North Mississippi Allstars
World Boogie Is Coming
Songs of the South Records
When the North Mississippi Allstars channel their blues forefathers, they go straight for the horse’s mouth. On “Get the Snakes out the Woods,” R.L. Burnside himself shares unintelligible reptilian advice about needing to, well … get the snakes out o’ the woods. This bleeds into the next track, “Snake Drive,” where Luther Dickinson busts into raunchy slide licks and has some fun with the lyrics and unmistakable rhythms from Burnside’s 1992 track “Let My Baby Ride.” (Burnside’s sons Duwayne and Garry also make appearances on the album.)
There’s a lot of talk about snakes on World Boogie, but Luther, drummer brother Cody, and bassist Chris Chew aren’t just whistling Dixie down on the bayou. This is the soundtrack to Mississippi: The album was made to accompany Cody Dickinson’s films on modern life in the South. If you’re wondering what that sounds like in guitar-speak, here’s a shortlist: snarl, slide, locomotive, primal, all with a surprisingly modern edge. It’s quite an onion to peel. “Shimmy” has bluesy acoustic fingerpicking and an old-timey military march feel, complete with fife playing and a drummer-boy promenade. And on “My Babe,” vocalist Sharde Thomas blends a new-school twist into the tried-and-true with her bright, dewy call-and-response verses. Luther’s smooth-as-mud slow-burn on World Boogie postures nicely with the grit-caked ancestors he’s channeling, and these exciting contrasts make the North Mississippi Allstars an interesting band to watch. Regardless of what torches are being exchanged, this collection is using them to light fires under asses. —Tessa Jeffers
Must-hear tracks: “Snake Drive,” “Rollin 'n Tumblin”
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Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
