Cedric Burnside & Lightnin' Malcolm
9:30 Club, Washington DC
Feb. 8, 2010
by Cole Stangler and Mark Waterman
Hosts, "The Cosmic American Music Radio Hour," Saturdays 2-4 pm on WGTB
At a mostly empty 9:30 Club—in stark contrast to the crowd that saw Galactic later—Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm took the stage for a short set of some hill country blues. Despite the sparse crowd, Burnside and Malcolm, known as the Juke Joint Duo and The Two Man Wrecking Crew, were not short on energy as they pounded out some edgy country blues.
With its’ gritty and unpretentious sound, the duo channels the great hill country and blues tradition of north Mississippi—launching into extensive trances without the smoother and predictable chord changes of standard blues. Although Cedric and Malcolm performed all original songs, their sound is unmistakably derived from hill country legends Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, Cedric’s grandfather.
“Me, when I was six, seven years old…and a bunch of other grandkids…we be out there kickin’ up dust, you know to that music. That was our music. And that’s how me myself—I feel like I am the blues ‘cause I just grew up with the blues and it’s always been in me,” Cedric said.
(Read more and hear the full interview after the jump!)
