Kevin Wierzbicki: Is music a traditional part of your family get-togethers? Do you have jam sessions during holiday celebrations?

Cody Dickinson: I have a small immediate family. It’s just my mom, dad, brother and I. We sit around and enjoy mom’s cooking! We talk about music a lot, but it’s not so much played. I think we’d rather just relax and talk. 

Kevin: I was surprised when I found out that the first time you and your brother had written anything together was for the Polaris album. 

Cody: That’s right. “Kids These Days” was a lyrical collaboration and that’s the only time it’s happened. And “Eyes.” 

Kevin: Why not more often?

Cody: We both have very different musical tastes, different styles and different ways of writing. Luther likes to kind of save his songs until right before we record. We just did our recent record, called Electric Blue Watermelon, and quite a few of the songs I had never heard until the day we recorded them. Electric Blue Watermelon is the first time that we took time off from touring and spent four weeks just working on the record. It sounds like a cohesive, complete piece of work. All the other CDs we’ve done were spread out over a period of time because we’re so busy on the road. I think this is by far our best one. Luther came with a lot of real strong songs and my dad’s production was straight ahead. It was a joy working with him and it was fun recording this record. It was painless and easy, the way it should be. But that’s not the way it always is. 

Cody (left) and Luther (right)
Photo from Internet at Zebra Ranch

Kevin: When you were a kid hanging out in Memphis recording studios with your dad, did you realize what a cool deal you had going on? 

Cody: I think it helped me be more comfortable recording, having grown up around studios. A lot of musicians are not as fortunate. They don’t have a chance to be around that atmosphere. They’re used to playing in clubs, playing in front of an audience, and recording can be like being in a laboratory or being in school. It can take on that sort of sterile vibe and environment. It helped me to be a well-rounded musician. But I must say it’s not like when my dad was recording the Replacements that I was there every day running around playing with my G.I. Joe toys. That’s not the way it was. If he was working on a project, I would go for like five or ten minutes, one day out of the whole project. When he did a lot of movie work in the ’80s with Ry Cooder, he was out of town. He was in L.A. So he was gone, basically. My family life was more normal than you would think it was. 

Kevin: Do you ever get nervous around your dad in the studio? 

Cody: No. My dad and I have an honest relationship. The older I get, the better we get along. I know that I’ve heard him say that it’s hard for him to produce us because we know all his tricks, which certainly isn’t true. But I think it’s more of a challenge for him to produce us than it is for us to be produced by him. It’s real comfortable for me. When I work with other producers, they all seem like schmucks. Luther and I produced Shake Hands with Shorty (the Allstars’ 2000 debut album) and Polaris ourselves and it’s funny; it’s like a mistake. I always say I’ll never do it again. But I’m sure I will. 

Kevin: You did a version of Otha Turner’s “Shimmy She Wobble” on Hill Country Revue. Do you have a favorite memory of Otha? 

Cody: Luther and Otha were like best friends. Otha was seriously my brother’s best friend. It was hard on Luther when he passed away. We just learned so much from Otha Turner. He was like a cultural icon in our community. There’s something special about north Mississippi; it’s truly an enlightened place. I’ve done a lot of traveling and I’ve been around a lot of people, and Mississippi gets a bad rap. Fair enough, history is there. But it’s just not like that where I live. Like in the Delta, south Mississippi, there are still elements of ignorance. It’s because of people like Otha Turner, R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough; it’s because of them that north Mississippi is special. And my dad. The music is really what brings everyone together. That’s what’s interesting about our band, and it’s also what makes it worthwhile for me to take all of the time out of my own life to travel and play this music for people. It’s not just rap-metal or some shit. It’s music that means something to me. It’s sort of like being at home no matter where I am. 

Kevin: Living Blues Magazine recently had a full issue dedicated to the wealth of music being made in Mississippi. Can you just hop in your car Friday night and drive to some good music, or do you have to be in-the-know? 

Cody: Mississippi is one of those places where you could drive through it and not even think twice. You really kind of have to know people to enjoy it. Get to know somebody who’ll take you around and show you the spots. It’s still out there, but it’s funny. I’m a relatively young man, but it’s changed a lot in my lifetime. Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint was just down the road from my house. I would go there on Sunday nights, not because, “ooh, I’m going to the juke joint,” but because there was nothing else to do. That was what was going on for fun. I was kind of naïve and I didn’t realize how special it was until it was gone. I wish I had spent more time talking to Junior. We talked a couple of times and I certainly watched him play a lot. But it wasn’t until he was gone that I realized how incredible his songwriting was and what a special person he was. He’s dead and his juke joint is burned down. David Malone Kimbrough, probably one of his most talented sons, is in jail. He’s been in Parchman’s (Mississippi State Penitentiary) for years now. So it’s just pretty much gone. But there’s a flip side to that, too. People ask me if the blues is going to die off. Absolutely not. All you have to do is watch the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band or listen to DuWayne Burnside or Garry Burnside or any of the numerous Burnside family members. They’re all incredibly talented; all nine of R.L.’s sons play. It’s not going anywhere. It’s alive and well for sure. It might change a little, and I hope it does. In fact, I’m going to actively change it. I do as much as I can. You know, these purists who think I’m diluting the music can kiss my ass. 

Kevin: I can’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to say that. 

Cody: You’d be surprised. I’m going to work on a project with Otha’s grandsons. They all rap and they’re really good. They can freestyle, they write lyrics, and that’s my next thing. I want to incorporate hip-hop into fife and drum music, like rap and drums. It’s what we’ve been doing at our shows; there’s a little piece of it on the Bonnaroo CD. We have this new song that we’ve been playing at our shows. I’m not sure what we’re going to call it, something like, “People Came Here to Party.” I don’t know, they get crunk, they get excited and start rapping on the mic and free styling, and it’s incredible! It is blues, or at least it’s what blues is now. 

Kevin: I know that there is a certain element that holds the opinion that if you’re not Black, you can’t play the blues. 

Cody: The whole race issue is pretty irrelevant to me. Most of my friends are Black and I grew up embracing Black culture and learning from it. May it be a gospel drummer or may it be working on gangsta rap projects when I was twelve, or may it be playing basketball at Hernando Junior High. The culture just interests me, frankly, and the rednecks, the farmers, and their farming redneck kids didn’t interest me. But at the same time I never tried to be a “bluesman”; I never tried to put the hat on and act like whatever, something I’m not. I’m a rock’n’roll drummer and I know that. But there’s something interesting that happens when I play blues music, and I’m aware of that too. We’ve been real careful not to exploit the music. Shake Hands with Shorty, for example, is all covers, but we didn’t take any arrangement credit, even though we did totally bastardize the music. What’s special about the North Mississippi Allstars’ sound is Luther's and my rock influence with gospel background combined with the blues covers and our attempt to write blues songs. It’s real hard to try and write songs of the caliber of “Skinny Woman” or “Shake ’Em On Down.” They’re incredible, those lyrics! I just can’t write like that and I made a conscious effort not to contrive it; not to sit down and say, “Okay, I’m going to write a blues song.” I certainly hope I don’t claim to be something I’m not. I did write a song on our new record that has sort of a hill country vibe but I wasn’t trying to do it on purpose, it just came to me. It’s called “Stayed up All Night” and it’s got a real Junior Kimbrough influence. But it’s real. And that’s a lot like the way Polaris was. A lot of people freaked out because there were pop sounding songs on it, and that was just the sort of music I was writing at the time. This is our band, I helped create it and that’s the type of music I’m writing and I’m going to put it on the record. Maybe it was unfair to our fans; I hope not. It opened up all the possibilities for us where we could do any kind of music. We’re musicians, we spend our lives playing, constantly, and we just have to try different things and make our own mistakes. 

Cody Burnside?

Kevin: When was your first session with R.L. Burnside? 

Cody: It was at Bonnaroo. That was the first time I ever played with R.L. Burnside. Luther toured with him right before the North Mississippi Allstars formed. I think that had a huge impact on Luther. I know it did. He came back [and] he was a different man. You know, Otha taught Luther what it was about to play the blues, but R.L. showed Luther that you can make a living at it. That’s when I think it really clicked for him. So Luther played with him a bunch, but I didn’t. 

Kevin: I read in Living Blues Magazine about this character on the scene in Mississippi called Super Chikan. Have you ever met him? 

Cody: Yeah, yeah. He’s a friendly dude. He’s the real thing, too, Super Chikan. I don’t know him that well, but to me he seems a happy, content guy who’s not going to compromise his lifestyle for anybody or anything. He just seems happy to me. He’s a happy bluesman! He’s a real positive sort of cat. 

Kevin: What’s your take on the “crossroads” legend? 

Cody: Robert Johnson freaks me out. I just don’t know what to think about that. I think that like any kind of folk tale, there’s truth in it. And like any kind of tall tale, there’s exaggeration. The one thing that there’s no doubt about is the incredible talent that Robert Johnson had, and how young he was. All his compositions! All his songwriting was just incredible! Who taught him to write songs like that? Where did he learn it? I think he just freaked people out. I think he just scared the hell out of them so they said he sold his soul to the devil. Because they just couldn’t honestly believe how talented he was. But I would more realistically say it was a gift from God. 

Kevin: Is there a musically relevant place in Mississippi that makes you emotional? 

Cody: Where Junior’s juke joint was. It’s now just a pile of ashes. My ex-girlfriend, I took her down there and we stood on top of the soot. It’s a pile of black ashes. If you look around you can maybe find a piece of a broken cymbal or whatever. There’s nothing there. That’s the one that moves me. You stand there and you can feel it. It’s not like Keith Richards and Mick Jagger didn’t go there, it’s not like U2 didn’t go there, it’s not like this incredible music wasn’t played there. There’s no memorial; there’s no nothing. If I have any decent bone in my body, I’ll put some sort of monument up there one day. I know where it is, but if things stay the way they are now, in five years it’ll be a parking lot or overgrown in kudzu. I talked to his son about it, and we’re gonna do it. We’re just busy.