Cedric Burnside

On the day after his Grandaddy RL's birthday, we are super excited to confirm that CEDRIC BURNSIDE is coming to Glasgow!

Who saw him with RL at King Tuts forever ago? It was like an earthquake!

Ticket link and official blurb below.
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“My school was a juke joint/From a kid till I was grown/And blues is really/All I ever known”
“Ain’t Gonna Take No Mess”

Take
one glance at the iconic tintype photograph which serves as the cover
to his new album, Benton County Relic, and you know immediately that
Cedric Burnside is the real deal. “When I first saw it, I thought I
looked like an outlaw,” he laughs.

The 39-year-old still lives on
several acres not far from the Holly Springs, Mississippi, home where
he was raised by “Big Daddy,” his grandfather, the late
singer/songwriter/guitarist R.L. Burnside whom Cedric famously played
with, just as his own father, drummer Calvin Jackson, did. Cedric was
literally born to the blues, more specifically, the “rhythmically
unorthodox” Hill country variant which emerged from Mississippi, where
he grew up surrounded (and influenced) by Junior Kimbrough, Jessie May
Hemphill and Otha Turner, as well as delta musicians T-Model Ford and
Paul “Wine” Jones.

Grammy-nominated in 2015 for Best Blues Album
for the Cedric Burnside Project’s Descendants of Hill Country, as well
as the recipient of the Blues Music Awards honor as Drummer of the Year
for four consecutive years, Cedric’s latest album offers a showcase for
his electric and acoustic guitar, recording 26 tracks in just two days
with drummer/slide guitarist Brian Jay in the latter’s Brooklyn home
studio in a rush of creativity. It’s his first release for Single Lock
Records, the Florence, Alabama label headquartered across the Tennessee
River from the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and responsible for
critically acclaimed records by John Paul White, Nicole Atkins, Dylan
LeBlanc and St. Paul & the Broken Bones.

And while Cedric
humbly refers to himself in the album’s title, the music within is
anything but ancient, the rich tradition of Hill country blues dragged
kicking and screaming into the modern-day with crackling electricity
amid its nod to life’s essentials. If the blues has traditionally been
about getting through hard times, Benton County Relic offers the kind of
deep baring of the soul that enables us to transcend oppression,
whether in the 19th century or in the precarious present.

There’s
blood on these 12 tracks, from the matter-of-fact recitation of his
poverty-stricken childhood without running water, radio or TV in “We
Made It” (“I come from nothin’/I done been lower than low/I keep my head
straight/No matter how low I go”) and the description of a “Typical
Day” (“I wake up in the mornin’/Sun shinin’ on my face/I drink a cup of
coffee/I might roll me a J”) to the loss of family endured in “Hard to
Stay Cool” and the unrequited passion of “There is So Much.”

“I
write my music according to how I live my life, the things I’m going
through at the time,” insists Burnside, who lost both his parents, an
uncle and his younger brother Cody over the last few years. “I love
music so much. It’s really something I can turn to when I’m feeling down
and out, and in pain. Whether it’s the heartache of breaking up with a
girlfriend, or frustration at a dispute with a family member.”

Burnside
has brought a music that started as an expression of grief and a will
to survive into a modern-day art form that is both timely and timeless, a
glimpse of myth and insight into the human condition. “Back in the day,
it wasn’t heard as music, but more like ‘somebody help me, I want to
get out of this situation,’” says Cedric. “These days, anybody can have
the blues. Some people deal with loss by going out and getting drunk or
even killing themselves. The blues is about surviving through those hard
times, telling the world what you’ve been through, and how you came out
of it.”

Cedric’s blues cover a wide range of different emotions.
“Give It to You” is an expression of pure sexual desire, a traditional
blues trope. Burnside explains, “That kind of stuff still goes on in
the world today,” he says. “It has happened to me, and I’m sure it has
happened to a lot more people. Whether it’s politically correct or not,
it’s the truth. And that’s how I write my music. It might seem harsh or
messed-up, but it’s real.”

“Call on Me” is a song penned for his
three daughters, ages 13 to 17, about being there emotionally, if not
always in person, given his hectic touring schedule. “I just want them
to know, what I do is not just for the fans, but for them, too.”

The
traditional “Death Bell Blues” is a tribute to his own “Big Daddy,”
R.L. Burnside, who used to perform the song, once covered by Muddy
Waters and countless others. “I did it the same way ‘Big Daddy’ did it,”
he says. “I want to let the people know where my music comes from.”

On
“Ain’t Gonna Take No Mess,” Cedric insists he’s performing the music he
wants, regardless of what anybody else says. “I’ve been playing almost
30 years now,” he exclaims. “It’s who I am, what I am. I am Hill
country blues. This is my whole life, and I’m not going to listen to
anyone who tells me what I can and can’t do. I just thank God that
Single Lock Records let me be with my music.”

Cedric has both
played and recorded with the North Mississippi Allstars (Luther
Dickinson gave him his first electric guitar), Widespread Panic, Jimmy
Buffett, Bobby Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He was also featured playing drums
alongside Samuel L. Jackson in Craig Brewer’s 2006 feature film, Black
Snake Moan, which was in part a tribute to his grandfather R.L. and
other iconic bluesmen.

Now planning to tour with collaborator
Brian Jay to promote the new album, Cedric eschews politics in favor of
the personal. “I know there’s a lot going on in the world,” he says.
“But I try to give it all to God and let Him handle it. Politics
divides people. The blues brings them together. A bluesman has to find a
way to make it through.”

Cedric Burnside isn’t content with just
making it through. On Benton County Relic, he brings the blues alive
for a new generation of fans weaned on the likes of White Stripes and
the Black Keys. And why not? That’s all he’s ever known.