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.
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.
Cedric Burnside began touring when he was 13, but he had a hell of a guardian: his grandfather and bandleader, the north Mississippi hill country blues giant R.L. Burnside. For 11 years, Cedric played drums behind his “Big Daddy” throughout the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia, helping spread the sound of Marshall and Benton counties.
He’d started when he was barely big enough to climb up on a drum throne, playing house parties and juke joints with R.L. and his neighbor, the region’s other musical patriarch, Junior Kimbrough. (Cedric inherited the drum chair in Kimbrough’s Soul Blues Boys from his father, Calvin Jackson.) And Cedric played with both men until Kimbrough’s heart gave out in 1998 and R.L. was sidelined by a major heart attack in 2002, nearly idling him until his death in 2005.
Cedric’s heart, however, is that of a musical lion. By the time he was in his late teens, he was considered one of the finest blues drummers on the planet—and he has four Blues Music Awards to certify that. Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars praises Burnside for “keeping authentic hill country drumming alive while casually modernizing the tradition,” and adds that “as a singer-songwriter he’s writing new blues classics of his own, and he’s become one of the great hill country guitarists.”
Frankly, while Cedric’s contributed drums live or on albums to Widespread Panic, T-Model Ford, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Paul Wine Jones, various bands with Burnside and Kimbrough family members, and many others—even Jimmy Buffet, his deepest mark has been made as a leader and co-leader in a series of thunderous, hypnotic, groove-intensive duos.
The guitar-and-drums format is in his bones. It’s a longtime staple of downhome and raw blues, going back to Hound Dog Taylor and beyond, and continuing up through his Big Daddy’s band, T-Model Ford, and Lil Poochie Watson & Hezekiah Early, to Jon Spencer, the White Stripes, and the Black Keys. Since 2007, Cedric has made five albums with duos: two with funky Tele-slinger Lightnin’ Malcolm and three with his guitar-playing cousin, Trenton Ayers. The latter were under the name the Cedric Burnside Project and include Descendants of Hill Country, which was nominated for a Grammy in 2016.
Ayers is a burning guitarist, but fans who’ve attended Cedric Burnside Project shows in recent years have been treated to Cedric’s emergence from behind the kit, as he’s moved up front for a portion of the sets to play a handful of originals and chestnuts on acoustic or electric guitar, nailing the transporting drones and mesmerizing riffs that give unadulterated north Mississippi hill country blues the mojo to leap genres and appeal to rock, blues, psych, and jam fans.
Turns out, Cedric Burnside has been seriously assembling his guitar skills for more than a decade, outside of the spotlight. And on his new album, Benton County Relic, Burnside stays in front of the kit, leaving the drumming to his engineer and partner on the album, Brian J, and delivering a modern hill country guitar manifesto. Cedric’s guitar tones are dirtier than a dog in a muddy Mississippi cotton patch. The stories, like all great blues, are irony-free and honest—and his singing drives them home the way Josh Gibson used to hit balls. The autobiographical “We Made It” is the tale of his rise from poverty in 3:35, set to stuttering, marrow-revealing guitar lines. “Hard to Stay Cool” takes a cue from Kimbrough’s sinuous 6-string melodies and chanted vocal style, but it’s amped by Cedric’s big-thumbed tone and his pure river water voice. It’s timely as hell, in this era of hot heads. And for a double-shot of that good old R.L. Burnside north Mississippi hill country grind, listen to “Death Bell Blues,” which Cedric and Brian J spackle with extra coats of rust.
TIDBIT: The Stratocaster on Burnside’s debut album as a guitarist was recorded, through two amps and a DI line, by drummer, guitarist, and engineer Brian J at his Brooklyn studio.
If you’re tired of typical I-IV-V fare, Cedric just might be your man, and Benton County Relic might be the tonic you’ve been wanting. And if you’re still a little mystified by what this “north Mississippi hill country guitar” stuff is, let Cedric explain.
What’s unique about Mississippi hill country blues guitar?
Hill country blues is very unorthodox. It’s got a very unorthodox style of rhythm. Many people are used to Chicago blues, Texas blues, and even Delta blues, you know, having the eight-bar or I-IV-V on it. With this music, there are no bars, you know? [
Laughs.] They like to hold the notes and bars as long as they want to. I see hill country blues as being more like they gonna do what they wanna do. [Laughs.] It’s definitely got its own thing—its own rhythm and everything.
It’s so straight from Africa that I feel it in my bones, in my soul, you know? I was listening to Ali Farka Touré about three or four years ago, and I was like, “Oh, that’s some old Junior Kimbrough song.” I really thought it was Junior until he started singing, and when he started singing, I was like, “wow.” Hill country is very African sounding.
Let’s talk about your musical background and how you started playing with R.L. Burnside, your Big Daddy.
My Big Daddy used to do house parties every other weekend. And as a young kid, I’m one of several grandkids that used to set there, at 5 or 6 years old, just listening at the music and watching.
Watching my Big Daddy and my dad and uncle play, I just knew in my heart and soul that that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Nobody had to tell me. My eyes bugged wide open because I loved that music so much. So one evening I just went up to jump on the drums, when my Big Daddy and dad took a break to go drink the moonshine and get refreshed. And people started saying, “Look at that little guy! Man, he’s gonna be good some day.” That turned into me playing the juke joints at age 10, with Big Daddy and Junior. I did my first tour with Big Daddy at age 13, and I’m still going today. I just thank God for everything that R.L. Burnside and Junior taught me. Now, I’m about to be 40 on August 26.
On acoustic or electric guitar, Cedric Burnside’s sound is full of rumbling strings, plucked punctuations, and hypnotic riffs—all part of the code of north Mississippi hill country blues. Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
Touring as a 13-year-old sounds like a hell of a way to see the world.
For that first tour, we went up to Toronto. I had never even been out of Mississippi. I had butterflies, because I was only just used to playing local house parties or the juke joints, you know? And so to get there and see a different crowd, and wondering are they even gonna like this music, and wondering if I’m gonna mess up or not. It was just awful—the butterflies in my stomach. But after the first song, they started clapping and shouting, and I was like, “Oh, okay, cool!” Then I knew I was ready.
What led you to play guitar, and when did you start playing?
I never put a whole lot of interest in it, like I did the last eight or nine years, but I’ve been fiddling around with the guitar for the last 13, 14 years. I just finally took it seriously, mainly because when I write a song I want the music to be right. Before that, I had to sound the chords out with my mouth. People didn’t understand what I was going for. I didn’t even know what key it was in. A lot of times I sounded stupid! [
Laughs.] And so I told myself, man, I just got to learn to play guitar so I can play my music for people, as opposed to trying to hum it out.
Luther Dickinson gave me my first guitar, and I always took that guitar everywhere with me, no matter where I went. I practiced in the hotel room a lot. I practiced in my house on my porch. I kinda developed my own style. Luther showed me a little something on the guitar, when I was on the road with him and JoJo [Hermann] from Widespread Panic several years ago. And I’ve been doing it ever since: Trying to get better and better, and get better and better at songwriting. I have to say, the guitar is my newfound love.
Well, I’ve heard a lot of hill-country guitar, and I don’t think anybody’s doing it better than you right now. What kind of guitar did Luther give you?
It was an old Harmony acoustic. I’ve still got that guitar.
The guitar-and-drums duo format seems to be the basis of most Mississippi hill country style bands. What kind of freedom does it give you? And what kind of responsibility does it impose on you?
That’s just what I know. I’m not opposed to playing with a bass player. It’s just that that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life: the raw hill country blues. Even when I toured with Big Daddy, it was like a duo, with him and Kenny Brown on guitars. But a lot of times at the juke joint [Junior’s Place, which was run by Kimbrough], Kenny wouldn’t be there or the bass wouldn’t show up, so me and Big Daddy would have to do a duo. We’d make it work. So that’s why I decided to keep my band and my albums as a duo.
Guitars
Fender Stratocaster (studio)
Ibanez AR (live)
Fender Squier (live)
Amps
Fender Bassman (studio and live)
Fender Twin (studio)
1x10 Supro or Silvertone (studio)
Effects
Fender Reverb tank (studio)
Electro-Harmonix Memory Man (studio)
Boss EQ (live)
Strings and Picks
Various .011 sets
Brass and glass slides
As a guitar player, I wouldn’t say a duo gives me more freedom, because I have to play the lead and the bass at the same time. That’s a task. You gotta mind your Ps and Qs to do the lead and the bass. It takes some work and a bunch of time to get used to it. It kinda comes second nature to me now that I’m able to write my songs in the style that I want to play my music in. And the sound of the guitar is important. I like to think of it as dirty. [Laughs.]
Let’s talk about Benton County Relic. On past albums, you’ve primarily sung while playing the drum kit. This time your guitar is out front all the way. Why make your debut as a guitarist-frontman now?
I write songs all the time, and I wanted people to finally hear my songs the way I intend them, instead of another guitar player interpreting. I want people to know who I am and what I go through in life, and what my family and friends go through in life, and, hopefully, when the people hear it, they can relate. For me, this was overdue.
What gear did you use in the studio?
I was using a Fender Twin, a Fender Bassman, and a Stratocaster my friend Brian J had in the studio.
The guitar sound is fat and filthy. Did you use any overdrive or distortion pedals?
To be honest with you, I’m not really used to pedals. I use just a little equalizer pedal to give me a little boost. But that’s about it. Brian J put one on “Call on Me.” I forget the name of the pedal that he used to make it kinda, I guess, Caribbean-sounding. [
Laughs.] [For more details see the sidebar, “Capturing the Hill Country Guitar Sound.”]
But I do crank the Bassman up. I kind of put the highs and the lows at the same level, but try to put the volume on about 6 or 7, to bring out that good bottom.
We did the whole album in two days, just going song after song after song. We didn’t even listen to rough mixes because we didn’t have time. And the night before I left the studio in Brooklyn, we listened at all the music, and we was like, wow, we couldn’t believe what we had come up with.
