Blues rock is not dead. To the contrary, it’s very much alive in the capable hands of artists such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd. A blues guitar prodigy (he completed his first record, “Ledbetter Heights,” while still in high school), Shepherd sustains a style of music which is all too often shunned by mainstream media. Although many classic rock and blues acts are still active (Aerosmith, BB King, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rolling Stones, to name a few) or appear reinvented (Robert Plant), the lack of newer acts from the same mold have caused fans of the Golden Age of rock to tremble with uncertainty about the future of … well, everything. After the most roots-filled, cut-the-crap rock show at the Casino Ballroom, featuring dual headliners Shepherd and Dickey Betts with Great Southern, the classic rock faithful can rest in peace for a while longer.

Dickey Betts and his band Great Southern had the first slot Tuesday night, and each act shared equal set time. Sticking primarily to lengthy blues and southern rock-based jams, Betts, who is most widely known for his work as guitarist for The Allman Brothers Band, got the crowd shouting and shimmying before his opening number hit the one-minute mark. Astute readers of the popular magazine Guitar World may have noticed senior editor Andy Aledort present in the band lineup as a rhythm/lead guitarist for the current tour. Betts is just one of many musicians with whom Aledort, a noted Hendrix fanatic and historian, has a long history; he even performed with Hendrix’s rhythm section on one occasion. Consequently, he was a stellar surprise addition to an already star-studded bill.

Working their way through various jams and Allman Brother’s tunes, Betts was seemingly plagued with technical problems due to the number of crew members constantly zipping to and from the stage during almost every song. Ripping through the classic “Ramblin’ Man” as a final encore, however, Betts left the smoking stage (and amplifier) to an ecstatic crowd. Dear Kenny appeared to have his work cut out for him.

Opening with one of the many swaggering, Texas-style shuffles from “Ledbetter Heights,” Shepherd and lead singer Noah Hunt soon had the crowd well in hand. They worked their way through a varied set of sizzling songs, simply letting it rock for the well paced hour and half. It must have been celebrity night in Hampton Beach, because sitting behind the drum kit for Shepherd was none other than former Stevie Ray Vaughn drummer Chris Layton. While Hunt schmoozed the crowd with all the charisma of Mick Jagger, Shepherd strode across the stage to Layton’s spot-on drum work, slamming out the single-string into to the well-known “True Lies” from his sophomore breakout “Trouble Is…” with all the swagger of Jimmy Page. While each of the four Shepherd records are good, they don’t even come close to the live show. In today’s age of Pro Tools and pitch shifting, that’s a rare exception.

Then came the group’s only major radio hit, the swampy “Blue On Black,” during which the duo motioned for an extra chorus for the crowd to sing. A talent of Shepherd’s seems to be constantly walking a line between bad-boy rocker and audience-catering entertainer, and he seemed to know just when to turn it up and when to lay back.

Coming out for an encore after the high-octane “Shotgun Blues,” which follows a “Red House”-like lyrical format concerning infidelity, Shepherd lit into the immortal wah-wah intro to Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).”

Although he stuck closely to the heralded Vaughn cover of the tune in structure, playing many of the signature licks verbatim, he did so with such a passion and intensity that by the end of the nine-minute jam, it must have been all he could to do to take a final bow before exiting backstage.