The Southern Soul Assembly tour is exactly as advertised. Four of the South’s finest musicians—J.J. Grey (Jacksonville, FL), Luther Dickinson (Memphis, TN), Anders Osborne (New Orleans, LA) and Marc Broussard (Carencro, LA)—coming together for a unique blend of blues, soul, gospel and good old fashioned rock and roll.
As Luther Dickinson explains, the tour, which begins tonight in Sandpoint, ID, is just as rewarding for the musicians as it is for the fans. In a business that can unwillingly promote isolation, a chance to share the stage with your peers is not one to be passed up. The on-stage result is a unique, collaborative, anything-goes experience that is sure to satisfy audiences all around the country.
We caught up with Dickinson en route to the first stop on the tour. Check out all he had to say.
I know you guys did a brief run earlier this year, but how did this project come to life?
At the heart of it is JJ. He and I have been friends—we met so early on, so long ago on the circuit, it’s just been like minded. And then Anders and I have been working together for the last three or four years, as soon as we met it’s like our destinies just became so intertwined. But really I have to give the credit to JJ and his camp—it was their vision, they put something together everybody dreams of, you know, getting a singer-songwriterin the round situation. I just feel so fortunate that I could finally have done it. The simple answer is just that JJ called us up.
It’s certainly an interesting mix of characters. What do you dig about playing with and being around the other three guys (Anders Osborne, J.J. Grey and Marc Broussard)?
As many stories and jokes as we tell on stage, it’s even more hilarious and deeper on the bus just hanging out. It really feels like we’re all at the point where we are in our life and our career, you know we’re like fathers and maturing into other areas of our career. In this business, you work so isolated that it’s rare to get together with your peers and share experiences and give each other advice and just to hash it out, you know? To actually get a chance to do that is so, so much fun.
JJ is such an amazing person and you can feel that in his music, he just radiates positivity. I used to get an angrier feel from him but now it’s just sharing the positivity. Man, JJ is killing it Anders is so wise and Marc, what a God-given talent, man.
The thing that we all share is that our songs all have a regionality to them. We all like to write about our home land so there’s these different stories and traditions and legends and inside jokes that we’re each drawing from. But we still share that kind of love for our home but hopefully—everybody always asks me about the Southern aspect of it—I think the emphasis should be on the soul because even though we do like to write and sing about our homes, the songs can transcend that and it can just be soul music and maybe it’d be a lyric that touches you or a vocal, someone singing that moves you or a musical moment that turns you on to that.
What I mean by soul music is trying to make a moment, trying to create a moment that every one in the room can feel in one way or another. This is rare for us to play these beautiful theaters with these amazing audiences that are completely quiet and listening to every aspect, you can hear the musicality, the lyrics ring, they resonate in different ways and of course playing the guitar is a dream. Playing acoustic guitar to a theater full of people, that’s as good as it gets.
You mentioned being isolated sometimes in this business. I watched an interview with you four recently and it seemed like you all asked each other more questions than the interviewer did. Are you all relishing the opportunity to pick each other’s brains while on the road?
So much. We’re always picking each other’s brains and playing tunes for each other and that’s what’s so exciting about it. We’re not kids in vans anymore. We have to evolve our scope of what our idea of our careers are and all these artists have advice or a story. It’s really helpful to be able to brainstorm or just tell stories. It’s hilarious I mean, JJ gets fired up man. He’s so funny, it’s so much fun.
We’re energizing each other. There’s no right or wrong or point to the show. There is no punchline. But it just feels good to get together and be with each other.
The show is unique in itself because you guys each take turns playing solo but there is also a high-level collaborative spirit to it in the end. Everyone gets a big piece of the pie.
There’s no way I can sit there and not play along with these fellas. Some songs demand a solo performance, but it’s fun. We have foot drums and bass and we let the show build and do everything from a cappella to almost a full-on band. It just grows organically. We like to let Marc start the show and see where it goes from there.
The funny thing is that you never can tell what’s going to happen because all of a sudden someone will do something so moving and you have to follow it and you’re like the guy who gets stumped. We’re just like “Whoa, I do not know how to follow that.” And that’s really kind of fun too cause we’re honest about it. Everyone in the room is aware of like :Oh my god, Anders just sang his heart out and now it’s my turn, what?” But that’s cool, that’s what it’s all about.
This upcoming run of shows will take place out West. Will there be a different approach to the shows or are you just going to do what you do?
That’s it. When R.L. Burnside first took me on the road in ’97 we went straight up North and I’d never been up North before and it blew my mind, because we’re in Boston at a sold out show and the people are lined around the block in the snow to see R.L. Burnside. I was like ‘Whoa, this is amazing.’ (Laughs) So yeah, we just do what we do.
Tell me about your relationship with music from the South and what you grew up listening to in Memphis and Mississippi.
Oh man, well you mentioned gospel. When I was a kid my parents would drop me off in Memphis at guitar lessons and I’d have rock ‘n’ roll guitar lessons and then my grandparents would pick me up and the next Sunday morning and we would go to church where my grandmother played piano. I learned a lot about music and music theory and just songs and traditional—real traditional—music from listening to my grandmother play in church. That was a huge influence on me.
Also, going home with my Dad and his friends—they were rock ’n’ rollers. My dad was the first person I met that was actually a rock ’n’ roller. And this was in the fifties—that’s rock ’n’ roll heaven, you know—teenage heaven. Be it Delta blues, early Jazz, fifties rock, sixties soul, psychedelia—really Hendrix and Allman Brothers hit me early cause he was friends with the Allman Brothers. We saw the Sex Pistols in Memphis. It was all there. The family record collection is an immense wealth of knowledge.
And then when I was about thirteen I found Black Flag for myself and that really spoke to me. That was cool and that was my own thing but at the same time I was really starting to get into Johnny Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters for the first time. My Dad and his friends, they were around the country-blues guys Furry Lewis and Rev. Robert Wilkins in Memphis and I knew that and learned the repertoire from them but when I met Burnside and Junior Kimbrough in the mid-nineties, that changed my life. They just totally blew my mind and I had my own experience with modern day country blues and then R.L. took me on the road and I’ve been moving ever since.
You gotta wish what you hope for cause when I was a kid experimenting with psychedelics and listening to [Jimi Hendrix’s Live At Fillmore East and Electric Ladyland I was like “that’s what I want to do with my life, I want to play psychedelic guitar” and that path opened up for me. Thank God, I’ve had such a blessed life. But also I’m such a folky at heart, you know, Fred McDowell and Mississippi John Hurt and Doc Watson. I used to love that stuff.
Relating that to the Southern Soul Assembly, do you all feel like you draw on your different influences to blend into the show?
Definitely. Anders has his bag, JJ has his bag and Marc, he’s a soul singer. Straight Donnie Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, you know. That’s definitely one of the perks. One of my new trips I’ve been thinking about this tour is like—you talk about soul music but for me roots music, that’s even a broader spectrum. And you think about American roots music, it’s like a tree. Every branch there is a different type of fruit and climbing that tree and swinging in those vines is where I like to get down.
Do you think that broad spectrum plays into the spontaneity of the show?
I don’t know. We’re always surprised. We never know where it’s going to end. You never can tell because what song Marc picks might affect what song JJ picks. Even though we’ve got some touchstone tunes sometimes the direction of the set is reacting to each other.
It’s funny because there’s definitely some shows we’ll get on the whole death trip and then we’ll get on the love trip, it’s really funny. It’s a good time, man.
