From Style Weekly May 24, 2006- Richmond's alternative newsweekly for news, arts, culture and opinion.  

Rising Son

Up-and-coming bluesman Duwayne Burnside is ready to be heard.
by Brent Baldwin

In rural Holly Springs , Miss. , in the hill country above the Delta, the blues are still a way of life. Just ask guitarist/singer Duwayne Burnside, who as son of the late blues legend R.L. Burnside began playing the blues before he could even hold a guitar." Hill country gotta sound don’t nobody have,” Burnside says with a thick Southern accent from his home in Holly Springs , where he’s just driven from playing a festival in Tampa . His young son is crawling all over him.

“Memphis' got so many peoples, but it ain’t got too many hill country bluesmen, ’cause we got our own style — doin’ it more raw,” he says. “As you go further into the city, they got more technology, pedals and stuff. Hill country is just playin’ what you feel. In a juke joint, you ain’t got nothing but a guitar and an amplifier.”

Burnside’s celebrated father died last year at 80 after a late career revival in the 1990s that produced some modern-day blues classics, such as “Too Bad Jim” and “A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey.”

Most of his life, R.L. Burnside worked as a sharecropper and commercial fisherman. But after his powerfully expressive voice and tumbling, dronelike blues style was featured in the 1991 documentary “Deep Blues,” the “hill country sound” became more popular. This was also thanks in no small part to the Fat Possum record label, which helped revive the careers of several obscure blues artists.

Burnside had a large family and many of his children continue to play music with each other and in their own groups. Growing up, Duwayne Burnside got to sit in with just about every major blues guitarist you can imagine — Memphis was nearby.

Of all the siblings, Duwayne seems to be enjoying the most success so far. He was recently nominated for best new blues artist from the internationally respected W.C. Handy awards (the show airs on TV in Japan ).

His latest album, the raw “Under Pressure,” features Burnside’s muscular blues-rock playing with an occasional blend of Memphis is blues and Motown soul. Younger fans may have already experienced his energetic playing from his touring days with the North Mississippi Allstars, a well-known country-rock jam band.

“I love ’em, and it was good. They got they own thing. I enjoy it, but I enjoy myself better,” Burnside says. “They crossed me over [to a white jam-band audience]. … But my style came from hanging out with my daddy — I grown up in it. You gotta be doing it and livin’ it and feelin’ it. It kinda grow into me.”

It’s clear that Burnside still misses his father, with whom he had a special bond. He hopes to honor his father by releasing a tribute album by January, tentatively titled “I Got Your Back,” on his own label, B.C. Records.

Burnside said that one of the last things he asked his father to do was sing with him at the massive Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee .

As a young man, Burnside says, he also learned a lot by playing bass with another blues legend, Junior Kimbrough and the Soul Blues Boys.

“Junior was like my other dad, man. He helped me out and I learned so much from him,” Burnside says. “As far as [other] influences, Albert King, my daddy and Lightnin’ Hopkins — they all gave me something.”

Now, the fiery son is forging his own reputation on the road, meeting celebs like Morgan Freeman (whose music club, Ground Zero in Clarksdale , Miss. , Burnside is playing next month) and mega rock stars such as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who once made the trip into the back country — disguised as truckers — to watch him play.

Burnside will be performing with a four-piece at his Richmond show, and he says that he never knows exactly what each show will be like.

“It’s probably gonna be kinda hard, rockin’ blues,” he says. “But certain cities I go, I change the thing, ’cause I get a certain feelin’, know what I’m saying?”

Burnside says that he wouldn’t mind playing sometime with Eric Clapton, who he says has created a “hot, fat sound” on his own, similar to what Burnside does when he takes a Johnnie Taylor soul song and remakes it into Burnside blues.

“I used to hang out with Albert Collins,” he says. “He was a good guy, and Little Jimmy too. You know, I try to do a little of them, Albert King, daddy, Junior Kim brough and just keep all of ’em alive. … In Richmond , I’m gonna try to take care a business and just make sure people have a good time.” 

From the Omaha City Weekly - The News & Entertainment Weekly of Omaha, Lincoln, & Council Bluffs - January 2006

Blues Descendant

Duwayne Burnside impressing the country with more than just his lineage
By Rick Galusha

It’s an established yarn, growing up on the “good side of the tracks,” sneaking across to some rundown juke joint on the “bad side of the tracks,” peaking into a conveniently placed window and being able to see a legendary, now deceased, blues figure (long before “White America” got hip, of course), and then falling in love with the blues and becoming an impassioned player.

More artists tell that story than people claim to have attended Woodstock , but few can substantiate having grown up with the Delta blues star R. L. Burnside and then playing extensively with Junior Kim brough. Needless to say, Duwayne Burnside is an authentic country bluesman, one with an electric twist.

I don’t know if it was his strong Delta accent or the fact that he was on a cell ph one 750 miles away, or maybe it was the rainstorm we finally got, but interviewing Duwayne Burnside was no walk in the park. Nice enough guy, but we sure had a hard time understanding each other. What came across was a man with a passion for playing live music in front of an appreciative audience. “We played more than 70 shows last year, many of them festivals,” Burnside said. “Last night we sold out the Kalamazoo Theatre. It was really great.”

During this leg of his current tour, Burnside is out with former Squirrel Nut Zipper’s frontman Jimbo Mathus.

In addition to building his own career, Burnside’s history includes helping the North Mississippi Allstars reform after the band had evidently called it quits.

“Cody’s an all-round player,” Burnside said. “He’s got his own thing but he’ll play anything. When they’d broken up we kinda got together, and he’s gonna do it. Eventually, the rest of the band came back. When we’d started playing (as the North Mississippi Allstars) there’d be 20 people in the club. Within nine months we’d be selling the place out, so I decided it was time for me to go back to my solo thing.”

Duwayne’s father, R. L. Burnside, was 60 when he was finally “discovered.”

“That film ‘Deep Blues’ came out and that really pushed him over the top,” Burnside said. As the sometime bass player for his father and another famous North Mississippi bluesman, Junior Kim borough, Duwayne is the only one of his siblings who is still playing professionally. “I have nine brothers and five sisters and they all play something: We learned just by hangin’ round daddy.”

For a time Burnside owned and operated a club in Mem ph is before deciding to try his hand, once again, at touring the nation.

“I just love getting on the road. It’s my job to keep this North Country blues alive,” he said.

With two albums, “Live at the Mint” and “Under Pressure,” and a wide open road in front of him, Burnside’s authentic roots-blues sound is in sharp contrast to the slick, guitar-powered blues so many have come to appreciate.

“When they hear us, they love us, love us,” claims Duwayne.

We’ll see. Burnside recently sold-out Buddy Guy’s Lounge in Chicago at $35 a ticket. You can see Duwayne Burnside along with Blind Pig Record’s Rev. Billy C. Wirtz and others at Murphy’s on Feb. 2 (tickets $12).

From Nashville City Paper online column - March 31, 2006 - a civic-minded, public- spirited newspaper devoted to coverage of relevant news for Nashville readers.

Family blues offerings
by Ron Wynn

“Big Daddy” R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough may be gone, but their spirit and musical legacy is maintained in the work of Burnside's offspring. Duwayne Burnside and the Mississippi Mafia's Under Pressure (B.C. Records) sounds like the kind of date Albert King might have made if he'd grown up in today's Mississippi Hill Country.

Burnside's raw, jagged guitar fills and anguished, gritty vocals are augmented by his Mississippi Mafia mates on songs that are often terse and disturbing. “Why You Act Like That,” “She Threw My Clothes Out” and “Pressure” are as contemporary as the blues can get, with storylines just as rough and personalized as any vintage Delta number.

Burnside also does two strong covers, a somber version of B.L. Burnside's “Bad Luck City” and a choppy but sincere rendition of Albert King's “I Got The Blues.”

The Burnside Exploration features Garry and Cedric Burnside doing their own guitar/drum duo presentation on The Record (Lucky 13). They also include a pair of tribute covers to R.L. (“Long Haired Dony”) and Kimbrough (“All Right Long”), but otherwise perform their own originals which have both plenty of blues narrative foundation as well as some Southern hip-hop influences (“You Don't Love Me,” “Rambler,” “I Don't Want To Live” and “Damned If My Voice - Talk”).

While Cedric rhythmically mixes, stirs and creates odd, often unusual rhythmic patterns, Garry plays a fierce, rambling and assertive type of guitar, while both add vocals that can be abrasive, charming, humorous, warm or desultory. Sometimes they seem all over the place, but manage to find a suitable way to complete their statements and wrap their songs.

Just like the original Hill Country giants they once lived and worked with, Garry and Cedric Burnside don't make neat, always technically correct music, but it's always distinctive and valuable.

From All Music Guide Review by Stewart Mason

Under Pressure

In blues, just as in rock and country, a famous surname is just as often a hindrance as it is a help: there are probably half a dozen Julian Lennons for every Rosanne Cash. Luckily, Duwayne Burnside's debut studio album leans more toward the latter than the former. His first album, 1999's Live at the Mint, was a pedestrian mix of well-worn blues standards like "Dust My Broom" and "Hootchie Cootchie Man" with derivative originals, and it over-featured cred-enhancing guest spots from his newly famous father. In the intervening years, Burnside's become an adjunct member of the North Mississippi Allstars, and it appears that working with musicians closer to his own age and interest has ignited a greater creative spark. (Guests on this album include ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers frontman Jim Mathus, who co-produced the album and plays rhythm guitar under Burnside's lead, and bassist brother Garry Burnside, whose day job is in Junior Kimbrough's band.) There's an immediacy to Burnside's playing and singing on this album that wasn't present before, prodded by the Stax-style rhythm section of Garry and drummer Roy Cunningham. Best of all, even the album's covers, a crisp and concise version of Albert King's "I Got the Blues" and an expansive, soulful take on Dad's "Bad Luck City," sound as energized as Burnside's stylistically varied originals.

From Plan 9 Music - a full service, independent retailer with more than 20 years in the music retailing business.
Review by: Darryl Davenport, 2001

Duwayne Burnside: Under Pressure

Guitarist and vocalist Duwayne Burnside the son of Mississippi Blues vet R.L. Burnside has produced a new release while on break from the North Mississippi AllStars. Ten hard hitting tracks showcase Burnside as a strong vocalist, decent songwriter and one hell of a fiery guitarist, who ignites images of a young Jeff Beck while harnessing the explosive manner of Hendrix or Little Jimmie King. The title track begins with slashing drums, allowing Burnside's guitar to scream a delightful song. "Why You Act Like That" draws influence from the country blues tradition in it's lyrical style, yet Burnside pours out a deep soul on this track, illustrating a real sensibility for roots music seldom heard. "She Threw My Clothes Out" reminded this writer of Howlin' Wolf at some points, with Burnside's voice testifying about the problems relationships sometimes suffer. The band’s movements on this piece jam to the highest degree. "King' begins with a Hendrix-like guitar call that opens the set wide open for a total Rockin session. “I Got The Blues," an Albert King classic, gets a great re-work with timing from the Mississippi Mafia on mark. This release from Duwayne Burnside and his Mississippi Mafia should without any doubt propel Burnside towards wider acclaim. Burnside's skills as a guitarist are heralded throughout this disc. In addition this collection is a powerful statement of the influence of pure Mississippi Blues electrified, versus the more popular electrified sound from their northern cousins in Chicago and Detroit..... Duwayne Burnside simply lays it all out for ya, a rising son in the art of guitar artistry.

From Charlotte Creative Loafing, February 15, 2006 - the most complete arts, entertainment and events listings in the Charlotte area.

Pressure Drop: Duwayne Burnside strikes out on his own

We all owe debts to our parents; and most aspiring artists are saddled with iconic influences. But in young bluesician Duwayne Burnside's case, the shadow cast by his progenitor is longer than most. Even beyond death, the legacy of his father, country blues master R.L. Burnside, remains formidable.

Growing up in the north Mississippi hill country, Duwayne Burnside's daddy learned guitar from his neighbor, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and played in the juke joint next door, owned by Junior Kim brough. These titans' primitive, rhythmic country-blues shudder and shake like a tarpaper shack in a hurricane, threatening to fly apart at any moment. This particular slide guitar-fueled juke blues style lingered in semi-obscurity until the 1990s, when Fat Possum Records began releasing albums by the area's sexagenarian blues artists, the biggest of which was R.L. Burnside. Though he died last year, Duwayne's father looms over everything he does.

"I think sometimes when they come they're kinda looking for me to do like he did. And a lot older people who were fans come and listen. So that's part of why I keep his music going on while still playing my own thing. I'm gonna spice some of it up and I'm going to keep some of it like it is," Burnside explains in his thick, hill country accent. "You've got to keep that kind of feeling going. I'm trying to keep it on. My hill country is going to be hill country, but it's going to be newer kind of stuff to keep the hill country going on -- keep it growing."

Indeed, listening to the younger Burnside's studio debut, Under Pressure, one is struck by how much soul and Chicago blues creep into tracks such as his rattling cover of Albert King's "I Got the Blues," or his white-hot take on his father's " Bad Luck City ." "It's got kind of like a mellow hills blues, and it's got blues rock to it, too, but it's still got that same hill country sound and feeling of rawness," he says.

Burnside's retronuevo approach incorporates a range of blues styles, from Muddy Waters and Lightning Hopkins to Jimi Hendrix. But one thing remains constant about his guitar playing: it's LOUD.

"This one time, the sound guy comes up to me at Tipitinas in New Orleans , and he says, 'I don't ever have no problem with you, because the only thing you ask for is where the volume is. You don't ask me for nothing else,'" Burnside relates with a chuckle.

Though he's been playing for years, Burnside's career got a boost when he joined his friends Cody and Luther Dickinson (sons of famous Mem ph is producer Jim Dickinson) in the North Mississippi Allstars. While based in the hill country sound, NMAS injects a bit of boogie and a predilection for improvisational blues that's made them popular on the jam band circuit. Burnside played with them for almost three years before setting off again on his own.

"When I first got with the Allstars, nothing hadn't happened really, and we didn't have nobody come see us play. When I first started, Cody told me, ' Don 't let that discourage you because there ain't nobody here,'" he recalls. "I said, 'We'll just make that happen.' I was just there to make sure they got where they were going, that's all. Anybody wants to help their friend out, but once they got to where they are, that's when it was time for me to go off and do my own thing.

"They helped me and I helped them," Burnside explains. "It got me to another level. It got me up there where I need to be paying attention to a lot more things that I needed to be doing."

Back on the road, performing with his backing band, the Mississippi Mafia, Burnside tries to weigh how his father's heritage has impacted his own, but falters. Stopping and starting several times, he finally suggests, "Folks be saying that, but I'm my own man and my own thing. I love my father, and I don't care what nobody say. He made it happen, so I don't have no problem with that. I'm his son."

We all struggle with our genetic and familial legacies, trying to forge our own identity from our inheritance. For Duwayne Burnside, the furnace has six strings and is reheated every night, pouring forth a mixture of old and new.

"Sometimes I kinda --" Burnside says, faltering again before recovering with a good natured laugh. "But it's all good. They sure are some big feet, though. For real."

From Gritz Magazine (www.gritz.net) - review by Derek Halsey

Duwayne Burnside and the Mississippi Mafia
Under Pressure

Duwayne Burnside has stepped up with a new recording of his own called “Under Pressure. I say ‘on his own’ because he grew up as the son of the late Mississippi bluesman R. L. Burnside, and then went on to do a stint with the North Mississippi Allstars. His father died about a year ago, the North Mississippi Allstars returned to being a trio, and now Duwayne and his Mississippi Mafia band are stepping up to claim their own space on the mantle. “Under Pressure” features 8 new original songs by Burnside, including a nod to his father called “Tribute.” Barnburners include “She Threw My Clothes Out,” “King,” and “Hard Candy Part II.”

Duwayne’s guitar is cranked up and prominent, but it never overshadows the group’s sound. The other members of the Mississippi Mafia include Nate Mitchell, Jimbo Mathis, Garry Burnside, Roy Cunningham, and guest John X. The band also plays the funky, slow blues number written by R.L. Burnside called “Bad Luck City,” and the Albert King classic “I Got The Blues.”

From In Sight review by Donald Wilcock - September 14, 2006

Duwayne Burnside: Under Pressure

Trying to capture a conversation with Duwayne Burnside for this article is like attempting to put a scrambled egg back in its shell.  He's one of 14 children born to the late Mississippi hill country blues man R.L. Burnside, and it sounds like Duwayne's got every one of his siblings in the van with him as they careen down the highway somewhere near Davenport, Iowa.  At first, I thought they were playing The Red Hot Chili Peppers on the radio during our phoned interview, but Duwayne assures me it's just everybody having a good time.  And when he tells them my request to "turn down the radio," everyone laughs.

They've played Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago last weekend, and somehow between now and Saturday, they're going to navigate across the plains to the east coast for a weekend gig at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington.  Duwayne calls the band The Mississippi Mafia, but they sound like magpies, and I can't get this image out of my head of this van bounding from side to side, up and down, arms sticking out of the window, exhaust puffing smoke signals out the back end, careening chaos at 65 on the interstate.

Daddy defined dysfunctional.  Himself one of 13 children, R.L. once was convicted of murder but was let out of prison after six months ostensibly because his boss on the farm said he needed him to drive tractor.  "I didn't mean to kill nobody," Burnside told The New Yorker. "I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head.  Him dying was between him and the Lord."

A farmer and fisherman most of his life, R.L. along with the late Junior Kimbrough became cult celebrities when Fat Possum Records began recording their hill country sound in the mid-90s.  His best known record is a thing called "A Ass Pocket of Whiskey" recorded with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.  If you think Sonny Boy Williamson's collaboration with Eric Clapton was far out, check out this piece of work.  It's like Mississippi Fred McDowell dukes it out with The Cramps.

So, the progenitors of the Mississippi hill country sound, R.L. and his neighbor Jr. Kimbrough, have passed on but left a legacy and a demand needing to be filled.  The sound, a kind of fundamental drone that makes John Lee Hooker sound complex by comparison is very hypnotic.  But the younger generation isn't buying into the old guard's blues ohm.  Duwayne's music is to his dad's sound what System of A Down is to classic rock.  I mean this guy is rocking out.  He's throwing old soul in with Hendrix wa-wa and spurting it out in a barrage of guitar riffs that on one hand seem as out of control as his van, but there's enough of the hill country rhythm in his veins that it all slides by in a rush that's got crossover cash cow written all over it.

The difference between Duwayne's 1998 "Live at The Mint" CD and 2005's "Under Pressure," (his only two recordings) is almost staggering.  This man is moving on up and out of Mississippi even if he has just opened his third juke joint this decade in Oxford, Mississippi.  Listed on the latest CD as John X, the record producer's real name is John Volaitis who has worked with Bonnie Raitt, The Stones, U2, Bowie and Black Sabbath.  The album was produced at Jimbo Mathus's Clarksdale studio where Buddy Guy did his best work.  Jimbo is so retro, he's still "turning buttons" to quote Duwayne, instead of digitally recording.  But the results are like Duwayne's conversation, slow and fast at the same time, retro but modern, dysfunctional but in the way Jerry Lee Lewis is dysfunctional, sliding along on a KY Jelly slip stream.

SIDEBAR

I saw Duwayne last year at the Pocono Blues Festival, and he can translate his recorded music into a live performance that has some pretty incredible dynamics.  He spent a couple of years as an off-again on-again sideman for The Mississippi Allstars and is heard on their "Polaris" and "Hill Country Revue: Live at Bonnaroo" CDs.  But he's doing the right thing to establish his own identity and his own band.  While The North Mississippi Allstars can't decide whether they're a blues band, a jam band or John Hiatt's backup rock group, The Mississippi Mafia are more grounded in the regional back porch stylings of R.L.

Asked if he feels it's important to carry on that legacy, Duwayne suddenly becomes intensely focused.  "Oh, definitely!  This has definitely got to happen 'cause he brought me up this way.  He made us the way we is not.  He brought us this far.  Because of him, I gotta keep going.  It's very important."  As for all his siblings, one of whom plays in his band, he says, "They don't do it for a living.  It ain't their career.  They can do it, but they don't want to.  I love doing it.  I definitely want to keep on going on.  I always am gonna do a song about him and always play his songs."

Of the 10 songs on "Under Pressure" eight are Duwayne originals, one is by his father, and another is by Albert Kin, another strong influence on his guitar style.