LIFE IS A JOURNEY

For some people, travelling life's road is easy. For lifelong worrier Myles Kennedy it's anything but. But with his brand new solo album The Art Of Letting Go he's learning just what that title says.

- Polly Glass

A couple of years ago, Myles Kennedy turned to Jim Carrey for some life-changing wisdom. The mercurial Hollywood star, a "genius" in Kennedy's eyes, had announced his retirement from acting, when he said this: "I have enough. I've done enough.

I am enough." For the Alter Bridge frontman, a lifelong worrier learning to manage his anxieties, it parted a lot of internal clouds.

"When I heard him say that, it was like: 'Wow, there's somebody who's figured it out,"" Kennedy says now. "It's like, just be here, just be grateful for what you have, let go of all that other stuff." In a strange way, there's something in Kennedy's gentle, sharp-cheekboned look - brightened easily with a wide smile that's not a million miles from Carrey. The Mask one moment, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind the next.

Committed performers coming to terms with fearsome inner critics.

For Kennedy that process - coupled with a nod to Bruce Lee's 'be like water' philosophy - comes out in his third solo album The Art Of Letting Go.

"He [Carrey] has got versatility as an actor, as a comedian," Kennedy enthuses. "That's why he's one of the all-time greats, in my opinion, because he's able to cover so many different bases. I aspire to that. I mean, I don't feel like I'm nearly at his level in what I do, but I work at it, and I like to explore different sounds and do different things." If Kennedy's first two, more acoustic-based, solo records - 2018's Year Of The Tiger and 2021's Ides Of March - were about facing his personal demons, The Art Of Letting Go is the sound of him releasing those demons.