Our second day at Austin’s South By Southwest Music Festival got a somewhat earlier start than our first, with one late-afternoon day set and a full slate of night showcases. The highlights:
- JUSTIN FOX BURKS
- The North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson trading licks with special guest G. Love at Stubb’s.
Locals: With two official showcases and a handful of daytime parties and live radio performances, the busiest Memphis act in Austin this week may be the North Mississippi Allstars, who have rolled into town as the culmination of a brief tour promoting their new album, Keys to the Kingdom. The band has squeezed this tour in during a break as the opening act for the East Coast and — coming up — the West Coast touring leg for Robert Plant’s Band of Joy. (For the Plant tour, the band is performing as a duo, just brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson. Bassist Chris Chew is back on board for their headlining tour.)
Seeing them indoors at Stubb’s early Thursday night, the Allstars were as good as I’ve ever seen them. Playing a set that seemed to come almost exclusively from their new album, they were sharp, Luther Dickinson finding a perfect balance between song form and his masterful guitar playing. A constantly smiling Cody Dickinson was crisp behind the drum kit and Chew added bass lines as big as he is, with help on tambourine, backup and, at times, lead vocals. The gospel undercurrent on Keys to the Kingdom came out even more clearly on stage and added more gravity and soul to the band’s trademark blues-rock sound.
Before they performed, I had an extensive conversation with the brothers Dickinson in which we talked about the passing of their father, Jim Dickinson, his influence on their current album, the future of his Zebra Ranch studio, the duo’s long list of side projects, the difficulty of pleasing fans and critics who want different things from the band, their personal SXSW history, and other topics. Look for plenty of material from that interview in next week’s festival cover story — and probably a collection of interview outtakes in this space after the paper hits the streets.
