Four-time Blues Music Award Drummer of the Year, Cedric Burnside will be heading to the WOMADelaide Festival to share his blues.
The blues has a rich history that runs deeper than the Mississippi River. Stories and songs of love gone sour and revenge have been passed down from one generation to the next for over a century.
One such bluesman continuing this tradition is Cedric Burnside, who will be bringing his band – The Cedric Burnside Project – to WOMADelaide.
Burnside has been making a name for himself as a legend behind the drum kit since the age of 13, having backed such greats as Jimmy Buffett, Jessie Mae Hemphill and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
Burnside’s precocious talent as a bluesman can be put down to a combination of his hard-work ethic and the support of his family. It’s not just any family Burnside is from, as his lineage is filled with legendary bluesmen, including his father Calvin Jackson and grandfather, or ”Big Daddy” as Cedric calls him, R.L. Burnside.
Cedric recalls getting his start as a musician at a young age thanks to growing up “at the house parties my Big Daddy used to throw every other weekend, and I was very young then – I was about seven-years-old. That was my first time jumping behind a drum set.
“By the time I was ten-years-old, I was good enough to play the juke joints. The police would sometimes come, and [the adults] would have to hide us until they [would] leave, because we were too young to be in the juke joints, but we were [in] the band; so they couldn’t afford for us to leave.”
It was only after continuing to prove himself at the juke joints that R.L. Burnside invited Cedric to tour with him, taking over the position of drummer once held by his father. “My dad played drums behind my Big Daddy for a bunch of years. Then he moved to Europe when I was 12.
“One Sunday night, [R.L.’s record label] Fat Possum came to one of the juke joint shows, and they heard me and my Big Daddy playing. They said, ‘Wow! R.L., that kid is great!’ My Big Daddy was like, ‘That’s my grandson'. They couldn’t believe it.
"They said: ‘That’s your next drummer right there'. And before you knew it, I was going on the road with my Big Daddy at the age of 13 on my first tour to Toronto, Canada. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Since the passing of “Big Daddy” in 2005, Cedric has been staking his own claim in the blues picking up four Blues Music Awards for drumming, while also taking up singing and guitar for his own band, The Cedric Burnside Project.
While his style incorporates everything from blues to funk to hip hop, Cedric is still rooted in tradition by helping make the hill-country-blues-style heard, much like his father and grandfather before him.
Burnside describes hill-country-blues as “such an unorthodox style of music. The rhythm is crazy!
“There’s no 12-bars, no 14-bars. I like to call it ‘feel music’ because it’s a type of feeling. You can’t get there expecting it to change; this music just changes, and you have to be ready. That’s kind of how the old cats did it back in the day. They had that hypnotic rhythm, like a droning. It’s just a great, rare blues that people came to love. And here we are, spreading it around the world. And I’m happy to do it.”
Cedric Burnside Tour Dates
Sat 5 Mar - Mt Penang Gardens (Central Coast)Tue 8 Mar - Perth Blues Club
Fri 11 Mar - WOMADelaide (Adelaide)
Sat 12 Mar - Port Fairy Folk Festival
Sun 13 Mar - Port Fairy Folk Festival
