NMA: Shake What Your Mama Gave Ya
By Team JamBase Jan 24, 2008 • 12:00 am PST
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“It’s the most successful [studio release] to capture what we do night after night. We reached a certain level of confidence and a certain way of working, which basically means cutting it live and don’t fuck with it, that’s really worked for us,” says Luther Dickinson. “We cut 22 demos. I ended up writing all kinds of songs – some love songs, some poppier songs – and we let dad pick what he wanted, and he chose 12. It’s cool because he picked the rockers. My original goal was to do a straight blues-rock, classic rock album. I’d been listening to a lot of early ZZ Top. [Hernando] is kind of like the records I used to listen to before I discovered Black Flag [laughs]. Greg [Ginn] is a huge influence on me. His riffs are just so fucking heavy!”
The abiding impression of Luther and Allstars has been they’re pure blues guys but listen to Hernando‘s “Soldier” or “Keep The Devil Down” and you’d be forgiven if you thought it was vintage Black Sabbath or even Wolfmother.
“We had a family band with our father, and he taught us lots of roots music, but I also grew up with Van Halen,” offer Luther. “Women and Children First was the first cassette I ever bought in third grade, and that led to ZZ Top, AC/DC, Hendrix, Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin. Then I discovered Black Flag, which affected me like nothing else had. When I got to be 13 or 14, I started to accept and dig the blues in a personal way. My father and his band played with Furry Lewis and Sleepy John [Estes], but as a kid I thought of it as their music. At 13, I started playing guitar, and from that point on I accepted it all. It wasn’t until the early to mid ’90s that I was exposed to the Hill Country Blues. We were living here but I didn’t know about it until Fat Possum [Records] came around and I realized there were modern day country blues right here. That changed my world as much as anything.”
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The first time I heard the Allstars was in a coffee shop in Amsterdam in 2000, stirring a sugar cube and gooey hash into a steaming double espresso, when the sunflower lovely behind the counter slipped on Shake Hands With Shorty, the North Mississippi Allstars’ just released debut. Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Shake ‘Em On Down” trundled out of the rickety speakers, a perfect mud splattered soundtrack to the sludge slapping my brain around. There’s something delightfully unrefined and raucous about the NMA that the intervening eight years have done little to civilize.
“My dad says in the studio misery sticks to the tape. If you’re not having fun, it’s obvious. It’s just gut feelings and street talk that I’m going on,” says Luther. “We just did a six-week tour with Charlie [Musselwhite] and Mavis [Staples]. Even though we grew up playing roots music and then Hill Country Blues, he really taught us some blues, man. What trips me out about Charlie is he’s a psychedelic warrior! Here’s a guy who left Mississippi in 1959, moved up to Chicago and grew up with that whole scene, and then moved to San Francisco in ’67 with his first Vanguard record about to come out. He was talking about Howlin’ Wolf and Owsley in the same sentence. You can hear that sensibility in his music.”
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That peculiar intersection of LSD and “Three Hundred Pounds of Joy” surfaces in the Allstars’ music at times, where their blues bounce carries long haired concertgoers away on a rainbow Slip ‘n’ Slide. Hernando taps into this with “I’d Love To Be A Hippie,” a smiling creeper sung by bassist Chris Chew, who rounds out the trio.
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However, for the hints of Flower Power in their sound, don’t expect the Allstars to start singing about smiling on your brother or starting peace rallies.
“On the tour with Mavis and Charlie, we played [Black Sabbath’s] ‘War Pigs’ every night. But, I haven’t been able to write a protest song. Some cats are cut out for it and some aren’t,” observes Luther. “It’s cool that Neil Young put out his record [Living With War] and Bruce [Springsteen] put out his record [Magic], and Michael Franti is amazing at his message, but for me it comes back to that R.L. Burnside philosophy of whatever place you’re at you should try and give it that clapboard juke joint feeling. Maybe I’m a little better at escapism [laughs].”
Hernando is looser than their past couple records, showing greater continuity with the Allstars’ freewheeling live shows. Dickinson says they welcome happy accidents but also understand the value of discipline. It’s wisdom picked up from friends like Col. Bruce Hampton and alumni of his peculiar boot camp.
“Jeff Sipe says, ‘Go out on a limb and break it!’ Yeah! If you play in the Colonel’s band he doesn’t want you drinking water. He damn sure don’t want you taking a drink. No smoking cigarettes, no flirting with the crowd. It’s all about the music. He says, ‘If you go to the dentist you don’t want him making eyes at your girlfriend. Or if you go see Michael Jordan you don’t want to see him drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette.’ It’s professionalism,” recounts Luther. “What he really laid on me that really changed it up was, ‘If you get 10 people or a 100,000, just don’t let it get to you. Don’t be discouraged, don’t be intimidated, don’t be frustrated because that’s just your ego fuckin’ with you. If you can bring yourself to come through on the music night after night, get in the zone and do your thing, then nothing will throw you.’ That’s a muthafucker right there!”
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Luther Dickinson is a sit-in king at festivals, wandering the grounds, guitar on his back, looking for an amp to jump. “I’m a ho’,” he laughs. Even after playing marathon sets with his own band, he’s usually ready for more. “There’s a little secret I’ll let you in on. When you enjoy what you do, when playing guitar and singing are what you’re trained to do and it’s what you love, well, it’s not that difficult. Time just flies by. You get into the zone, and it’s like living a dream. It’s like being in a dream. It’s what it’s all about.”
The day I spoke with him, Luther was knee deep in a blues super group session at Zebra Ranch with Musselwhite, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Jimbo Mathus, his dad and the Allstars.
“Our home studio is like our little family church. I can be at home but until we do a session in the barn I don’t really fell like I’ve made it back yet. I’ve got no interest in recording our music anywhere else now,” says Luther. “You’ll never be able to recapture the blues of ’20s and ’30s. You just take it in and that naturally turns into rock ‘n’ roll. Local musicians, white and black, influenced Jimmy Rodgers, and then he put out records that influenced John Hurt and Furry Lewis, who in turn influenced a generation of white dudes. It jumps back and forth between the generations and races. That’s what I love.”
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“It’s important for us to make homemade records in our own studio. The last two [NMA] records were done in Memphis, which is great and an honor and tradition, but in this day and age I think that atmosphere and the intangible vibe is more important than sonic clarity. The records I love aren’t perfect. I heard [The Replacements’] Pleased to Meet Me, which my father produced, and it was the imperfections of that record that really hit home for me. If they’d made that record five years ago it would have been WAY more polished. I had to tell my band [with Hernando], ‘If the vocals are out of tune, well, so be it [laughs].’ Just let it be.”
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“That was super cool, man. And John, talk about committing! All the vocals on that are live off the floor. That really impressed me and started me on the path that led to Hernando, where we’re cutting things live to keep it real,” offers Luther. “We spent two summers touring with him, and I played on his new record coming out soon. It’s largely acoustic and really really fine. Touring with him, it was great to see people react to songs he wrote but had only heard from Bonnie Raitt or Eric Clapton.”
“A real breakthrough for me on this [new] record was collaborating. The band writes a lot of music together, especially Chris, who’ll come up with a bassline at soundcheck or something and I’ll make note of it for later. He wrote a lot of the riffs on this record. But, this was the first time I’d hang out with someone like Jimbo [Mathus] and say, ‘Let’s write a song.’ My friend Aaron Julison plays bass for Kid Rock, and we’d go to Detroit and just write songs. I love the collaborative aspect of the music but this was the first time as a lyricist that I tapped into that tradition of two cats sitting in a room alone to write songs. It’s a beautiful thing,” says Luther. “After the last record touring cycle, I didn’t write any lyrics for almost two years. Then, I got together with Jimbo. I had tons of music because I’d started working with computers and had documented tons of musical ideas. So, we got together in my dining room, and he said, ‘I always wanted to write a song about shaking what your mama gave ya.’ And I said, ‘Well, I got this riff.’ We started going and quickly had the first version of ‘Shake.’ He’s such a jumpstart!”
Another factor putting some piss in Luther’s vinegar lately is his invitation to join The Black Crowes last year. He’s a major highlight of that band’s forthcoming Warpaint album (arriving March 4 on the Crowes’ own Silver Arrow label) and will be touring hard throughout 2008 with both the Allstars and Crowes.
“The trio is great but there’s also something seductive about playing in a big band, which may be part of why I wanted to be part of the Crowes,” comments Luther. “It’s a huge wall of sound to be surfin’ on top of. It’s fun and it suits me. I love singing and writing but when it comes down to it, I just want to play. It’s a commitment. You have to lay it down. You gotta come on with the come on!”
The idea of total commitment to each piece of the puzzle is integral to The Black Crowes, and it’s heartening to see Luther’s own sensibilities dovetail so well with his new bandmates.
“That’s an invisible spirit. You can’t nail that down. There’s an energy you conjure up by touring a lot, playing nightly with the same people, and I don’t think you can fake that. It’s funny when you’re backing someone up and you’re supposed play like you’ve been together for years. It’s impossible. You can’t fake the funk.”
JamBase | Mississippi
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