Cedric Burnside
THE GRANDSON OF MISSISSIPPI HILL COUNTRY BLUES GREAT R.L. BURNSIDE GOES ALL IN — AND ALL OUT — ON HIS NEW ALBUM, I BE TRYING
THERE’S A TENDENCY in some circles to view blues music as a museum piece, while the musical styles it informed — rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, hip-hop and their various subgenres — are allowed to evolve. But the country blues music that rolled out of hillside jukes and hollers in the north Mississippi Hill Country in the hands of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside is alive and well, thanks to younger artists like Cedric Burnside.
“I’ve listened to old-school blues my whole life,” says the 43-year-old Burnside, calling from his home in the rural Mississippi hills where he learned the ropes from his “Big Daddy,” aka his grandfather R.L. “Even when [R.L.] wasn’t playing guitar, he would throw on some Fred McDowell or Jessie Mae Hemphill, even Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins. Some of my cousins, and some of my uncles and aunts, they’d get so tired of it they would leave the house when he started playing.”
Originally a drummer, Cedric began backing R.L. on tours when he was just 13, absorbing the hill country rhythms and his grandfather’s sense of timing and improvisation. By the time he got serious about playing guitar himself, R.L. was in declining health and unable to play much. Instead, Cedric pored over videos on YouTube to study R.L.’s fingerpicking technique. The fruits of those lessons are on display throughout his latest album, I Be Trying [Single Lock], which follows his previous two Grammy-nominated solo outings.
Recorded at Royal Studios in Memphis with producer Lawrence “Boo” Williams, who also has roots in the Hill Country, Cedric took advantage of the studio’s gear collection, plugging his Fender Stratocaster and a Les Paul-style guitar built for him by Mike Erickson into vintage Fender and Gibson amplifiers. On a cover of R.L.’s “Bird Without a Feather,” he plays an auditorium
“It was just amazing to me, that sound, and sitting and looking at my Big Daddy [R.L. Burnside] play his music firsthand. I knew it was something I was gonna do for the rest of my life”
style Gibson acoustic given to him by a fan and collector after a gig in Philadelphia. While Burnside takes most of the leads himself — as well as half of the album’s drum tracks — longtime friend Luther Dickinson wields a slide on “Step In” and “Keep On Pushing.”
No matter where his playing wanders, though, Cedric never wanders too far from the roots his grandfather planted. “It was just amazing to me, that sound, and sitting and looking at my Big Daddy play his music firsthand,” he says. “I knew it was something I was gonna do for the rest of my life.”