North Mississippi Allstars 'Hill Country Revue: Live at Bonnaroo [LIVE]' album

The Mississippi Spirit that inspires so much great music in the delta also thrives further east in the hill country where the North Mississippi Allstars live. For five years and four studio albums the band has channeled this Spirit’s power and mysticism and given it new life. Before forming the North Mississippi Allstars, Brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson were something like your average Black Flag-loving teenagers (distinguished by a certain respect for Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica). Luther was just out of his teens and Cody was still having trouble getting drinks in bars when the Spirit possessed them, granting them insight into the world that was all around them.

Their dad, Jim Dickinson, is a musician (among his many accomplishments he played piano on the Rolling Stones‚ “Wild Horses,” produced the Replacements‚ Pleased to Meet Me, and co-wrote “Across the Borderline,” sung by the likes of Willie Nelson, Freddy Fender, Bob Dylan and others) who, along with mother Mary, raised the boys outside Memphis in rural Mississippi swampland. There, after listening to what their MTV peers around the globe made popular, these brothers got turned on to the sound of their own street, or to be more precise, the sound of their dirt road. It was blues, yeah, but it was more than that–there were smatterings of soul, of hip-hop, of the modern chitlin circuit and of the ancient African paeans to Pan. The brothers were changed, their souls gripped by the Mississippi Spirit, their instruments the medium.

“When I got turned onto the hill country scene,” remembers Luther,” it blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that not only was there this great primitive funky modern country blues coming out of Mississippi, but it was right under my nose and I didn’t even know about it!”

Immersing themselves in the world all around them, the Dickinsons absorbed Otha Turner’s fife and drum picnics, R. L. Burnside’s juke joints, Junior Kimbrough’s Sunday throw downs with homemade fruit beer, and they branded their souls with all manner of white lightning whiskey. Luther and Cody began sitting in where this music was being made, and then one humid summer night in 1996 at a two-day festival called Dixie Fried, they brought their new friends to Memphis. Most everybody at this first or second North Mississippi Allstars gig was known on the Memphis stages; what was different was the combination–the rockers, the fife and drum players, the trance boogie masters–and everyone added a little something to make something new. You’re holding the Allstars‚ fifth CD in your hand, so you know this idea worked well. Real well.

The North Mississippi Allstars Hill Country Revue is the culmination of that sweaty Memphis night almost a decade earlier. Gathered on one stage not far from the Hill Country, not far from Memphis, was nearly every living influence on the band, all channeling the music that has made the group–and the region–so enduringly popular.

In addition to the Dickinson brothers, the core of the group includes Chris Chew and Duwayne Burnside. Chew was a football hero bass player they had gone to high school with. At the prom, he needed backing to perform “Dark End of the Street” and he called on the brothers Dickinson.Chew had come up singing and playing in church, and his groove just fit. Burnside is a son of Hill Country legend R. L. Burnside, and after years of jamming with the band, he wound up as a member.

Since recently opening Burnside’s Blues Café on Highway 70 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, he’s no longer with them full time, but for the Bonnaroo gig he got someone else to tend bar so he could tend guitar. Also on stage from the start was Jim Dickinson, playing electric piano and adding the occasional side comment.

Longtime musical collaborator and friend JoJo Hermann joins the ever-growing party early in the show. Popular as the keyboardist with Widespread Panic, JoJo used to lead a Memphis band called Beanland, a southern psychedelic jam band in the Allman Brothers tradition that shaped the young Dickinsons.When you think you’re hearing the Allmans in the Allstars, it’s more directly Beanland.

The opening track is “Shake ‘Em On Down,” a nod to Fred McDowell, the blues guitarist who is, in a way, the godfather of the contemporary Hill Country scene. McDowell used to ride a buggy with Otha Tuner, the two of them making music on their way to gigs they played together. He was also a formative influence on R. L. Burnside, whose version of “Po’ Black Maddie” is the next track. R. L. himself takes the stage–in a throne, rightly, and accompanied by his wife–and delivers his classic “Jumper on the Line.” It’s a beautiful sight: two generations of two regional musical families creating–interracially, bi-racially, no no, it’s trans-racially–music with a heritage that translates to the informed, the uninformed, the unformed, and the uniformed: Those who listen, groove.

Duwayne Burnside steps up to sing “Bad Bad Pain,” his funky rocker from Polaris, the band’s third album, and then it’s Daddy Jim’s turn with “Down in Mississippi,” an obscure J. B. Lenoir song that the family has resurrected. When Luther introduces Chris Robinson to sing on “Boomer’s Story,” it’s a nod to the future–new collaborations. Enhancing that nod, Cody Dickinson steps out from the drums to share vocal duties and play a guitar solo–new directions indeed. But “Boomer’s Story” is also a nod to the past; it’s the title track to Ry Cooder’s third album, produced by Jim Dickinson.

Otha Turner’s Rising Star drummers are called to the stage, and the family is complete. Otha Turner became a mentor and life instructor to Luther Dickinson; to the rest of us, he was a gracious host at picnics, a shaman in the dark night, and distiller of quite refined white lightning. He died at 94 in 2003, still tending his fields with a mule-drawn plow and still dating the ladies. The drummers play a groove that is as natural as the rolling hills that distinguish their home from the delta, and as funky as anything a hip-hop machine has ever created (and way more timeless). Otha’s players include his grandsons Andre, Rodney, Aubrey and his spiritual son R. L. Boyce, the Hill Country’s great toastmaster. Garry Burnside joins the cast on guitar for a ripping version of his father's "Snake Drive". When R. L. Burnside’s grandson steps out to rap on “Be So Glad,” the vitality of the music is assured.

So with the nearly two-dozen people onstage, the Allstars ride the groove home. They close the show with another nod to R. L. Burnside, a workout on his “Going Down South.” It’s a tune that makes you move, that touches you way down inside and speaks a truth made more evident with each passing generation.

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North Mississippi Allstars - Hill Country Revue: Live at Bonnaroo [LIVE]