The BluesPowR Blog

Duwayne Burnside‘s latest album Acoustic Burnside (Dolceola Records) — his first in 17 years — may not have won the award in the Acoustic Blues Album category for which it was nominated during last month’s Blues Music Awards (an honor that went instead to another “Mississippi Son” in the form of an album by that name from harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite), but it’s one you’re going to need to add to your collection if you haven’t already. Sure, we’ve heard some of these same songs covered — quite well, in fact — over the years by the likes of such stars as The Black Keys and Buddy Guy, but not since the original masters like Duwayne’s father R.L. Burnside and their longtime Hill Country neighbor Junior Kimbrough have these songs sounded as genuine and satisfying as you’ll hear here.

Referring to the project as a “rebirth for me,” Duwayne returns to his roots with acoustic versions of songs he learned mostly from his father, including several of the elder Burnside’s (“Going Down South,” “See My Jumper Hanging on the Line,” “Alice Mae”) along with some from Kimbrough (“Stay All Night,” “Meet Me in the City,” “Lord Have Mercy on Me”), Robert Johnson (“Dust My Broom”), and other classics (“Poor Black Mattie,” “44 Pistol”), with Burnside elaborating: “…playing stripped down like this, you can hear this music come right out of my heart because that’s where my daddy put it.”