Luther Dickinson is (almost) as fascinating to follow when he talks as when he plays guitar and for many of the same reasons. He’s full of ideas, but he’s also willing to follow his trains of thought, as he’s positive they will take him somewhere worth going and often times bring him right back to where he started.
The logic of his guitar solos follows that pattern, as does his conversation with Doug Collette. Strange as it might seem to hear such a down-home person talking aesthetics, Luther Dickinson is nothing if not the enlightened rogue the late Duane Allman was thinking of when he coined the phrase about his own Brothers in music. The late Jim Dickinson’s offspring (whose sibling Cody is also a charter member of The North Mississippi Allstars) knows history and respects it, though not so much so he won’t bring it into the present to set the stage for its future.
With the wizened perspective of the forty-year old he just became, Luther trusts his instincts, planning only just enough, confident he can interweave his solo career with his main vocation, the Allstars, giving short shrift to neither. Following the recent release of his newest solo album Rock and Roll Blues, we got more insight into the creative flow of one of rock’s most versatile and prolific musicians.
The first thing that struck me about Rock and Roll Blues was the cover shot of the guitar growing out of the beautiful green landscape. Who’s idea was that photograph and where was it taken?
It’s about fifteen minutes from my house, a beautiful hillside you can climb—there’s a road right here–and you can see for miles and miles and miles. That’s kudzu, the Mississippi state plant and I was just rolling round one morning with my friend taking pictures. It’s funny: none of the picture taken that morning was usable except that one: I just jumped in there with the kudzu- I’m crouching down holding the guitar.
That sounds like a Mississippi folk tale!
We just got really lucky. Glynis McDaris was the photographer and she did most of the art in the album.
It’s a great representation of how the music sounds: it’s so warm and so comfortable, it almost sounds like you and Sharde (Thomas, drums, fife and vocals), Amy (LaVere, bass and vocals) and Lightnin’ Malcolm (drums and vocals) just relaxed one afternoon and recorded all these songs. Was it as easy as it sounds?
It might’ve taken three days, but probably more like two. But some of the songs I’ve been working on for years: “Vandalized” is over twenty years old, a youthful punk song just never released, and I’ve been working on “Blood and Guts” for a few years, “Some Old Day” is really old and never found a home. But most of them are new. They were all orphans till they found each other. At some point I realized all these rock and roll songs about my life fit together and then I started writing towards that.
Was there one song or one track that seemed to crystallize the whole collection?
You know how it goes…at some point you go “OK it’s time to make another record…” so you go back to the drawing board and see what’s there, what’s happening and what you’ve been working on. I thought of the phrase ‘rock and roll blues’ because it’s been used before, and I thought, “Well that’s what this record is all about.”
It clearly wasn’t an Allstars record, it was so personal and so wordy: Something we just learned and something I wish we’d known ten or twelve years ago is to put things in their rightful place. Our biggest mistake with the Allstars is we tried to filter everything through this one outlet—every idea, every experimentation, every aesthetic.
That’s my biggest mistake: I like to set up these aesthetic parameters based on what I’m listening to at that time. Now this is my third solo release and it just makes everything stronger. World Boogie Is Coming, the last North Mississippi Allstars record (released autumn 2013), was really proper: that’s what people like us to do. And it feels good to have that freedom to have everything speak for itself and not get diluted or constricted or conflicted.
Your record does sound like an extension of Hambone’s Meditation (instrumental record from 2012) and your other solo album Onward and Upward (2009). There’s a story that you’re writing there that’s fascinating to follow because you’re going to lead it through the years; hopefully you’ll be doing this thirty or forty years from now, and it’s going to be chapter after chapter of these vivid little stories like those on this album. In contrast to the Allstars, it’s going to make for a great novel in its own way.
I hope so–that’s nice of you to say. I don’t have a follow-up to Rock and Roll Blues planned. I’ve got some really interesting ideas that I’d shooting towards now, but they’re not another proper singer/songwriter record. But I don’t want to follow that up. To me, almost, Rock and Roll Blues may be a once in a lifetime: it’s so personal, from ages eleven or twelve to forty. The first song I wrote in my early twenties, “Vandalized,” and the last song I literally finished the day of recording it, that morning like ”I gotta finish this!” Like I said I don’t want to follow it up, but I’ve got some crazy ideas in between!
I bet you do. You must be excited about this project you’ve got going with J.J. Grey (Southern Soul Assembly).
Oh yeah, this is so much fun!. We’re playing these beautiful theatres doing our own thing, not opening up for anybody.
It must be very gratifying because you’re getting your audience and no one else—they’re going to eat it up. And it must be a great feeling to know you’re really being listened to when you perform.
I loved The Wandering record you did with Amy and Sharde ( 2012’s Go On Now, You Can’t Stay Here: Mississippi Folk Music, Vol. 3) so how did how did you decide to record with them for this?
That’s just a natural extension of The Wandering. We broke up on the road. It was doomed, but it was beautiful while it lasted. Everyone was so classy and we made it through all our contractual agreements and fulfilled all our obligations, but that’s what came of it: Amy and Sharde and I adore playing with each other. So I invited them to make my record and shortly thereafter, Amy invited us to make her record, (Runaway’s Diary, 2014) Sharde and I played on it and I produced it with a bunch of other players. And it’s amazing. Like I said early, it’s the community that decides where it’s going and we have awesome chemistry and we love playing together, it’s so easy.
I tried recording these songs electric and it wasn’t happening, but all my side projects are acoustic, so when I decided to break down all the songs to acoustic the whole thing came to life. For me acoustic music is magic—it’s my true love—besides Bo Diddley or Howlin’ Wolf early Fifties rock and roll, I don’t really listen to electric music.
Is that right? Well I’m not surprised because this album is like someone whispering a story in your ear. Hambone’s is like that too, so insinuating there’s something almost mystical about it. But you sure love to crank it up when you get an electric guitar in your hands and your brother’s hammering on the drums!
Well, I love that and it is my first real love. And I get a lot of inspiration from Jack White: he’s a really smart gentleman, he’s really in control of what he’s doing and has a really good perspective on what’s happening. But I was looking at him and thinking “Wow, in this day and age, guitar is really out of fashion, so out of style, but he’s keeping it cool and keeping it popular, you know?” And that’s part of the debt I owe to rock and roll: to keep the electric guitar cool.
I appreciate that because I think the electric guitar is the greatest instrument ever invented.
It is! So I try and serve both masters you know, moving into a more electric type outfit for the future. But that’s what I mean about things being in their rightful place: with the Allstars we can just rock. That’s why I think our next recording will be even better because we’re such late bloomers. still figuring out what we do and what we need to be doing. Rock and Roll Blues is the culmination of the aesthetic I’ve been working on with the Memphis String Band and all these records with dead strings and ribbon mikes; I really learned from Buddy Miller (producer of Levon Helm and the Wood Brothers among others); he is so cool like “I will come to work at your place and you come to work at my place but I don’t want to overdub anything. If you want a banjo player, call one up and wait for him then cut the track. You want back up vocals?—call the girls and cut the track.” I read about a session of Phil Ramone’s where they all focused on the singer for the whole session, all about getting a live vocal performance. That scenario opened my mind because I grew up in a generation where you’d get a band track, then take time and get the vocals later. But that’s not the type of records I like.
But that’s a different thing and not really a performance per se. That’s a recording and recordings have their own personality, which is not the same thing as a performance in and of itself.
But that’s what I’ve been going for with my record, Amy’s record, The Allstars new record, all live vocals with few exceptions.
Interesting you mention Buddy Miller because he produced the last album by The Wood Brothers (The Muse, 2013) and he did such a great job with them. It looked like it was all done live and their music is a lot like Rock and Roll Blues too because the chemistry’s much the same. The recorded sound of your record is so warm: engineer Kevin Houston’s been working with you and the Allstars for a long time now hasn’t he?
Yeah we were in high school bands together and then in college we got another bassplayer and he went on to study music engineering. We’ve been recording together ever since we were kids, originally using just a four-track, but then I couldn’t take it anymore and bought myself an analog eight track machine for Rock and Roll Blues because that’s the medium by which I like to record: live vocals and a raw performance. I just love tape.
I didn’t see any credit on the album for ProTools computer software.
I know how to get a tolerable sound on the computer—we all do—but while you’re recording and the engineer hits ‘Record’ or you hear the sound of the tape rewinding, it’s like a hypnotic state of making music that’s not the same when you’re on the hard drive. And I just wanted to please myself: I had no outlet for this record when I made it, I was just making it for myself, right before my birthday. And I hate mixing, so we mixed it with no processing, straight off the levels, we just compressed the upright bass, we just took it straight from the two-track. I just wanted to hear what would happen if we went straight to tape and it was beautiful! It was perfect!
One time I listened to it, I turned it up and I just went to the middle of the room and sat down so I was surrounded by the music and it was like I was in the room with you guys as you played and sang…which is probably what you were aiming for.
That is totally it. And it’s so hard mastering: it’s a treacherous situation and I don’t trust myself to mix because I’m so old-fashioned. I hired a mixer for Amy’s record because I knew I couldn’t do it justice. I can indulge myself, but if somebody hires me to produce, I don’t feel right.
Is it because you couldn’t be objective enough about it?
I don’t know how to make a modern mix and I don’t have a reference point because I despise how modern records sound. My daughter is a little princess ballerina, so we listen to classical music and Walt Disney records, Modern Jazz Quartet, Ahmad Jamal and she loves piano music so we listen to Vince Guaraldi and Dave Brubeck. I love piano and it’s my main regret I’m not a piano player.
Can you play piano at all?. I’ve never seen a creidit for you doing it, but what happens when you sit down to just noodle?
I can’t rock, but I can play. I just composed a soundtrack, which I will eventually release: I played piano, vibes, Mellotron and horns, harmonica, melodicas and stuff—a beautiful experience. I was commissioned to perform accompaniment to a black and white film from 1927, Berlin,…it’s a great movie. All I had to do was play guitar, but the guitar would not do it: it was not talking to the movie. But piano was perfect, so I wrote and recorded the score to the movie, then synched it to the movie and played guitar along to that.
Don’t be too hard on yourself!. When the ambition strikes, you better follow it just like your inspiration. Have you ever seen a movie with live music accompaniment?
Yes, a friend of ours does it a lot and I love it. It’s insane how the mind wants to sync up the music to the image.
Absolutely!
I recorded my whole score inspired (…by the film…). I knew the movie by heart, but I wasn’t recording to the movie, though when I went to sync it, it’s like everything fell right into place. Put that there, put that there, boom boom boom…and then there were these beautiful coincidental syncs happening. It’s what the mind likes to do.
Right, but it doesn’t make it much less eerie when it falls into place like that at once. It’s almost like it was created all at one time. I can’t wait to hear that when it’s released..
I’ll probably just give it away since the movie is public domain. But I did take it to a guitar festival and improvise to it on the guitar which was REALLY cool because I ws able to do my thing on this music I created but I didn’t know it on guitar, so it was a little tricky.
What a great pleasure to be able to accompany yourself right?
My whole life is so blessed. Ever since I was a little kid I knew I wanted to be a musician because of my father and his friends, I knew it would happen because it was all there for me.
My life is real simple: just family and music and that’s it. Like J.J. says, it’s all about a moment and I’m so grateful for audiences coming to the shows, because without them it all falls apart: it’s nothing. It’s like the Allman Brothers say about ‘hittin’ the note:’ trying to get to that place! (laughs)
Dont miss Southern Soul Assembly on tour this fall. Tickets are on sale now at www.SouthernSoulAssembly.com.
Tour Dates
November 11 – The Panida Theater – Sandpoint, ID
November 12 – The Triple Door – Seattle, WA (2 shows!)
November 13 – Aladdin Theater – Portland, OR
November 14 – McDonald Theatre – Eugene, OR
November 15 – Cargo – Reno, NV
November 16 – The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
November 18 – Regent Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
November 19 – Orpheum Theater – Flagstaff, AZ
November 20 – The State Room – Salt Lake City, UT
November 21 – Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO
November 22 – Boulder Theater – Boulder, CO
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