GravelRoad

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 Projects Descendants of Hill Country, as well as the recipient of the Blues Music Awards honor as Drummer of the Year for four consecutive years, Cedrics 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 latters Brooklyn home studio in a rush of creativity. Its 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 albums 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 lifes 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.I write my music according to how I live my life, the things Im 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. Its really something I can turn to when Im feeling down and out, and in pain. Whether its 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 wasnt 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 youve been through, and how you came out of it.