“Modern Mississippi music.” If you ask singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Luther Dickinson to define what the North Mississippi Allstars (NMA) create, that’s the answer he’ll give. It’s the path he and his brother Cody have been traveling down ever since NMA dropped their 2000 debut, Shake Hands with Shorty, and one the band members will share when they hit stages on their latest tour.
“By the time we made Shake Hands with Shorty, our recipe was Mississippi Hill Country and sacred steel cross-bred with our stoner/punk/low-rez psychedelic jam,” Dickinson said in a recent interview. “I would never presume to call myself a blues musician, but growing up in Mississippi we were surrounded by so many traditional families that played hardcore blues. We always brought our own influences into everything we did, be it psychedelia, production ideas or whatever. I never aspired to be traditional, hardcore blues. And the connotations are heavy.
“Another phrase that I like is ‘roots music,’ he continued. “Listening to Ryan Coogler’s interviews that accompanied the Sinners movie, his straight-up quote is that genre [itself] is an instrument of segregation and racism. I don’t want any part of that.”
NMA’s current tour brings them to the Luther Burbank Center on May 9, with blues legend Bobby Rush, whose own latest brush with fame came playing harmonica in the movie Sinners, and again on the Oscar-night musical presentation.
This musical journey coincides with the quartet’s 12th and most recent studio outing, Still Shakin,’ which commemorates the 25th anniversary of NMA’s debut. But rather than hitting the road and playing the first record in its entirety, the Dickinson siblings, along with NMA bandmates Ray Ray Holloman (Eminem; Ne-Yo) and Joey Williams (Blind Boys of Alabama), recorded 11 new songs with a collective of sidemen.
The album opens with “Preachin’ Blues,” a real stomper fueled by soaring pedal steel and a pounding rhythm that is a one-way street to handclaps and hip-shaking. Still Shakin’ is packed with an array of infectious jams. Highlights range from the call-and-response, jam-band-flavored gospel of “Pray For Peace,” featuring a spirited vocal turn by Williams; to the fat-back funk of “Poor Boy” paced by Burnside and “Monomyth (Folk Hero’s Last Ride)”; to the ethereal closing instrumental dedicated to the Dickinsons’ storied late father, Memphis record producer Jim Dickinson.
The eclectic nature of the NMA sound stems from the openness with which Luther Dickinson approaches his craft, which was further honed during the pandemic when he fleshed out his home-studio skills. It carried over to this recent project.
“The musicians I was working with, multi-instrumentalists Ray-Ray [Holloman] and Joey [Williams], are so great and their contributions were so powerful, that it really became an inspiration—to feature them,” Dickinson said.
Dickinson’s live approach to playing music started out with him immersing himself in the sounds of Jimi Hendrix and family friends the Allman Brothers. He coupled that with spending considerable time forming bonds with juke-joint blues families whose patriarchs were latter-day legends, like Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside and Othar Turner.
The 53-year-old guitar player’s own non-NMA experiences included a stint as a member of the Black Crowes, but it was a post-Crowes experience with the late Phil Lesh that really honed the latter-day NMA’s sound.
“Leaving the Crowes wasn’t an easy move to make, but I’m glad I did because shortly thereafter was when Phil Lesh started calling me,” Dickinson said. “That led to a whole new community, a whole new repertoire, a whole new experience.”
With a dozen albums recorded under the NMA banner, not to mention side projects like the recently released Dead Blues: Vol. 1, an interpretive platter of blues covers the Grateful Dead recorded, Dickinson has plenty of musical options for his concert set lists. Even so, he knows there’s a balance to strike that he’s more than happy to honor.
“I don’t blame anybody for it, but we definitely have fans who still want to hear the first record—I know how it goes,” Dickinson said. “We really enjoy playing the new stuff and we’re working up new stuff for our next record as well. But we also play foundational songs off the first record and mix it up with whatever we’ve got cooking. Even if it’s a batch of 30 or 40 songs, I have to switch it up and can’t just do the same set list night after night.”
The North Mississippi Allstars and Bobby Rush appear at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts on Saturday, May 9. Tickets $50-$75 plus fees, at lutherburbankcenter.org/event/north-mississippi-allstars-bobby-rush26/.
