<\/div>\n
Memphissippi Sounds – Welcome to the Land<\/h1>\n
Two young men playing authentic original blues, the one-chord trance drone chanting form that preceded what most folks think of as the traditional 12 bar\/ AAB lyric structures, might seem like a musical anachronism.\u00a0 <\/span>But when the song\u2019s vocal chant kicks in \u201cget cha foot off my neck,\u201d you know it\u2019s 2021 and as modern as can be.<\/p>\nThis is the work of Memphissippi Sounds, the duo of Damion Pearson and Cameron Kimbrough.\u00a0 <\/span>Their new release from Little Village is called Welcome to the Land<\/i>, and it will be out October 15th<\/sup><\/span>.\u00a0 <\/span>It was recorded at Memphis\u2019s legendary Sun Studios and produced by Aki Kumar, a Little Village artist and board member who plays a very mean harp himself.<\/p>\nAs we know you can guess, Memphissippi is a partnership of musicians (Damion, harmonica, and Cameron, drums\u2014both play guitar and sing as well\u2014 from, respectively. Memphis and North Mississippi, which are essentially adjacent and also worlds apart.<\/p>\n
Music hasn\u2019t changed so much in North Mississippi, so it\u2019s less surprising that Cameron was in touch with these original blues, particularly because his grandfather is the well-known Junior Kimbrough.<\/p>\n
But Damion grew up on his father\u2019s record collection, which featured George Clinton and Parliament\/Funkadelic and the Ohio Players. Local and national rap and hip hop, from Playa Fly and Dr. Dre mixed with church every Sunday growing up.\u00a0 <\/span>He picked up on blues from Memphis\u2019s stalwart blues station WDIA, and he studied it seriously, \u201cthe older the better for me,\u201d from John Lee Hooker to Muddy Waters, Howlin\u2019 Wolf, Jimmy Reed, and both Sonny Boys.\u00a0 <\/span>His family was first-generation Memphis, and the rest of the family still lived in Madison County, Tennessee, some in town and some on the farm, so he was never too far from the blues.<\/p>\nCameron, from the North Mississippi country village of Pott Camp, \u201cdeer hunting, four-wheel riding,\u201d did indeed grow up surrounded by the blues\u2026.and a few other forms of music.\u00a0 <\/span>His early favorite was Metallica\u2019s \u201cNo Leaf Clover\u201d with the San Francisco Symphony.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cIt was so dramatic.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It led to System of a Down, Nirvana, Incubus, and rap, as well as the Holly Springs Saturday morning blues, \u201ca southern soul circuit type of blues.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>He moved on to years of playing R & B, but his life blew up in his late twenties when the trucking company he worked for got caught selling commercial driver\u2019s licenses and Cameron lost his job, his truck, his house, and his life to that point.\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly, the blues were truly meaningful, and he held them close.<\/p>\nWhen Cameron and Damion met up, something clicked instantly.\u00a0 <\/span>Damion had never heard hill country old-school groove music, but as soon as he did, he realized he\u2019d been a fish out of water with more conventional blues.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI play with a lot of feeling, which is deeper than a lot of guys on Beale Street doing the 12 bar, so I always felt like I was out of place.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I found Cam and realized, \u201cthis<\/i> is where my music is, my harmonica can really take off with him and with this kind of music.\u00a0 <\/span>I was having my own kind of feeling and that feeling, once I really honed in on it, just worked with this type of music.\u00a0 <\/span>Like James Brown said, \u2018Trust in the one.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>And follow the groove.\u201d<\/p>\nCameron felt the same way.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI think Damion pretty much fed off of my energy of what I was playing, you know, he’s a really top guitarist, and so he had the technical way of doing things and I had the spiritual way of doing it.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think he combined his spirit with my spirit and it just kind of took off from there.\u00a0 <\/span>We didn’t have any conversation, we just started playing together.\u00a0 <\/span>Actually, we were walking around somewhere playing on the street and we caught people’s attention and that’s when we started to realize that maybe we got something, because we was just having fun with it, but when we played it seemed to draw people in, and people started asking us what our name was.\u201d<\/p>\nEnter Aki Kumar, who\u2019d met Damion at a harmonica workshop in Holly Springs.\u00a0 <\/span>After \u201cstalking\u201d him on his Instagram page, Aki found out about Memphissippi Sounds and proposed recording.\u00a0 <\/span>Damion steered them to Sun, which pleased his partner.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cMan, I was geeked to be in there recording.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew, you know, that we might not go platinum, but we got some juju on this one.\u00a0 <\/span>I was surprised at how fast the engineers worked.\u00a0 <\/span>Aki really surprised me because he really did play a large part of the ideas that kind of came together \u2026Just his presence and the way that we all worked well together in that studio.\u00a0 <\/span>It was like clean, pristine. Everything was fast if you wanted something.\u00a0 <\/span>They made sure it happened.\u00a0 <\/span>It was just a smooth operation.\u201d<\/p>\nIn his first stint as producer, Aki was equally impressed with the duo.\u00a0 <\/span>Never having seen them play together, he avoided going in \u201cwith any kind of predetermined agenda. This instinct was a fairly good one. Both gentlemen, being the seasoned musicians that they are, took very little time getting up and running and required very little direction\/course correction. They were jovial, relaxed, free-flowing and took creative chances even while holding themselves to a high musical standard. I’m grateful they were open to whatever inputs and suggestions I provided on occasion.\u201d<\/p>\nThe album opens with Damion\u2019s \u201cWho\u2019s Gonna Ride,\u201d an anthem to the pandemic, George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cSeeing that,\u201d he said, \u201cbut also personal experiences of seeing friends or myself in those kind of situations, and if something happened to me personally, would the whole world come out, \u2018who’s going to ride, who’s going to ride with me.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>If I can’t speak for myself, who is going to ride?\u00a0 <\/span>Who is going to tell my story?\u00a0 <\/span>But also there was a Tupac song where he said that as well, who’s going to ride, so it’s a hip hop saying.\u00a0 <\/span>If I got to go down there and if I got to march, who\u2019s coming with me?\u00a0 <\/span>It takes a community to make this change and it came out of that as well.\u201d<\/p>\nWelcome to the Land<\/i> isn\u2019t all politics.\u00a0 <\/span>In Cameron\u2019s words, \u201cAfter you get through getting your neck stepped on, you need a little love after that.\u00a0 <\/span>If you\u2019ve heard any of my music, 95 percent of it is involved with making love to some woman or trying to figure out what’s going on with a woman. And you could never go wrong with that concept and, you know, that’s kind of where I am, you know, I want to keep that Kimbrough vibe going.\u00a0 <\/span>It’s really about wooing the woman, loving the woman and the blues\u2014we all get blue.\u00a0 <\/span>If you can’t relate to any other blues, you can relate to a woman leaving.\u201d<\/p>\nRaw, by turns searing and romantic, this music will move you.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a perfect example of why Village Music set out to uncover music that needed a hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>