North Mississippi Allstars

There’s work to do, though. Bassist Chris Chew, 26, shows up at the Dickinson’s house ready for a day of jamming. Drummer Cody, 24, wants the outfit to record his new song, “Hillbilly Vertigo,” an original tune and a departure from the traditional blues standards found on Shake Hands With Shorty, the band’s debut CD. Classic songs by Fred McDowell, R.L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough, among other blues legends who have roots in the region, grace the 10 tracks on the group’s Tone-Cool album.

But don’t mistake the Allstars for simply a blues cover band. The performers’ musical taste and their repertoire go way beyond just mimicking a style. They are teachers and preachers of their heavily influenced blues roots music. Absorbing the region’s blues-rich community and spreading it like a gospel everywhere they go, the North Mississippi Allstars have created a fresh sound using the music of decades past.

While the area and its flock of notable blues dudes had a tremendous influence on the band’s sound, an equally important factor resonated from within the Dickinson family. Cody and Luther’s father is Jim Dickinson, who’s been called a “producer’s producer” for his work years ago in Memphis studios. Jim has recorded with the likes of Ry Cooder, the Rolling Stones, Alex Chilton, Bob Dylan, and The Replacements, among many others. Obviously, music was in the air from the brothers’ beginning.

“We had a musical family and we grew up watching our dad and his friends play,” Luther said. “And as we got older I mean, we were really young and we played parties and stuff all through high school we always knew what we wanted to do. We just tried to prepare for it the best we could, but it’s such an ambiguous future, you know? Growing up, wanting to be a musician there’s no way to tell what’s going to happen.”

The brothers Dickinson formed a band called DDT when Luther was 17. The group and its various incarnations, which lasted about seven years, performed a mix of “punk, southern rock, fusion, folk anything,” Luther said. “It was just very creative original music. We played anything we wanted to.”

In between gigging, recording albums and contributing to compilations as DDT, Luther became interested in the blues, leading him to fully realize the wealth of musical knowledge embedded in the region. In his late teens, “I got to know Otha Turner and R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, and we were so lucky to realize that there’s this great community of local blues music right here and now,” Luther said. “It wasn’t like a resurgence or a museum. It was real life, you know, drive down to Junior’s and drink some moonshine. …

“And the thing that was key to us was there was all these second-generation musicians and their families, like Cedric Burnside or Garry Burnside or Kenny Kimbrough. And we got to know those guys as friends.”

So the Allstars were formed and immediately lived up to their moniker. Turner and his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, as well as blues legends’ children, sat in with the band. “It was just like a musical chairs thing,” Luther said. Over the years of touring, the Allstars have traveled with Medeski Martin & Wood, Gov’t Mule, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Galactic, a band with similarities to the Allstars.

“It’s so cool because they (Galactic) are taking their regional New Orleans tradition and pushing it to the future and exposing it to kids,” Luther said, “and that’s the same thing we’re doing.”

Constant performing remains a top priority for the band. Because of Chew’s day job as a truck driver, the Allstars recently enlisted Garry Burnside to play in the band on a full-time basis, covering bass in Chew’s absence and doubling on guitar and drums during other gigs.

“I think there’s a spirit that lives in the music that you can only get, you can only conjure up when you’re rolling every day. It’s a new city, another gig every night, and you do that long enough, you get this energy, this perpetual motion-type energy that I think people respond to more than actually the music itself, in a lot of cases,” Luther said. “But that’s my life force, man. I love that feeling more than anything.”

Back at the Dickinsons’ home on a warm Mississippi summer afternoon, the Allstars have only a handful of days off in between their just-finished European outing and their U.S. tour, which runs for two months. Work must be done to prepare for the tour. “We’re getting my gear checked out as far as making sure everything is good before we leave,” Chew said before heading to the brothers’ backyard studio where the band recorded … Shorty.

The group doesn’t mind the busy schedule. “I think we’re building a good foundation because we just strive for a career of playing music and touring and recording,” Luther said. “We’re young and we love it. [Touring] doesn’t wear us down, either. We never get too tired. We really get more rest on the road than when we’re at home because … you get home and there’s no time to sleep. There’s so many things to take care of, things you want to do and people you want to see.”