Fans of the blues are in for a treat with blues royalty, Cedric Burnside, headed to the ‘Maine this weekend.
Burnside and special guests perform live at Castlemaine’s Theatre Royal this Saturday March 5 as part of a national tour that also features dates at the Port Fairy Folk Festival and Womadelaide.
Burnside’s date with the ‘Maine marks his fourth trip to Australia and follows his third Grammy nomination – a Best Traditional Blues Album nod for this year’s I Be Trying, which Burnside recorded at Royal Studios in Memphis, where Al Green cut his classic sides for Hi Records in the 60s and 70s.
The Ashland, Mississippi-based blues aficionado is the grandson and longtime drummer of the late great RL Burnside.
He carries the mantle of Mississippi Hill country blues – with its commitment to poly-rhythmic percussion and its refusal of cliched blues chord progressions – to new audiences around the world.
These days predominantly a guitarist, he plays stripped back, and sizzles like a live-wire.
Burnside’s blues echoes the past, present and future all at once and expands upon the traditional darkness of blues with themes of love and hope.
The Mississippi Hill Country blues guitarist and singer/songwriter carries within him the legacy of the region’s sound stories.
At once African and American and southern and Mississippian, these stories tell about love, hurt, connection and redemption.
His Grammy-nominated I Be Trying is a 13-track album treatise on life’s challenges, pleasures, and beauty.
“Life can go any kind of way,” Burnside was quoted in a recent edition of Rolling Stone.
With almost 30 years of performing and living blues in him, he should know.
Those who make this Saturday’s night’s live show at Castlemaine’s Theatre Royal are warned to expect their soul to be stirred.
