Photo by Dean Budnick
“That’s just kind of the whole American dream right there, when all the ingredients and all the people mix together and make some American rock-and-roll,” says Luther Dickinson, who is as American a musician as you’re likely to find. Dickinson’s father, famed Memphis-area producer Jim Dickinson, introduced Luther and his brother Cody to not only the timeless music of folk and Delta Blues, but also the contemporary sounds of rock-and-roll and even punk music, all through introducing them to the people who created the music and lived the life of the American musician.
Now an accomplished guitarist in his own right, Dickinson heads up the North Mississippi Allstars with Cody, along with The Word, which features NMA teamed up with lap steel master Robert Randolph and keyboardist John Medeski. Dickinson’s latest project is a solo acoustic album called Blues & Ballads (A Folksinger’s Songbook: Volumes I & II), a career-spanning collection of new and old tunes compiled in the classic songbook style. Here, Dickinson speaks about the impetus behind the project, along with the lasting impact his father’s relationships has on his life and career and why playing with The Replacements’ Tommy Stinson made him realize some of his limitations as a guitarist (in a good way).
You’ve described this new album as a life story album—your life story, but also going back to the history of American music.
Well, my interpretation.
Can you talk a little bit about how this idea started and why this is the point in your career in which you wanted to do something like this?
The whole thing started with the art. I wanted to make a songbook. I grew up loving songbooks, folk songs—the Alan Lomax songbook is a great example. Especially in our fathers’ generations, those musicians, they learned so much. That repertoire from the Alan Lomax songbook, he and his father transcribed all the folk songs they collected from all over the world, and they published these things. I grew up studying these things, and I love that stuff. The Beck project, [ Song Reader—I’d already had the idea, but that piece of art is amazing. There’s so much in there. Anyway, I wanted to make a songbook. I love acoustic music, too, and I write all my songs on the acoustic guitar. They all start there. I listen to a lot of acoustic music at home. It was just a dream of mine to make a songbook, and I had a batch of new songs, but I also wanted to rerecord some tunes from my repertoire in an acoustic-folk fashion.
Growing up, I recorded everything through a rock-and-roll filter. Later, I learned that, in some cases, it didn’t suit the songs as well as it could have. So I casually started rerecording songs with my friends, either solo or with the groups of friends wherever I was over the last two years. The one song “Storm” is probably the oldest—it’s easily 20 years old—and I write a lot. I love the American rural tradition of storytelling and folk music and, at one point, I realized that Stagger Lee or Casey Jones were just men, but then the songs made ‘em into these folk heroes. Back in the late ’90s, I started writing about my friends and family, trying to write folk songs about my people, make them into folk heroes. If you look at the songs, it’s really not so much my life story as much as the story of where I grew up, you know? I sing about different musical heroes of mine, and you definitely hear their styles in the guitar.
Your dad Jim was obviously an icon, particularly in that area of the country. You’ve talked about how people have seen your family as a link between the old and the new, and I feel like this album comprises that. Was that kind of what you were trying to do?
It’s trying to make timeless art. I think the format of acoustic guitar and voice, be it Robert Johnson or early Bob Dylan or whatever, that’s my favorite art form and it’s totally timeless. The record is geared towards that, and some of it is the smaller acoustic group. As far as our father, man, our father grew up in Memphis in the ‘50s, and he always played rock-and-roll. He remembered before rock-and-roll. He experienced the whole thing; he figured out open tuning by watching Bo Diddley. It’s like, “What’s he doin’? He’s not makin’ a chord!” You know? And he stayed up all night that night and figured it out. That’s how long ago it was, when no one knew how to play open tuned guitar. And then the blues revival and the folk, the beatniks in the ‘60s—I mean, he was of the age where he was hippie, he was a beatnik, so it was an amazing thing when all the blues giants from Mississippi and Memphis were rediscovered—and that’s Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bukka White, Reverend Robert Wilkins, Furry Lewis was huge in his community.
[My father] and his friends, man, they lived through that and learned from those guys. And then he went on to produce punk rock and psychedelia and all types of crazy music. We grew up around all that, and then we came up in the ‘90s in Mississippi and there was another blues resurgence with R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and all of those families. All of a sudden, there’s like modern-day, electrified, multi-generational country-blues, and it blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it. And then, by the time I’m done with it—especially when we’re plugged in—it’s rock-and-roll. That’s just kind of the whole American dream right there, when all the ingredients and all the people mix together and make some American rock-and-roll.
Speaking of your father, you have that song “Ain’t No Grave” on this record. Can you talk a little bit about when and why you wrote that song?
Our father passed in ’09, and I wrote a lot of songs in that period of time, celebrating him. I do folk songs, but it’s also the blues—right there, when you’re so sad that your art just pours out. I rarely play it in public, because it’s not appropriate at a nightclub or a party atmosphere. But I love it when people go to those songs for comfort. It’s so sweet when people tell me that. I’m glad, you know—that’s what music’s for. I wrote that song one morning, woke up on the bus and then wrote the whole thing before I even turned on the light. It just came pouring out. I get back on the bus and got my guitar and got my songbook and I went in the bathroom, and the music and melody came out just so quick. It took a while to record it, but it was a very easy song to write.
I wanted to talk a little about your relationship with Tommy Stinson. You knew those guys, The Replacements, when you were younger. And then you played with them recently. How did that relationship form and develop?
Tommy is one of many relationships that I am so fortunate to have that are extensions of my dad’s relationships. He had thousands of friends, man! He was such a great person, and musician and record producer. He was such a great teacher, too; he taught a lot of bands and musicians. He produced Pleased To Meet Me, the Replacements record, back in [1986] they recorded it. That’s when I met him, and they let me play some guitar noise on one song. [Paul] Westerberg and Tommy were always super sweet to me, really nice, and it’s one of my favorite records. Some people don’t know, but Westerberg plays in a lot of open tunings as well. He blew our minds, because he was writing pop-punk rock-and-roll songs in open tunings that we’d never—you know, my dad and I didn’t know anybody doing that. Keith Richards [has his] thing in open tuning, [but] this was even another further extension of using open tunings. Tommy was like 20 or 21 at the time; I was 13 or 14. And we stayed in touch, especially after Dad passed. Chuck Prophet, Tommy Stinson, a lot of different musicians on the scene, they reached out to us, and we stay in touch.
Tommy is working on a new solo record that I played on, and we played some shows together. But I’ve been so busy that I had to pass the gig over to my friend Steve Selvidge, who plays with The Hold Steady. He’s a Memphis guy. His dad, Sid Selvidge, and my dad, they were in the Neutrons together. When Steve and I grew up, because we were little kids watching them, we were like, “That’s cool! I wanna do that.” Steve’s a great guitar player, and obviously more suited for the gig, because Tommy quit calling me as soon as I referred Steve. [Laughs] But I’ll tell you what, man, I play a lot of different types of music with a lot of different people, and usually it’s easy and inspired and just doing my thing. But playing with Tommy was hard, man, because I’m not a melodic power punk-pop player, and I don’t listen to that type of music. Even though Tommy is one of my favorite songwriters and I love his music, I don’t play that style, and it was hard. It was funny: it was humbling, to work on that project and to not do as well as I should’ve. [Laughs] It’s true. The gigs were easy because I could just play my way through, but recording that style—it’s good to know that there are limitations. That didn’t come out right, but do you know what I mean? I can do a lot of different things, but that’s hard.
Speaking of playing with different people, you’ve played with Phil Lesh and Robert Plant, pretty big names. What is it like being on stage with artists of that caliber?
Oh man—Dad used to say, “You have to play every note like it’s your last, ‘cause one of ‘em will be.” And that’s the thing, it’s just being in the moment. The Allman Brothers called it “hitting the note.” You’ve just got to be in the moment and get it together and stay focused on the music. Col. Bruce Hampton gave me the bed advice, and it applies to this: Be it 10 people in the audience or 10,000 people in the audience, don’t let that throw you either way. It’s just your ego twisting you. Either you’re frustrated it’s not a big crowd, or you’re intimidated that it’s such a big crowd, it’s still just your ego getting in the way of your relationship with the music and the moment. Same thing if you’re playing with Phil Lesh or Robert Plant. You’ve just got to concentrate on the music and just do your thing. Both of those guys were so inspiring and intelligent and hilarious. Phil Lesh gave me the best compliment ever at one point: He walked over and was like, “You’ve got the proper type of mind!” I was like, “Alright!” [Laughs] It was so much fun.
The Word got going again last year with the new album and the tour. How is that going? How was that year for you guys, and do you have plans coming up for 2016?
Man, making the Soul Food record was so much fun, and the tour was off the chain. Playing with Robert—Cody and I just adore that. It’s as good as it gets, you know? Robert is such an inspiring player because he’s like me; he’s kind of a destructive improviser. He’ll break the song down just to make something new and fresh happen. He’s happiest when he’s just improvising. That’s what The Word does best, ensemble improvisation. For us, we don’t do that a lot; we improvise a lot within frameworks, based on structures. But just a room full of people improvising free, especially in front of a large audience, it’s really, really fun. I just adore it. For me, my thing is I try to stay out of the way. Keep the rhythm driving, but leave the room. I just do a lot of single-note rhythm patterns, way up high on the neck. We’ve got Medeski’s huge power, and Robert has a huge palate, so keep it moving but stay out of their way. And we’re gonna go to Australia next month, so we’re excited about that.
And with the Allstars—Chris Chew, who has been playing with you in The Word, is still out of the lineup?
He quit the band three-and-a-half years ago. He quit the band to drive buses. He loves driving. He was already a truck driver, then he quit back in ’99 to go on the road with us. Then, on the road with us over the years, he started driving tour buses. He fell in love with it, and it’s a very lucrative job. Drivers make a lot more than most musicians sleeping in the back. There was a time when we’d ask him to go on the road with us, but he was too busy driving, you know? He loves doing it. We played together with The Word, and we do this and that, but Cody and I are recording right now, and the phase we’re in right now is we’re experimenting as a duo. We’ve been using arpeggiators, different keyboards—not playing along with sequences, but interactive arpeggiators. It’s really fun. It’s aggressively a duo record. It’s real aggressive musically and sonically, too. It’s pretty gnarly. It’s our twentieth anniversary. We started the band in June, 1996. So we’ve been recording our new record and we’re finishing up for release later in the year.
