“The music is hot, you know”
Hill Country Love
PROVOGUE
ALBUM OF THE MONTH
8/10
ALMOST halfway through Hill Country Love, Cedric Burnside untangles a skein of blues from his guitar and starts singing, “Here I go, ’bout to walk through the door/I see people, all over the floor/I”. The opening of “Juke Joint”, one of the many high points of Burnside’s new album, does much to position his songwriting, and his music, within the rich tradition of hill country blues, placing it firmly in the juke joint: old rural weekend venues where black communities would gather to drink, eat, hang out and play music. It’s no surprise, then, that photographer and scholar Bill Steber once called juke joints the “kiln where the musical fires burned brightest” in the Mississippi Delta.
