C: What’s it like balancing life on the road with life in the studio? I know you guys are on the road almost non-stop and you had spent quite a bit of time working on the album in the meantime. Luther even does some producing work. Have you felt a little burned out at all?

CD: No, it’s funny. When we go on tour, we open for quite a few different bigger bands. We play these theaters in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, more than a lot of the headlining acts. When we load in and do sound-check, the house guys there are like, “Hey, we just saw y’all two weeks ago!” and it’s true. We’ve been on the road non-stop. We just did a seven-week run with one week in-between. That one week off we had, Jon Spencer was at our place in Coldwater, just waiting for us to start cutting. The whole week home was spent in the studio. We cut what’s gonna be an album that’s gonna be released as “Jon Spencer and the North Mississippi All-Stars.” It’s bad-ass. I’m really excited about that.

C: Did you all play on that together?

CD: Yeah, I played drums and bass and Luther played guitar. I’m really psyched about it. I don’t get burned out or bogged down, because each and every day I’m making progress. The progress becomes more and more obvious. I’ve geared my whole life towards it, so I’m ready.

C: There are a couple of tracks on the album that really strike me. I got the album right before I went on a long road-trip, so I wore it out, right out of the case. There are points on some tracks, like Po’ Black Maddie, where I can hear some Allman Brothers style riffs, and then you break it down much like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, with the quick drum solo in the middle. Are these influences incidental to your sound or is their inclusion intentional?

CD: Well, in a lot of the drums parts at least there are a lot of direct references. I reference Mitch Mitchell in that song, and Robert Barnett of Big Ass Truck. I play a lot of his stuff on the record. We definitely wear the influences on our sleeve. As far as the Allman Brothers progression on Po’ Black Maddie, it just seemed so obvious, we started doing it onstage just for fun and it became part of it. When we went in to do the record, we tried to capture all the good stuff we’d come up with onstage on the last couple of tours. We just wanted to throw it right in there. The transition into Skinny Woman, we were all about that because that’s exactly what we try to do live-

C: Segue right into it.

CD: We like to Segue into different songs.

C: I know you want to try and make the album and live experience equal so people can appreciate them both.

CD: Right, exactly. We’re gonna freak out on the next couple of records and stretch things out even more. On this one, we had a lot of music we needed to document.

C: I did a little bit of research to try and learn some more about the songs on your album. I know a couple of the songs you have on the album like Station Blues, KC Jones, and Someday Baby I’ve heard from other band that have similar influences, many coming from Memphis. Sometimes I’ve seen these songs recorded under different names. I know Station Blues I’ve seen listed as Sittin’ On Top Of The World.

CD: Oh definitely.

C: Would you say this is more a result of the oral tradition passing blues music down from generation to generation or is it simply because these are your own rock interpretations of these songs?

CD: Yeah, what we call Station Blues is kind of a combination of that and Sittin’ On Top of the World the way that Otha does it. That’s a direct reference. Of course there are a lot of songs called KC Jones. It’s kind of like Stag-O-Lee or whatever, but we do the Furry Lewis version that we learned from Mudboy and the Neutrons. That’s total Memphis. That’s good though. You’re absolutely right, man. It’s a strange hybrid. Even though we try to do these songs like we’ve heard them before, even more gets lots in translation. That’s part of the artist’s interpretation, I guess. The lyrics are so great on those old tunes. It’s hard to resist playing them.

C: Sure, I know the Grateful Dead recorded an acoustic variation of KC Jones and called it On the Road Again. The Memphis Jug Band cut that as a 78 back in the 20’s. You guys also have your own Jug band, [Gutbucket] of course. They also recorded a song called Stealin’ which was the B-side to the Dead’s first release Don’t Ease Me In and they did some of these other-

CD: You mean “Stealin’, Stealin’, pretty mama don’t tell on me.” That song? Gutbucket used to do a version of Stealin’. That’s cool, I didn’t know that.

C: Do you guys feel any influence from the Grateful Dead, or do you just share some of the same influences?

CD: Definitely in our live shows. You can’t help but think about it these days. They were the ultimate live band. But on that record, you know, there’s more of the influence on All Night Long with the guitar solos that reference Lovelight. That’s a Dead reference, sort of.

C: Via Bobby “Blue” Bland

CD: Yeah, that’s one of the best records ever. I love conjuring the [Dead’s] spirits onstage. They were just crazy. The music they made was totally out there. On the records, though, they had a totally original take on it. The verses we did, like KC Jones, the riff I play on that on open tuning was the first thing I ever learned on guitar, literally. Putting that song on the record was like putting the first thing I ever started playing on my first record, but it was the Mudboy and the Neutrons version, as far as that song goes.

C: You’ve always told people that you love living in Northern Mississippi and would never move away, no matter how big your music gets. Aside from the music itself, what’s the most appealing thing to you about the Northern Mississippi and Memphis areas?

CD: Well, man, you know I’ve been pretty much all over the country, at least east of Mississippi. There’s just nothing like the girls in Mississippi.

C: True

CD: You know what I’m saying? That’s just special. Plus getting to live right down the road from Otha and R.L. and all their families, the Kimbroughs, that’s awesome. It’s just a beautiful country, the way it’s so undiscovered still to me in a way. I tell ya, though, we go across the country, from city to city and see the big cities and the mountains and everything. There’s just nothing quite like coming home to Mississippi. If I lived somewhere else, it wouldn’t be like coming home. It would feel like I’m still traveling. You know what I mean? I was born here in Memphis. I just love it. My dad tried to leave. He lived in Miami for a while and that didn’t work. I’m going to learn from his experience and not do it.

C: One last question. What gets you more fired up: having a brilliant moment onstage or having a brainstorm in the studio?

CD: I had a funny conversation with Jon Spencer in the last session we did. We were talking about the difference between being in the studio and being onstage, and I told him I loved making a good record and the studio was where it was at. He said “Don’t you love it when people clap for you?” That kind of sums it up. I love making a good record because it’s timeless and it’s a document of where we are right now, but going out and building up momentum playing live music is a whole different thing. I’ve learned to love them both equally. They create a good balance.

[My song research for this interview was aided greatly by the work of Blair Jackson in his book “Goin’ Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion” -CS]

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