Cedric Burnside grew up steeped in Mississippi blues. Now, he's helping to ensure its future.
If in 2021 north Mississippi hill-country blues is often seen as a relic of a bygone era, for Burnside, 42, it’s very much an evolving, present-tense practice.finds the singer-songwriter reworking and reinvigorating that tradition, with a focus on clear-eyed self-inventory. It’s an album full of admissions of guilt, meditations on past mistakes, and, as its title suggests, imperfect, ongoing attempts at self-betterment.
Growing up in a legendary musical family like the Burnsides didn’t exempt Cedric Burnside from the rural poverty of north Mississippi in the late 20th century. “I have been hungry,” says the songwriter, who sings about his difficult childhood in “Step In,” the album’s lead single, and one of its most powerful offerings. “I have been at home waiting on my momma to hitchhike home to bring us back some food. And it took a while for her to do it.
“I really love to be myself,” says Burnside. “And the reason I say that is because all the times before I always collaborated with other musicians. Before I got really focused on guitar, I wrote my music from the drums, or I just had it in my head, so I’d always have to show another guitar player what I had in my head. Now I play what I have in my head. …Burnside says the most musically unorthodox moment onone of two covers mixed in among the album’s 10 originals.
Providing musical mentorship for the next generation of his family is only one of the ways Burnside remains committed to preserving the legacy of his grandfather, and more broadly, of the blues as a whole. Some, including the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, have expressed doubts about the genre’s future.
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