be a driver, so it will be frequently seen in an around Los Angeles we're certain. The Rides narrator kept referring to the Charger as a "show car", but that's not entirely accurate. Yes, it will make some car shows, but as nice as this thing is, it should spend more time on the road than it will in a trailer.
    Congrats to Shannon and Sean Hudson at Redline, Ted

Moser, Rich Nedball, and everyone involved in making this car a reality. The guys at Redline informed us the day after the show they were already getting e-mails asking them to build more of these, but for now at least, they're gonna' take a breather.
    However, since Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Kid Rock are buds, and since Kid's a Dukes fan as well with a General Lee clone of his own, we wouldn't be surprised to see at least one more of these things put together. This one will remain special to us though, having been the first big time custom we were actively involved in the construction and development of. The fact that it was built for one of our favorite guitarists who also happens to be from right here in Louisiana makes it even more special. Keep the shiny side up Kenny, and for heaven's sake, don't try jumping anything!

or the better part of Kenny Wayne Shepherd's life, he's had a guitar in his hands. Most of those guitars have been Fender Stratocasters. If you've ever seen Kenny live, take notice of his main axe, a sunburst vintage Strat that has darn little sunburst finish left. Aside from looking like it's been dragged behind a gravel truck, believe us, that this sounds sweet and the boy uses some really heavy strings for a thick as a brick bluesy sound. Kenny Wayne and the Stratocaster are seemingly inseparable, with the classic instrument seeming to be an extension of his own body. We've seen guitarists make tough riffs look effortless before, but Kenny seems to have about nine fingers on his left hand.
Early along in the Xtreme Lee project, Del Breckenfeld at Fender Guitars wanted to do something special for Kenny Wayne as well. They decided to do an Xtreme Lee Kenny Wayne Shepherd edition Stratocaster which would be presented to Kenny Wayne when he took delivery of the Charger. Since the paint on Kenny's Charger is a custom mix by Ted Moser, Fender shipped a bare premium Strat body to Ted's shop where "Bama" and Pat Ceo applied the custom paint.
When Kenny Wayne opened the trunk during the filming of Rides, there was the new guitar sitting in the trunk, which was a bit of a surprise for Kenny; he knew the guitar was being built, but didn't know it was in the trunk.
For all you guitar guys out there, the complete Strat shown here is a relatively stock '60s reissue Strat with the same graphics applied to Kenny's personal guitar. The guitar Kenny will be touring with and playing live was also on hand, but wasn't fully assembled as Fender knows all-too-well that the boy likes to assemble the electronics and pickups in his guitars himself in order to achieve his own personal sound.
Fender is looking into producing a limited number of these guitars. So, if your interested in winning the guitar you see here check out Kenny Wayne's website for details (www.kwsbanc.com). Congrats to Fender for coming up with this axe and hats off to Del Breckenfeld and the entire crew at the Fender Custom Shop for making sure cool projects like this get personal attention. Leo Fender would be most pleased.