Myles Kennedy

Born on November 27, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, as Myles Richard Bass, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist spent his formative years on a farm near Spokane, Washington, after his father’s death at age four prompted his mother’s remarriage and the adoption of the Kennedy surname. During high school he absorbed the contrasting influences of Led Zeppelin and Marvin Gaye, took up guitar at fifteen while also playing trumpet in the school marching band, and formed the local heavy-metal outfit Bittersweet with friends; after graduating in 1988 he enrolled at Spokane Falls Community College, where he joined the Cosmic Dust Fusion Band on guitar for their 1991 album Journey before shifting to lead vocals and lead guitar with Citizen Swing, whose releases Cure Me with the Groove (1993) and Deep Down (1995) preceded the group’s dissolution.

In 1996 he co-founded the Mayfield Four with three childhood friends; the band secured a deal with Epic Records and issued Fallout in 1997, followed by Second Skin in 2001, yet the ensemble disbanded by 2002. Kennedy entered Alter Bridge as lead vocalist the following year, an association that remained undisclosed until 2004; the group’s debut One Day Remains appeared that year on Wind-Up Records and achieved gold status, with subsequent albums Blackbird (2007, Universal Republic) and AB III (2010, Roadrunner) rounding out the first phase of the partnership. Parallel to these activities, late-2009 sessions with Slash led to Kennedy’s contributions on two tracks of the guitarist’s self-titled solo debut in 2010; their collaboration deepened on the 2012 release Apocalyptic Love, issued under the name Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators and featuring Kennedy as sole lead vocalist, while he also served as stand-in vocalist for Axl Rose during Guns N’ Roses’ 2012 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Three further joint albums—World on Fire (2014), Living the Dream (2018), and 4 (2022)—followed, alongside four additional Alter Bridge projects: Fortress (2013), The Last Hero (2016), Walk the Sky (2019), and Pawns & Kings (2022).

Kennedy’s first official solo album, the folk- and Americana-tinged concept work Year of the Tiger, emerged in 2018 on Napalm Records after a decade of development and drew directly on his childhood experiences surrounding his father’s death. Its 2021 successor, the blues-rooted Ides of March, preserved that introspective core while embracing more intricate and high-energy rock textures; on the 2024 outing The Art of Letting Go he surveyed an expansive palette of blues, punk, metal, and hard rock to produce his most forceful recording to date, both sonically and emotionally.