Dan Auerbach poses with the gem he used to record much of Delta Kream: a Kawai Kingston S4T once owned by raw blues slide master Hound Dog Taylor. Note Taylor's name on the headstock, courtesy of the Dog himself, via a plastic-label punch.
There's no more biblical—New Testament, of course—introduction to the raucous, bouncing, mesmeric sound of North Mississippi hill country blues than the new Black Keys album, Delta Kream. It's essentially the agrestic subgenre's greatest hits: a collection of ripe corpuscles from the catalogs of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Ranie Burnette, Big Joe Williams, and Fred McDowell, plucked straight from the music's thumping heart—as chiseled into its core DNA as the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln are into the granite of Mt. Rushmore.
Burnside and Kimbrough, in particular, are the album's marrow, and that's a matter of faith. "People might not have heard of them, but they are two of the most important American musicians that ever were," preaches Dan Auerbach, the guitarist and singer who, along with Patrick Carney, breathes life into the Black Keys. "Pat and I are doing this entire thing in honor of them."
The Black Keys' "Crawling Kingsnake"
Watch the Delta Kream crew—Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney of the Black Keys amended by guitarist Kenny Brown, bassist Eric Deaton, and percussionist Sam Bacco—play Junior Kimbrough's version of John Lee Hooker's "Crawling Kingsnake." Auerbach plays his 1960 Tele Deluxe and Brown is on his 1958 Silvertone. The primary location is the Blue Front Café in Bentonia, Mississippi—the longest continuously operating juke joint in the United States. Its proprietor, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, for whom Auerbach produced a Grammy-nominated album, makes a cameo at 2:10.
And so a band that worked its way up from dive bars to headlining arenas, outdoor sheds, and festivals over 20 years—along the path distilling and evolving their original garage/blues sound into a brilliantly crafted, writerly, and eclectically influenced approach that's magnetized multiple Grammy nominations and hordes of fans, plus yielded 10 studio albums—does a musical 180. The smooth-but-sassy hooks inside albums like Brothers, El Camino, and Turn Blue—their platinum-selling trilogy from 2010 to 2014—are replaced by the rough-hewn, barbed ones of "Coal Black Mattie," "Poor Boy a Long Way From Home," and "Stay All Night." And nods to funk, psychedelia, pop, rockabilly, surf, and other normative forms are replaced by a devotion to a sound that echoes up from the African diaspora.
"In R.L. [Burnside], I could hear the ghosts of the whole lineage of the music that comes up the Mississippi River combined with all the cool bar sounds I loved about Chicago blues, all rolled into one person." —Dan Auerbach
That the call and response of Senegambian village drummers, the drone of the 1-stringed njarka, and the keening trill of handcarved reed fifes would still resonate so distinctly in a strain of rural electric blues might be called a near-miracle, if not for the dark cloud of their origins. As musicologist Edward M. Komara explained to me one night over copious beer and whiskey in a bar in Oxford, Mississippi, his extensive research shows that North Mississippi's slave owners were more tolerant of the indigenous music of their human property than those of the Delta and most other parts of the deep South, where drums and traditional rhythms, especially, were feared to be signals of rebellion. As a result, even today the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band plies grooves forged in the Niger Delta, and the one-chord stomp perfected by the late Kimbrough and Burnside stands as a nexus between the sounds of world music, psychedelia, rock, folk, and anything else that came into its octopus-like grasp over the past 400 years—amplified loud.
"The first time I heard the North Mississippi sound was in Alan Lomax's field recordings and Fred McDowell's Arhoolie label recordings," Auerbach recalls. "I fell in love with that stuff, and Fred's 'Write Me a Few of Your Lines' became a favorite song. With this stuff, some people get it, some people don't. When I first heard Junior Kimbrough"—whose melismatic singing and greased-spider guitar lines are a form of sonic hypnotherapy—"I didn't get it. It was way easier for me to get into R.L. Burnside. I had both of their albums, on Fat Possum, and in R.L. I could hear the ghosts of the whole lineage of the music that comes up the Mississippi River combined with all the cool bar sounds I loved about Chicago blues, all rolled into one person. And at the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland, I got to witness R.L. destroying a crowd. It was a combination of those records and seeing those guys play live, which was so intense it was mind blowing."
TIDBIT: The cover of the Black Keys' new album is a photo by William Eggleston, who in the 1950s began capturing Southern life. It was taken at a snack bar in North Mississippi.
By the time Auerbach and Carney, who've been playing together since they were 16 and 17, determined to make the Black Keys' 2002 debut, The Big Come Up, the sound of other raging Mississippi jukers like Paul "Wine" Jones and T-Model Ford was also in their gullets.
The Black Keys have paid homage before, with 2006's Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough. "I think we tried some of the songs we recorded for Delta Kream on those sessions, but it just didn't work out," Auerbach offers. "I'm not sure that, even 10 years ago, we would have been able to play these songs correctly, but Pat and I have both grown as musicians, and Pat's drumming blows me away on this album. It's so on the money and so him at the same time."
Junior Kimbrough holds court from the stage of his juke joint in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1995.
As Auerbach's solo albums and productions for artists as diverse as the Pretenders and 73-year-old bluesman Jimmy "Duck" Holmes have shown, he's also developed a knack for assembling the right cast of musicians. And for Delta Kream, he invited guitarist Kenny Brown, who played with Burnside for decades and earned the old wizard's praise as his "adopted son," and Eric Deaton, an MVP among hill country and Delta bandleaders, to help make the album bone-true. Percussionist Sam Bacco, another of Auerbach's frequent accomplices, completes the krewe.
"What some people miss about this music is that the right-hand technique is what really makes it." —Kenny Brown
Honestly, they were already at Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville, where they'd been pressed into service for Sharecropper's Son, an album Auerbach produced for Robert Finley. "When we finished the session for Robert's record, I texted Pat and told him he should come over the next day, just because it was so much fun to play with Kenny Brown. And that was pretty much it. It was a bunch of first takes. Two days later we had an album. We played all these songs we loved, from memory, and having Eric there to help me was great, because he knows all that stuff cold. And Kenny played on all of the original recordings! If you're a lover of hill country records, you love Kenny Brown even if you don't know it. I didn't fully realize it until he was sitting next to me, playing. It was that sound—the slide, those heavy notes. That great sound on 'Sad Days, Lovely Nights,' where he just hangs on the slide and makes this atmospheric sound.… He did that behind Junior Kimbrough on the original recording. That's my favorite musical moment from one of my favorite records—and there it was."
Kenny Brown, left, with his twice-stolen-and-returned 1958 Silvertone, added authentic blood to the Delta Kream sessions at Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound Studio. This master of Mississippi hill country guitar initially learned from the legendary Joe Callicott, Brown's neighbor as a child, and then apprenticed under the decades-long guidance of R.L. Burnside.
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Brown first met Auerbach over a decade ago at Norway's Notodden Blues Festival, on an artist shuttle heading back to the airport. "We had all had a late night and nobody was talking much," he says. But at the Delta Kream sessions, they instantly spoke the same musical language. "Dan is great to play with," Brown notes. "I loved the studio because it had great gear and Dan got really good sounds quick, and he's like me: He doesn't really play anything exactly the same way twice, so it always feels real fresh.
"Man, doing these songs bought back all kinds of memories. I was thinking about how we played 'Crawling Kingsnake' on Junior's first album, that we cut at his juke joint. And playing 'Poor Boy a Long Way From Home.' After 40 years, at least I can do 'em good now," Brown says, laughing.
"What some people miss about this music," says Brown, "is that the right-hand technique is what really makes it. A lot of the songs R.L. did, you can play with one finger on your left hand, but the right hand takes about three fingers working really fast. To really get the sound, sometimes you need to hit the strings, like a percussion thing. I think that comes from the fife and drum music. I do a lot of muting with my left hand and the heel of my right hand, and even the bass of my thumb. I don't even really think about it anymore, unless I try to teach somebody how to do it."
R.L. Burnside cradles an old Teisco in this 1996 publicity photo, but he was never fussy about what guitar he played.
For the sessions, Brown brought his beloved 1958 Silvertone. The guitar's been stolen from him twice, and returned, largely because it's recognizable by the twin popsicle sticks behind the headstock used to raise and anchor the tuning pegs. He also brought along the 1989 made-in-Mexico Stratocaster he frequently wielded with Burnside. And he used a third guitar: Fred McDowell's familiar Gibson Trini Lopez model, which Auerbach now owns along with Hound Dog Taylor's Kawai Kingston (a model often referred to generically as a Teisco, one of Kawai's popular spin-off brands), which also dishes out dirt on Delta Kream. Brown used only one pedal—Auerbach's Basic Audio Scarab Deluxe Fuzz, which he admired enough that the Black Key sent him one after the sessions.
Besides Hound Dog's Kawai, Auerbach played his beloved 1960 Telecaster Deluxe, which, he notes with a laugh, Nashville session legend Tom Bukovac has dubbed "the finest Tele on Earth." He enjoyed pairing it with an Analog Man Sun Face. "I used it a lot and kept it on with the volume down for my clean sound. The Tele pickups really work well with it. And the B-string on my Tele buzzes a little, because of the action, and I really like that. I told my guitar tech to leave it, because it always has a little sitar thing. You can hear it on the album."
"When I was 18, I label-maker-ed my name on the headstock of one of my Teiscos because of Hound Dog Taylor." —Dan Auerbach
DAN AUERBACH'S GEAR
Guitars
- 1960 Fender Telecaster Deluxe
- 1960s Kawai Kingston S4T formerly owned by Hound Dog Taylor
- 1960s Gibson Trini Lopez Standard (played on the sessions by Kenny Brown and formerly owned by Fred McDowell)
Amps
- 1950s Fender narrow-panel tweed Deluxe
Effects
- Ebo Customs E-Verb
- Analog Man Sun Face
Strings & Picks
- SIT .011 sets
- Jim Dunlop Custom picks
Auerbach acquired the Kawai through Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records, the label Iglauer founded in 1971 to put out Hound Dog Taylor's debut album. "That was really gracious of him, and I've been using it non-stop ever since I got it," Auerbach attests. "We didn't do anything but clean up the pots, and it sounds and works great. It still has Hound Dog's name on a strip from a plastic label maker on the headstock. When I was 18, I label-maker-ed my name on the headstock of one of my Teiscos because of Hound Dog."
His amp of choice was a vintage, narrow-panel tweed Fender Deluxe paired with an Ebo Customs E-Verb. "I set the reverb right next to me when I played so I could turn it up and down in the middle of songs, for solos," he adds. Since the original versions of all the numbers on Delta Kream were recorded by players who eschewed picks for fingers, it seemed natural to ask Auerbach if he followed suit. "I did both. Junior and R.L. never used a pick, but once in a while I indulged myself," he said, chuckling.
"There's no set pattern to how we record or plan an album," he says. "Every one's been pretty different, and we never talk about it ahead of time—never. It's just fun and spontaneous, and sometimes those moments and ideas end up being the most pivotal."
Put Dirt in Your Ears
Fuel up on the North Mississippi hill country blues sounds that inspired the Black Keys' Delta Kream.
Too Bad Jim, R.L. Burnside: Burnside's debut album on Mississippi's Fat Possum label is a rough-hewn testimonial to the rugged, ragged power of this regional folk-art form. With Burnside and Kenny Brown on slide, rhythm, and lead guitars, this set was a major influence on Auerbach and Carney during the Black Keys' formative years.
All Night Long, Junior Kimbrough: From the first notes, Kimbrough's idiosyncratic approach to blues is obvious and mesmerizing. Listening carefully, you can hear the threads of African music, hardcore blues, psychedelia, improvisation, and primal rock pulling together in his rather eerie sound.
You Gotta Move, Mississippi Fred McDowell: The rural majesty of McDowell's rhythm 'n' slide style is instantly arresting. No wonder he became a popular opener for major rock bands from the late 1960s till his death in 1971. You know McDowell's "You Gotta Move" from the Rolling Stones' version, and here you can enjoy the original "Louise," which the Black Keys recorded for Delta Kream.
Everybody Hollerin' Goat, Otha Turner and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band: Get down to the roots of the hill country sound with this album of the straight-from-Africa echoes of Mississippi fife-and-drum music. Turner, who carved his own reed fifes with heated metal rods, died at age 95 in 2007, but his granddaughter, Shardé Thomas, still leads the band today.
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Naturally, every recording Eddie Van Halen ever played on has been pored over by legions of guitar players of all styles. It might seem funny, then, to consider EVH solos that might require more attention. But your 100 Guitarists hosts have their picks of solos that they feel merit a little discussion. Some of these are deep cuts—get ready for some instrumental bonus tracks and Van Halen III mentions—and some are among the biggest radio hits of their time. Just because their hits, though, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to add to the conversation.
We can’t cover everything EVH—Jason has already tried while producing the Runnin’ With the Dweezil podcast. But we cover as much as we can in our longest episode yet. And in the second installment of our current listening segment, we’re talking about new-ish music from Oz Noy and Bill Orcutt.
Tinkering with theSDE-3 Dual Digital Delay suggested a similar, possibly enduring appeal. As an evolution of the Roland SDE-3000rack unit from the 1980s, it’s a texture machine, bubbling with subtle-to-odd triangle LFO modulations and enhanced dual-delay patterns that make tone mazes from dopey-simple melodies. And with the capacity to use it with two amps in stereo or in panning capacity, it can be much more dimensional. But while the SDE-3 will become indispensable to some for its most complex echo textures, its basic voice possesses warmth that lends personality in pedestrian applications too.
Tapping Into the Source
Some interest in the original SDE-3000 is in its association with Eddie Van Halen, who ran two of them in a wet-dry-wet configuration, using different delay rates and modulation to thicken and lend dimension to solos. But while EVH’s de facto endorsement prompted reissues of the effect as far back as the ’90s, part of the appeal was down to the 3000’s intrinsic elegance and simplicity.
In fact, the original rack unit’s features don’t differ much from what you would find on modern, inexpensive stompbox echoes. But the SDE-3000’s simplicity and reliable predictability made it conducive to fast workflow in the studio. Critically, it also avoided the lo-fi and sterility shortcomings that plagued some lesser rivals—an attribute designer Yoshi Ikegami chalks up to analog components elsewhere in the circuit and a fortuitous clock imprecision that lends organic essence to the repeats.
Evolved Echo Animal
Though the SDE-3 traces a line back to the SDE-3000 in sound and function, it is a very evolved riff on a theme. I don’t have an original SDE-3000 on hand for comparison, but it’s easy to hear how the SDE-3 bridges a gap between analog haze and more clinical, surgical digital sounds in the way that made the original famous. Thanks to the hi-cut control, the SDE-3’s voice can be shaped to enhance the angular aspect of the echoes, or blunt sharp edges. There’s also a lot of leeway to toy with varied EQ settings without sacrificing the ample definition in the repeats. That also means you can take advantage of the polyrhythmic effects that are arguably its greatest asset.
“There’s a lot of leeway to toy with varied EQ settings without sacrificing the ample definition in the repeats.”
The SDE-3’s offset control, which generates these polyrhythmic echoes, is its heart. The most practical and familiar echos, like quarter, eighth, and dotted-eighth patterns, are easy to access in the second half of the offset knobs range. In the first half of the knob’s throw, however, the offset delays often clang about at less-regular intervals, producing complex polyrhythms that are also cool multipliers of the modulation and EQ effects. For example, when emphasizing top end in repeats, using aggressive effects mixes and pitch-wobble modulation generates eerie ghost notes that swim through and around patterns, adding rhythmic interest and texture without derailing the drive behind a groove. Even at modest settings, these are great alternatives to more staid, regular subdivision patterns. Many of the coolest sounds tend toward the foggy reverb spectrum. Removing high end, piling on feedback, and adding the woozy, drunken drift from modulation creates fascinating backdrops for slow, sparse chord melodies. Faster modulations throb and swirl like old BBC Radiophonic Workshop sci-fi sound designs.
By themselves, the modulations have their own broad appeal. Chorus tones are rarely the archetypal Roland Jazz Chorus or CE type—tending to be a bit darker and mistier. But they do a nice job suggesting that texture without lapsing into caricature. There are also really cool rotary-speaker-like textures and vibrato sounds that offer alternatives to go-to industry standards.
The Verdict
The SDE-3’s many available sounds and textures would be appealing at $219—even without the stereo and panning connectivity options, a useful hold function, and expression pedal control that opens up additional options. The panning capabilities, in particular, sparked all kinds of thoughts about studio applications. Mastering the SDE-3 takes just a little study—certain polyrhythms can be dramatically reshaped by the interactivity of other controls and you need to take care to achieve identical results twice. But this is a pedal that, by virtue of its relative simplicity and richness and breadth of sounds, exceeds the utility of some similarly priced rivals, all while opening up possibilities well outside the simple echo realm
Reader: T. Moody
Hometown: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Guitar: The Green Snake
Reader T. Moody turned this Yamaha Pacifica body into a reptilian rocker.
I have always loved the reverse headstock, simply because nothing says 1987 (the best year in the history of the world) like a reverse headstock. The pickups are both Seymour Duncan—an SH-1N in the neck position and TB-4 in the bridge, both in a very cool lime green color. Right when these pickups got listed, the Buy It Now button once again lit up like the Fourth of July. I am a loyal disciple of Sperzel locking tuners and think Bob Sperzel was a pure genius, so I knew those were going on this project even before I started on it. I also knew that I wanted a Vega-Trem; those units are absolutely amazing.
When the body arrived, I thought it would be cool to do some kind of burst around the yellow so I went with a neon green. It turned out better than I imagined. Next up was the shaping and cutting of the pickguard. I had this crocodile-type, faux-leather material that I glued on the pickguard and then shaped to my liking. I wanted just a single volume control and no tone knob, because, like King Edward (Van Halen) once said, “Your volume is your tone.”
T. Moody
I then shaped and glued the faux-leather material in the cavity. The tuning knobs, volume knob, pickguard, screws, and selector switch were also painted in the lemon-lime paint scheme. I put everything together, installed the pickups, strung it up, set it up, plugged it in, and I was blown away. I think this is the best-playing and -sounding guitar I have ever tried.
The only thing missing was the center piece and strap. The latter was easy because DiMarzio makes their ClipLock in neon green. The center piece was more difficult because originally, I was thinking that some kind of gator-style decoration would be cool. In the end, I went with a green snake, because crocodiles ain’t too flexible—and they’re way too big to fit in a pickup cavity!
The Green Snake’s back is just as striking as the front.
