Chattanooga Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Luther Dickinson, guitarist and vocalist for the blues-roots band, North Mississippi Allstars, about how he got into music, growing up among legends and preserving blues tradition.

CP: When was the first time you held a guitar?

LD: Some of my first memories were of guitars. I had a little, plastic acoustic one. I got my first little electric when I was five or six. I just grew up with it. I didn’t get serious with it until I was 12 or 13, but it was always around. We had a band when I was in third grade and Cody was in kindergarten.

CP: What was the band’s name?

LD: It was called The Rebelaires.

CP: That’s a pretty sophisticated name for an eight-year-old.

LD: Yeah, well, we went to Rossville Academy. We were the Rossville Academy Rebels, so it was a play off of that name.

CP: Your Myspace makes it sound like you got into blues music just by being in proxy to it.

LD: It was cool because the older I got, the more I got turned on to what was around me. I grew up studying all kinds of different music, especially regional roots music, which is what my father was into. I thought that since I was into the guitar and it was what I wanted to do, it was my responsibility to learn as much of the tradition as I could since it was there for me. I figured I would be a chump not to pick up on it.

Later on, in my 20s, I got turned onto the hill country blues scene, which was right in my backyard. That blew me away because I didn’t expect to live through a real blues experience — I thought that was thing of the past.

CP: Who was around then?

LD: R.L. Burnside lived about 20 minutes from me. It was amazing. We had a studio, so we all started working together, those of us in the second and third generation.

CP: How did the older guys in the first generation react to the younger musicians taking up that torch?

LD: Oh, they loved it. We used to play Big Mama Burnside’s birthday party, and R.L. would sit there in his lawn chair and request all of us to play his songs. It was so funny. He’d be sitting there and say, “Play ‘Goin’ Down South’; Play ‘All Night Long.’” It was hilarious. Those were the best parties around. It was literally an extension cord coming out of a window, and we’d all be set up in the yard or in the car port.

CP: So why did you start the Allstars? Was this a way of keeping the blues spirit alive?

LD: We had a rock’n’roll band, but I just lost the feeling for that band. I couldn’t write for it, and I wasn’t interested in it. All I had been studying was Fred MacDowell and R.L. Burnside. I was just engulfed in the music of that region at that time right there. One night, I was down in my friends trailer where we’d been using these mushrooms he found all day, and I was trying to fall asleep on this green shag carpet listening to Fred MacDowell, and the whole idea just came to me. It was like, “OK, we’re going to start a band called North Mississippi Allstars, and we’re going to use as many of the local players as possible. We’re gonna play the traditional, hill country material. That’s how it started out.

Over the years, we started writing our own songs and exploring our own identity. We went in different directions. It’s really cool because that was 12 years ago, and it totally worked. Now, I’m playing in the Black Crowes most of the time, and Cody and Chris and Dwayne and Gary Burnside have the Hill Country Review Band, so they’re keeping it alive and moving. I’m so proud of the whole thing because R.L. those guys trailblazed the path, and we’re keeping it beaten down. Even now that I’m not doing the Allstars full time, the other guys are still keeping the path.

CP: What, in your mind, goes into really good country blues or blues-rock music?

LD: Man, I don’t know. It’s really a gut reaction. Different people respond to different things. It’s funny, as an outsider and listener, the more primitive it is, the more I like it. But the whole second generation of players all play more. We’re all more rock, and there’s more influences there. It’s not as primitive as it used to be. It’s funny, Dwayne Burnside and Robert Randolph love Stevie Ray Vaughn, and I love Jimi Hendrix. Different people are moved by different things. That’s an interesting question.

CP: It sounds like what you’re doing injecting rock into your blues is sort of a natural evolution of the music.

LD: One thing I really don’t have any interest in is somebody trying to be a traditional revivalist and be all primitive. That doesn’t interest me at all. If somebody’s going to over play or write a rock or funk song, I’d prefer that if that’s what’s natural for them. The blues have definitely evolved. R.L. and Junior Kimbrough is evolved. Junior’s father was a guitar player. No one had ever heard him because he wasn’t recorded, but you know he was more primitive than Junior because Junior played with a full electric band. That’s just the way it goes.

CP: As a blues songwriter, is it true that you can’t play the blues unless you’ve lived them?

LD: Oh man, I don’t know about that. It’s funny, just last night, my friend and I were talking about that. Hank Williams, you know, definitely had the blues. Lots of writers draw from the same emotions. It’s hard to write blues songs anyway — it’s — near impossible. I don’t know if that’s just because I’ve not lived them. The thing about writing blues songs is that it’s part of an oral tradition. Those verses and phrases go back who knows how far? If you’re going to write a blues song, you’ve got to participate in the tradition. Bob Dylan does that in his latest record. He’ll use a totally cliché blues line, but then he’ll rhyme it with something off the wall. That’s so cool. Lots of more successful licks have been coming from old-fashioned people from back home. I don’t know, writing a blues song about “I’m driving in my car and my baby called me on my cell phone,” to me, that doesn’t cut it. Maybe you don’t have to live it, but it helps to participate in it. It’s a traditional thing.

CP: Do you think that your music is more authentic as a result of growing up where you did?

LD: I think I’ve definitely learned things. If you’re working with a traditional art form, it helps to learn things by hand, face to face. I was fortunate enough to do that. I went on tour with R.L. Burnside and played at Othar’s house all the time. My dad says that Othar taught me to feel music, and it took me a long to figure that out because it’s such an amorphous concept, but I think I’ve figured it out. We would sit down there for hours playing guitar for him because we wanted him to sing. Until you got something going, he wouldn’t sing, but if you got something right, he would jump up, throw his hat down and sing. Him drawing that out is part of when I’d say it’s not just feeling the music, it’s about creating a moment and sustaining it. In reality, I’m a pretty simple guitar player, but I’ve had so many great opportunities to play so many different types of music with so many great guitar players.

I think about it a lot, and John Hiatt says it’s just about being soulful, but I think that part of it is just being able to be around people. When you’re sitting around with people like John Hiatt or the Black Crowes, part of it is just being able to hang. I think if you keep your music simple enough, people can relate to it easier. I like that. I know a lot of great musicians who just play over people’s heads. That’s lucky for me because it comes to me naturally — it’s what I do. I love Billy Gibbons because he’s made a living taking blues licks and giving them pop hooks. It’s amazing.

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