Displaying items by tag: folk blues

“To me, music is food and you need a variety to stay healthy and strong,” - Luther Dickinson on his prolific musical output, which, at last count, includes three new, somewhat divergent roots albums planned for 2015.

When Luther Dickinson was growing up in rural Mississippi — just 40 miles south of Memphis, but deep in the hill country — his favorite band was Black Flag, the caustic L.A. punk band that defined the hardcore movement in the 1980s. That may surprise listeners who have been following his career as a folk-blues-rock innovator. With his brother Cody, Luther is a charter member of the North Mississippi Allstars and has recorded with an amazing array of musicians over the years: Beck, Patty Griffin, Mavis
Staples, John Hiatt, Buddy Miller, RL Burnside, Lucero, Jon Spencer, and Robert Plant. He’s also produced albums by Jim Lauderdale, Amy LaVere, and Otha Turner, whose Everybody’s Hollerin’ Goat was named one of the top 10 blues records of the ‘90s by Rolling Stone. 

Better Off With The Blues began life as an acoustic blues band with roots in Delta Blues, Country Blues, Folk Blues, Rags and Jug Band music. Our members include Lou Borgenicht (harp and vocals), Ken Critchfield (bass), Jim Poulton (guitar and vocals), and Paul Rasmussen (guitar, mandolin and vocals).

Playing music from such diverse artists as Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mississippi Fred McDowell and more, BOWB performances feature a tour of the roots of the blues from the earliest decades of the 20th century. Add in songs by more current composers (including Delbert McClinton, Bob Dylan and members of BOWB themselves), and BOWB becomes a compendium for an entire century of blues approaches and styles.