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Foot-stomping blues band to take the field
By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN © St. Petersburg Times, published May 18, 2001 The name "North Mississippi Allstars" sounds like a baseball team. But baseball is far from what Luther and Cody Dickinson and their buddy Chris Chew are all about. These guys are about hill-country blues played with ancient soul and foot-stomping energy. The closest connection to the national pastime might be that they make a sound that soars like a high fly ball going over the outfield fence. "(They're) all hot-mud guitar and sandpaper-vocal soul, rendered with young muscle and good heart," wrote David Fricke of Rolling Stone. Chris Morris of Billboard magazine calls their stuff "electrified world boogie from Mississippi Fred McDowell's legacy." Tonight, sometime after opening act Backtrack Blues Band finishes its 9 p.m. set, the North Mississippi Allstars will take the stage at Bourbon Street Concert Club in New Port Richey. They're expected to play until well past midnight, doing rocking renditions of Shake Hands with Shorty, All Night Long andShake 'Em on Down. Their music is a mix of Delta blues and Southern rock, with a touch of gospel. They learned it hanging out in juke joints and jamming with legends like the late Junior Kimbrough and with R.L. Burnside. Their forte' is "trance," where they find a groove and dig in for long, hypnotic passages. The Allstars have been featured on National Public Radio and in a Time magazine spread (July 10, 2000) and played for colleges and at festivals all over, including the recent New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, Tenn. On Saturday, they'll do a 45-minute set at Tropical Heatwave in Ybor City, and on Sunday they'll be in the Florida Spring Fest in Pensacola. Singer-guitarist Luther, 28, and his drummer brother Cody, 24, got their first guitars when in elementary school in rural north Mississippi, where their family had moved when they were young. The sons of legendary rock keyboardist and record producer Jim Dickinson, they were around musicians and heard a variety of musical styles all their lives, everything from Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin to the Sex Pistols. The brothers played in several bands through the years, including what they call a "postpunk thrash-rock fusion" group, but finally settled in with their childhood pal Chew, 27, in 1996, to develop their particular brand of emotional, incendiary music. In 2000, an album they made with Kimbrough, Burnside and fife player Othar Turner, 92, was nominated for a Grammy in the contemporary blues category. The Dickinson brothers have produced two of Turner's albums, both of them critically acclaimed. Their current homes are a pair of single-wides deep in the woods in north Mississippi, where they practice and jam in an old barn nearby or at Kimbrough's juke joint, which caught fire a year ago and hasn't been rebuilt. Luther says his plan is to live in Mississippi hill country with his lifelong friends around him. As for the music, his goal is to "take it to the people and keep it real." At a glanceWHAT: North Mississippi Allstars WHERE: Bourbon Street Concert Club, 4331 U.S. 19, New Port Richey WHEN: 9 p.m. today; doors open at 8 p.m. TICKETS: $15 in advance or at the door
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From today's Pasco Times |
