CEDRIC BURNSIDE, grandson of the legendary R.L. Burnside, son of drummer great Calvin Jackson, is widely regarded as one of the best drummers in the world. Growing up at his grandfather’s side, he began touring at age 13, playing drums for “Big Daddy” on stages around the globe. Cedric was born in 1978 and raised around Holly Springs, Mississippi, and has been playing music all his life, developing a relentless, highly rhythmic charged style with strong hip-hop and funk influences. An equally adept songwriter and surprisingly powerful vocalist, Cedric brings new life and energy to the Blues.
Guitarist LIGHTNIN’ MALCOLM was born in 1974 in rural Missouri, and enjoyed the freedom of country life, quickly learning to entertain himself and others around him. Growing up in a little village called Burgess in a country house next to the KCS Railroad that ran from Kansas City to New Orleans, the train has always been a theme in Malcolm’s music, as well as the inspiration for the steady, insistent bass rhythms of rural dance music. Skilled on guitar, bass, and drums, Malcolm is an in demand session player with a telepathic sense of how to follow the older archaic styles.
Over the years the two have made friends and worked with the some of the very best Mississippi Blues legends including Cedell Davis, R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Big Jack Johnson, Sam Carr, Otha Turner, Robert Belfour and Hubert Sumlin, in addition to the younger generation of musicians including the North Mississippi All-Stars. Together Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm have crafted a sound reminiscent of such minimalist rock duos as The Black Keys or The White Stripes, while still retaining a sound uniquely their own by featuring original music, drums, guitar and dual vocal harmonies, and fusing Soul, Hip-Hop, and Funk with electrifying Blues power that's contemporary and traditional all at the same time. So get ready for an authentically swampy and raggedly stomping juke joint affair that is deeply rooted in the rich musical legacy of the Mississippi Hill Country Blues of the Delta. It’s old school, but it’s got that beat and electricity that’s gonna make people move!
“Once in a while you witness a birth in this business. A kind of unawareness to the fact that there are other sounds to be heard that you haven’t yet discovered, or dialects and music that is still being invented. That is precisely the sound you hear from this Mississippi duo.” – Bluessource.com
"Cedric & Malcolm are the next generation of amazing Blues with this duo’s swagger, intensity, and the way they make the crowd get up and start rockin’ out to their explosive sound." - Blues Web Radio
"Burnside & Malcolm have hit on a sound that takes the spirit of the blues breaking it down and adding some of their own intriguing twists." - The Charleston Gazette
Cedric Burnside: drums and vocals & guitar and vocals on 7, 10, 14
Lightnin’ Malcolm: guitar and vocals & drums and slide guitar on 7, 10, 14
Jason Ricci: harmonica (Tracks 7, 10, 12)
Bekka Bramlett & Etta Britt: background vocals (Tracks 1, 3, 4, 7, 11)
On paper, it doesn’t seem like it would work. A fair-haired young guitarist who wouldn’t look out of place at a frat party, and a young black man who would fit right in with the crowd at a 50 Cent show, forming a two-man band to play music that takes a primitive hill country blues tradition and mixes in elements of Jimi Hendrix, the jam band scene, funk and more.
But music isn’t made on paper. And when you read between the lines, it all begins to make sense.
Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm have each been living the blues for a lifetime, and have the chops to prove it. Burnside is the grandson and long-time drummer behind the late Mississippi blues legend R.L. Burnside. He began playing in Delta juke joints and on concert stages at age 13. Steve “Lightnin’” Malcolm was raised in rural Missouri, and was drawn into the blues while still a child, when, in his words, “I was 7 or 8, and the grown folks was parked out on the road listening to music and carryin’ on. They put on a tape called ‘Muddy Waters Greatest Hits’, and when I heard that voice shootin’ out of that speaker, I was shocked. I fell in love with it, and I promised myself then and there that if I grew up to be a man, I was gonna try to do that!”
Malcolm started out singing and playing drums – the latter laying the foundation for the propulsive rhythm in everything he’s done since. By the age of 10 he had his first guitar, and a couple of years later he was sneaking into local honkytonks and jukes, sitting in with anyone who would let him. Before long his quest for the blues led him to North Mississippi, where he fell under the spell of local blues legends Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and Otha Turner at Kimbrough’s world famous juke joint outside Holly Springs. He immersed himself in a style unique to that region, known to blues fans around the world as North Mississippi hill country blues, a distinctive cousin of Delta blues that draws elements from the fife and drum cadences linked directly back to the West African dance traditions. As played with electric guitars and drums, it becomes a churning, droning exercise of tension and release, hypnotic and sensual, and as perfect a vehicle as has ever been created for dancing at a sweaty Saturday night juke joint.
Malcolm got a lifetime’s worth of on-the-job training from the elder statesmen of the style, and also formed alliances with the other young turks on the scene, such as the North Mississippi Allstars, Jimbo Mathus, Kenny Brown, Kenny and David Kimbrough Jr., and most importantly, Cedric Burnside.
For Cedric, this music is as much a part of his life as his own heartbeat. As grandson of blues master R.L. Burnside, and son of drummer Calvin Jackson, Cedric says that as a youngster, “My granddad used to play out on the porch, and we'd have house parties every weekend…We just stomped up dirt." Born in 1978, he grew up listening to as much funk and hip-hop as blues, and incorporates all of it into a relentless, driving style of drumming that is perfect for the traditional hill country blues, and at the same time contemporary, fresh and relentlessly funky. When Malcolm, who’d by then earned the nickname “Lightnin’”, spent some time living in the Burnside home a few years ago, Cedric began jamming with him regularly, if informally, laying the foundation for their future collaboration. They soon teamed up - two men, driven by the blues and raising a hell of a racket with just drums, a guitar, and two voices. Their independently released debut CD in 2007, “Juke Joint Duo”, quickly began making waves in the blues world far beyond North Mississippi.
In May of 2008, Delta Groove C.E.O. Randy Chortkoff became aware of the duo for the first time, when they sat in at the informal jam stage outside the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, where the 3rd Annual Delta Groove Blues Revue was being held. Chortkoff was so enthralled by the duo’s propulsive music that before the day was out he was making arrangements to record them, and by the next day had enlisted veteran producer David Z.
Initially there was talk of simply doing a state-of-the-art re-recording of the “Juke Joint Duo” CD, but as it turned out Burnside and Malcolm had already built up a fresh cache of strong new material, so only a couple of songs were carried over for their debut release on Delta Groove, “2 Man Wrecking Crew”. Adding some variety to the mix, harmonica wizard Jason Ricci was brought in to play on a few songs – another detail that on paper might not seem to make sense, until one considers that early in his career Ricci spent a year playing the North Mississippi juke joints as a member of Junior Kimbrough’s band, and has known Cedric Burnside for over a decade.
But forget about what’s on paper. The results speak for themselves: this is some of the most riveting, compelling, booty-shaking music being created today. And for the most part, it’s all Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm – a true two man wrecking crew. - Scott Dirks
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