Roots Blues
Traveler Markus James Releases New Album, Head for the Hills, Recorded in
North Mississippi, on October 28th
“first one’s
free
and
the last one kills
time to head for the hills”
GRATON, CA – Firenze Records announces an October
28th release date for Markus James’ new album, Head for the
Hills. Recorded in Holly Springs, Como, Senatobia and Luxahoma,
Mississippi, as well as in Northern California, Head for the Hills
showcases Markus James on vocals, electric slide, 3 string cigar box, gourd
banjo, slide dulcimer, acoustic guitar, harmonica, beatbox, and a
snakeskin-covered 1- string diddley bow. He’s backed by a “who’s who” of North
Mississippi Hill Country drummers including Kinney Kimbrough (son of Junior
Kimbrough), Calvin Jackson (R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Deep Blues
film), Aubrey “Bill” Turner (Otha Turner), and R.L. Boyce (Jessie Mae
Hemphill). Also appearing is drummer Marlon Green, who was the last drummer to
record and tour with the legendary John Lee Hooker, and who is currently
accompanying James live (recent appearances include Montreal International Jazz
Festival, Telluride Blues & Brews Festival).
“After my
Nightbird album came out in 2003, I started getting offers to go
out and play, and one of them was from the University of Southern Mississippi in
Hattiesburg,” recalls Markus James. “I went down there with one African musician
and the reaction we received was so great, and I noticed that nobody was asking
questions about the connection between traditional West African music and Blues;
the people there just dug the music and they let us know. After that, I started
traveling more and more to Mississippi and meeting musicians there, and I was
especially drawn to some of the old-school drummers of North Mississippi.”
After
performing in Mali, West Africa one year, James had an epiphany about the
connections between what he’d heard there and some of the North Mississippi Hill
Country music he saw and heard in the film made from Robert Palmer’s classic
book, Deep Blues. “I came back to the US, saw the Deep
Blues film, and was amazed to see the exact same thing that I had just
seen in the sand dunes outside Timbuktu: three drummers and a guy playing what
they call a cane flute. It was just such an obvious connection between the
musical traditions I had been immersed in in West Africa and some of the
traditional music in North Mississippi. I was on my way back to Mississippi,
this time to perform in Oxford at Ole Miss, and this whole process led me to
seek out, record and eventually start performing with some of these great
drummers. Traditionally, in North Mississippi, like in West Africa, music is
part of life; it’s not just some ephemeral entertainment like a song on the
radio, and these guys also do other things like farming, construction, making
white lightnin, etc. They are not slick session players who work in studios in
a city. So, having recorded in all kinds of rough environments in West Africa, I
felt right at home setting up mics on a porch, hanging mics from barn rafters,
in a carport, and just rolling; and this seemed perfectly normal to them as
well.
“I must have
watched the first part of the Deep Blues movie (about North
Mississippi) a hundred times; and when I found myself playing with Calvin
Jackson in Sherman Cooper’s potato barn in Como, it was like a dream come true.
How this all came to pass is a long story. I had befriended the late, great
Jessie Mae Hemphill and visited her several times in Senatobia. She loved the
film I had made, (Timbuktoubab) and the African instruments we
were playing. We had a great time hanging out and singing together. Jessie Mae
told me about what she knew of the Africans in her family and about traveling
and playing with her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, who is documented in the Library
of Congress. Jessie Mae and I were preparing to record together in her trailer,
but when I showed up the last time she was on her way to her final resting
place.”
James had
similar encounters with many of the drummers who’d wind up on his new CD. Kinney
Kimbrough had stayed at James’ place in Northern California when he was on tour
with another band. They had started recording then, and later in Como, and yet
again in Holly Springs, when Markus stayed with Kinney’s family and they
recorded in his open-air carport. James and Kimbrough have gone on to perform
live as a duo (Beale Street Music Festival, Sonoma County Blues Festival), and
Kinney appears in several videos from the new album. Markus also recorded with
Aubrey “Bill” Turner and R.L. Boyce, both of whom were mainstays of fife and
drum music in North Mississippi.
“I have
recorded a lot of things with these drummers over the last eight years” says
James. “The music on this album includes some of these recordings that work with
the theme of the album. One of the highlights of this recording process was when
I reached Calvin. After talking for a while and telling him I was also doing
some acoustic things now with my gourd banjo, he suggested he could hambone, so
I drove out to his family property in Luxahoma, where we recorded on his
sister’s porch, with him hamboning while I played gourd banjo and cigar box. He
also said buckets, pots and pans were the first things he had played when he was
a kid, so we found two five gallon buckets and recorded with him playing those
on the porch. (The sound of feet stomping on the porch was awesome). Each of
these drummers has special unique qualities, but they are all connected to the
rich musical traditions of Hill Country Music. This is different from Delta
Music and it’s not for me to try to explain what that’s about, but I feel that
the differences are profound. The Hill Country is a beautiful place, with lots
of trees and shade, somewhere you would want to be, especially if you found
yourself in the sweltering Delta or in the big city and out of luck.”
Background
Markus James
has been recording and performing original, blues-based music with traditional
West African musicians since 1994, when he first made his way to Niafunke, the
northern Mali village that was home to the legendary African bluesman Ali Farka
Toure. His five critically-acclaimed Mali-based albums have been warmly received
all over the world and he had tracks included on two European compilation sets
that also featured Robert Plant, Ali Farka Toure, and Tinariwen, among others.
His work with three traditional Malian music masters was the subject of the
award-winning documentary film, Timbuktoubab, which was seen on
PBS stations around the U.S. His last album, Snakeskin Violin,
featured collaborations with trance groove hunters and a shaman in Mali, as well
as Calvin Jackson in Mississippi, traveling Tamasheks in California and African
Diaspora musicians in the U.S. Featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” the
album also drew rave reviews from Billboard, Living Blues
and the “House of Blues Radio Hour,” among many
others.
