The North Mississippi Allstars seem to have sprung from the Mississippi mud. The band’s attachment to the fabled land of the blues is passionate and profound.
“I’ve always been drawn to the past,” says lead singer and guitarist Luther Dickinson. “I love old music, old books and movies, old sayings, phrases. There’s an aesthetic that runs through it all that shapes me.”
As a teenager in Mississippi in the late 1980s, Dickinson’s fervor for roots music led him to the northern hills, where he encountered a pocket of musicians whose blues departed sharply from the Muddy Waters, B.B. King Delta sounds that had inspired decades of rock-and-roll. It was these interactions that inspired Dickinson and his younger brother, Cody, to form the North Mississippi Allstars. High school friend Chris Chew joined the core unit, which is augmented by a revolving cast of hill country players.
Luther, 37, and Cody, 33, were destined to become musicians. Their father, the late keyboardist-producer Jim Dickinson, worked with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and Ry Cooder, and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association in 2007. Their mother, Mary Lindsay, is the longtime manager of the family’s Zebra Ranch recording studio. The boys began playing guitar when they were about 5.
In high school, the Dickinson brothers formed a punk band, but Luther Dickinson’s attention wandered. He became close to the late Otha Turner, an octogenarian hill country farmer and fife and drum player. He would spend afternoons at Turner’s farm and began playing music and enjoying “goat sandwiches” at Turner’s community barbecues. He also began studying the guitar style of bluesman Fred McDowell and sought out Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, who became mentors.