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In the jam world, young bands like Daybreakdown and Shady
Deal carry that mantle proudly. Each of them tours
relentlessly, including stops on the festival circuit (catch Shady Deal at High Sierra this year). And each of them put
out solid debut albums in the past year. Daybreakdown's Make Me Wiser included a wise-beyond-their-
years rock anthem called "The Ante" and the band continues to provide rock-solid shows everywhere they go. They
are a well-rounded group, powered by the shredding of guitarist-on-the-rise Patrick McClary (look out for
this guy). They are currently working on a follow-up album with Cary Hudson manning the controls.
Shady Deal's debut, The Lift, was produced by the legendary Jim Dickinson, who described the
band as "Mississippi moonshine with a Missouri mule kick" (again, a person smarter than me). Their take on rock 'n'
roll is centered on thunder and guts.
North Mississippi
AllStars |
But it's not all country rock and jam bands. Remember, this is the home of the Blues. The North Mississippi AllStars' Luther and Cody
Dickinson practically grew up on the club stages of Oxford. I remember seeing them, all of 16 years old,
tearing the roof off of clubs with their high school band, DDT. In all of their incarnations, they've
been a mainstay of the scene, though they live a few miles up the road, between Oxford and Memphis.
The blues, and more specifically the Hill Country Blues, has always been a major part of this music scene here in
Oxford. I've lived here on and off for the better part of 15 years, save a move to New Orleans and quick stints in
Colorado and North Carolina. The second time I lived here, Sunday nights at Junior
Kimbrough's juke joint were par for the course. I'll never forget the time my friend Sox took me out there
for my initiation. You wanna see racial harmony? That was the place, sweating and dancing and drinking until the
sun came up. College boys and pulpwood haulers and everybody in between united by the hypnotic groove that
makes one forget of any earth-bound problems or concerns.
David Kimbrough, Cedric Burnside &
Junior Kimbrough
By Cheryl Lockwood |
Junior and R.L. are gone now (and so is their record label, Fat
Possum, which moved to nearby Water Valley to escape the high real estate prices of this exploding town). But
their offspring are keeping the Hill Blues alive. The
Burnside Exploration, Duwayne Burnside and David Kimbrough, all are active and kicking
ass. Kenny Brown, right-hand man of R.L. Burnside for ages, hasn't changed a bit, thankfully.
Just a stone's throw from Oxford over in Clarksdale, a renaissance is brewing. Jimbo Mathus' Knockdown South recording studio produced one of the best albums
of
last year, Knockdown South, and has (count
'em) two coming at you this year. His gal, Olga, is making a name for herself too. And a fella by the name
of Lightning Boy Malcolm is preaching blues from the heart, the only way to do it.
Jimbo Mathus |
A young man by the name of Sanders Bohlke, hailing from nearby Sardis, Mississippi, but cutting his teeth
here in Oxford, sounds like the bastard child of Van Morrison and Sam Cooke. Tyler Keith and the
Preacher's Kids regularly preach the gospel of raucous rock with garage band intensity.
And one of the unintended, and one of the only welcome, consequences of Hurricane Katrina is that a few New
Orleanians have made their home here in our little postage stamp, chiefly among them Shannon McNally and The Captain Midnight Band.
There's some heavy metal in the Cooters and some soul in Wiley and the Checkmates and a lot
more. In fact, I'd wager there's more great, original music per capita than just about anywhere.
Well, I could go on and on, obviously, but what I'm trying to say is that we've got a great little town here. It's full of
heart and soul and the things that keep one living. On a sweltering night in a Marshall County juke joint or a
Saturday evening dancing with sorority girls on the square, Oxford not only embraces the duality of the southern
thing, it invites it in for a glass of sweet tea and sometimes takes it out to the woodshed for a good ass whuppin'.
It's a town where people mean what they write and mean what they play, even if they're bullshittin' you from time to
time. It's a town that is mining its soul and searching for truth everyday, and that keeps me real interested.
Shannon
McNally |
Come down and visit us sometime. We throw a party each year, where we all gather around the square and play
music and share stories and art all day. Ask Wilco or Dr. John or Emmylou Harris. They've all joined us for the Double Decker Festival. So have Bobby Rush and
Marty Stuart and Jerry Joseph and lots of folks.
Yep, Oxford is a great town and I love it. Even though some folks here occasionally do things I'm not so proud of
(sometimes I'm even not so proud of myself, of course), there's duality here every day - pride and shame. Isn't that
what moves us? Makes us better? Makes us want to tell somebody something, anything, about how we feel and
convey some of our darker, deeper shames and prides? Isn't that why people write books and songs? Because they
have something to say about themselves that speaks to all of us in a universal way? I sure hope so.
Jim Dickinson |
The roots run deep in Mississippi, a state that can make a fair claim to the home of Southern Gothic Literature
(whatever the hell that is, other than what some New York editor slapped on a book jacket one day long ago), Fried
Catfish, Country, Blues and even Rock 'n' Roll. My state. And here in Oxford, the g-spot of Mississippi, those roots
are deepening and growing in ways even Bill Faulkner never imagined. And I don't have much shame in that at all.
JamBase | Oxford
Go See Live Music!
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