Dustin Milotte: Bringing the Hill Country to The Bijou
This past Friday a couple friends and I took some down time to go to the Bijou Theatre and check out The North Mississippi All-Stars with Jamie McLean. We met at the Downtown Grill and Brewery, took down some app’s and micro brews and headed down a rainy Gay St. to the Bijou.
We entered and McLean’s set was already in progress. I had seen him as the guitarist in The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, but never fronting his own band. His music was pretty solid, song driven rock. At times it reminded of Bon Jovi (not a personal fav) but with better guitar work. The crowd was pretty modest in size, especially during McClean’s set, but he got them going. He even pulled out the, “ Any of you girls feel like dancing come get on stage” for his closer.
North Mississippi took the stage next. I’m no stranger to their sound, I’ve seen them something like 6-8 times, but always as a four-piece. Friday NMA performed as a trio. With just the two brothers, Luther (guitar/vox) and Cody (drums/guitar) Dickenson and the large UT clad bassist Chris Chew their sound was lean and focused. Luther plays to crowd as a front man, soloing on the edge of the stage with a variety of guitars, one a homemade contraption consisting of a cigar box, a pipe, and two strings. His guitar vocabulary is reminiscent of Hendrix, true blues language fused with psychedelia and progressive slide playing. A lot of the material that night came from their latest album Electric Blue Watermelon, but as usual they employed some past favorites and folk standards.
NMA’s sound is part of a southern American tradition that seems to be somewhat forgotten in this modern time of relocation. They were born and raised in the same hill country of Northern Mississippi playing music together from childhood. The resulting sound mixes electric blues, country, rock and gospel. Luther himself states it best, “ (our music) holds to the folk tradition of oral history. Electric Blue Watermelon celebrates the lives and legends of the heroes in our community. If the traditions are kept alive, they can’t help but mutate and change.”
In short, the All-Stars place tradition above virtuosity. Example, a ritual at every NMA show involves Cody stepping out from behind the drum kit, picking up a guitar and “dueling” with his brother. When you see this you know that it’s the same scene that was happening twenty years ago in their living room, with their dad, producer/musician Jim Dickenson, looking on. And with three Grammy nominations now under their belt, their family and community is surely proud.
The North Mississippi All-Star’s have become part of my music going tradition. I was there when Cody burned his washboard at Bonnaroo, witnessed Luther play in the improv/gospel group The Word, and I was most impressed by their “Hill Country Review” band that featured something like 15 musicians spanning four generations from their home town. They keep me coming back, not because they blow my mind musically, but to see what the next chapter in this fable from Northern Mississippi is going to entail.
