Martin's Downtown

Craig Adams & the Long Goodbye

Born and raised in the small riverside town of Rosedale, MS, Craig Adams always had a love for music and lyrics. He and his three sisters were allowed to “live on the imaginative side of life," driving his creative talent at a young age. By his early teens, Craig picked up guitar playing old tunes with his father and began writing during long days in the heat of harvest season. After meeting his wife Katherine and building a family of four, he began to share his talent with others. The raw and unprocessed sounds of High Note are only the beginning of music to be captured from this southern songwriter.

Cody Rogers

William Boyle writes, “Rogers’ voice sounds like something you’d hear booming from the stage of that place. Shivery, deep, weathered.” Cody Rogers’ has always been between those two places. The son of a pool hustler turned preacher he grew up in north Mississippi shaped by the duality of biblical fire sweltering like the southern summer and the heavenly moans that shaped the hill country with music and lone neon lights glowing in the blackness of the night.

Rogers fronted Oxford, MS band, The Holy Ghost Electric Show, for six years and during that time learned who he was as a artist and songwriter, with the help of Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers), while exploring the soundscape with the family that made up HGES. Now, Rogers is releasing his first solo album entitled “My Heart is The Most Lonesome Rodeo” coming in 2018. “Carry these songs with you…”William Boyle writes, “They’re something to hold up against the doom that’s trying to consume and crush us.”

JM Stevens

JM Stevens is lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Austin based rock & roll foursome Moonlight Towers. The band earned a distinction in 2011 that few can claim when revered musician-actor-legend Little Steven Van Zandt gave their tune "Heat Lightning" the honor of being named “Coolest Song in the World", garnering heavy rotation on his internationally syndicated radio show Underground Garage.

Back at home that year, local paper the Austin Chronicle concurred, saying “Simply put, there’s not a hair out of place,” and describing the band’s music as, “Rock-solid bar room pop salvation songs that bypass the moment in favor of something that will never go completely out of style.” Forming in 2001, Moonlight Towers released 5 albums receiving critical accolades from the around the globe. James is now exploring new trails and is in the process of recording his first solo album.

North Mississippi Allstars

A forgotten roll of film inspired a musical accompaniment, the North Mississippi Allstars’ new record Up and Rolling. Shot before the turn of the century, the photographs resonate with the music of four families from the Mississippi hills. The album captures the communal spirit upon which the band was founded.

In 1996, a photographer from Texas, Wyatt McSpadden, traveled to North Mississippi looking to photograph local musicians. Brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson had grown up just south of Memphis and cut their teeth playing experimental rock & roll together, as well as the roots repertoire pioneered by their father, Jim Dickinson, a legendary producer (Big Star, the Replacements) and session player (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan). Their feet were firmly planted in the North Mississippi mud and music scene, and they were excited to show Wyatt around their community, to introduce him to the musical families of Otha Turner, RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.

Their first stop was Otha Turner’s farm. Then in his late eighties, he was the last living fife and drum musician in the hills -- “and a friend to all,” Luther exclaims. “He looked sharp that day, still in his Sunday best and ready for a good time.” They all sat together on Otha’s fabled front porch, which was something like a classroom for the elder Dickinson brother. The two would sit for hours, the kid playing guitar while the old man made up lyrics on the spot. That’s how “Call That Gone” came into the world, decades before the Allstars recorded it for Up and Rolling.

After Otha treated Wyatt to an impromptu concert featuring his family band of drummers, the fife player sent them down to Junior Kimbrough’s nightclub. They crossed the county line to see Junior and his Soul Blues Boys perform electrified, multigenerational cotton patch blues in their own unique style. Later that evening RL Burnside showed up, took the bandstand with beer in hand, and proceeded to tear the house down. “Wyatt was so smooth nobody felt he was taking photos,” Luther recalls. “No one was self-conscious or posing. Wyatt had a cloak of invisibility.”

Once the Peavey amps were turned off and the jukebox unplugged, Cody and Luther parted ways with the Texan. Wyatt shared a handful of the images with Otha and the Dickinsons but no one saw the remaining photographs for decades. Wyatt’s images were forgotten. The Dickinsons had other matters demanding their attention -- namely, a new band they envisioned as a loose collective of local musicians who would play the community’s repertoire.

A month after Wyatt took those photos, the North Mississippi Allstars made their Memphis debut, incorporating their father’s concept of roots music as a framework for improvisation and blending experimental/psychedelic excursions into Hill Country anthems. As Luther tells it, “after NMA first shook em’ down in Memphis, RL Burnside hired me to tour with him in ’97. A natural momentum began building up that slowly led to Cody and I hitting the road full-time. Our lives changed forever with the release of Shake Hands with Shortyin 2000. The music that rings thru the hills carried us away and became our home away from home as we began touring around the world. In orbit, we lost track of time and of ourselves.”

Shake Hands with Shorty made the Allstars one of the most celebrated roots acts around. In 23 years they’ve released ten studio albums, three of which were nominated for Blues Album of the Year Grammys. (Luther has notched another four nominations in various categories on top of that.) More important, they’ve played countless shows in front of avid crowds, touring alongside Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Mavis Staples, and John Hiatt, among many others. Says Luther, “I’m grateful to work together as a family -- with Cody, the musicians we roll with and the people who support our live shows. Together, we keep this music up and rolling.”

All those years of touring took the Dickinson brothers far away from their North Mississippi home and the people who taught them this music. “The elders passed on in our absence -- Junior, Otha, RL, our father,” Luther says. “Every time we returned home, it was less recognizable.” In 2017 Wyatt tracked the brothers down and shared those photographs with them. “The images stopped me in my tracks and blew my mind. The music that changed our lives was captured in these photographs. Cody and I wanted to set the music free and record an album to accompany these photographs illustrating what Mississippi music sounded like in 1996 -- and what it sounds like now. The fantasy of what music could have been on the radio that day in ’96 was the portal for the new original songs we recorded for this soundtrack. ‘Drunk Outdoors’, ‘Up and Rolling’, ‘Bump That Mother’, and ‘Living Free’ sing about life in Mississippi, be it our memory, reality, or dream for the future.”

Inspired by Wyatt’s images, the Allstars returned home to their family recording studio, the Zebra Ranch, to make the record they heard in those photographs. "We trimmed back the wisteria, emptied the traps, and swept out the old barn. Firing up the tube amps and the old computers, we began conjuring up modern Mississippi music, ancient and futuristic."

Along with originals, they covered some of their favorite songs by these local heroes, with help from Cedric Burnside and Sharde Thomas, Otha’s granddaughter. “She was only a child when she became his apprentice and heir to the bamboo throne of fife and drum music,” says Luther. “Now she’s the Queen of the Hill Country and my favorite singing partner.” In addition to duetting with him on RL’s raunchy “Peaches,” she also sings with Luther on Otha’s “Call That Gone.” “She read over her grandfather’s lyrics and proceeded to nail it in one take. It was like she was singing from the collective soul of her family.”

Cedric Burnside, RL’s grandson and two-time Grammy nominee, is featured on two tracks. "It's an honor to play with Cedric. "Out on the Road" was a highlight of the RL tour we played together in '97 and he sang his heart out on the new version."

“When we make a record,” says Luther, “we invite the people close to us at the time to join us. Recording with the musicians we are touring with or hanging with help capture a record’s time frame.” The great Mavis Staples takes them all to church on the old spiritual “What You Gonna Do?” Jason Isbell joins to record a tune that has been in the Dickinson family for years: “Our father recorded ‘Mean Old World’ with Duane Allman and Eric Clapton during the Layla sessions. Jason invited me to record an acoustic, slide guitar duo version. Cody came up with the new arrangement and wanted to record an electric version with Jason and Duane Betts, using Mean Old World as a vehicle to lay down an epic statement about modern-day roots rock guitar.”

As Cody puts it, “It’s all inclusive. Everyone is invited, the bar is always open, and drinks are on the house. But it’s important to us that we stay true to the vision of Hill Country music. There is incredible talent here in North Mississippi, so I’m always
learning. The best thing about being in this band this long is developing a sound and identity that is unique. That’s truly a blessing, so we do our best to keep the music honest.

While inspired by the community and music of that Sunday more than 20 years ago, Up and Rolling is the sound of modern Mississippi. Luther hopes, “the music is rooted, but spreads evasively from the kudzu jungle grown over Junior’s concrete slab and Otha’s porch boards thru the Zebra Ranch’s razor wire chain link fence. Transcending time and space, music reaches out into the dark of night like the wisteria vine, looking for free-hearted souls to latch onto and wedge into the foundations of hate, slowly tearing down walls a generation at a time.”

Southern Avenue

SOUL-STEEPED YOUNG MEMPHIS QUINTET SOUTHERN AVENUE SPARKS A ROOTS REVOLUTION WITH SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM ON STAX
Southern Avenue is a Memphis street that runs from the easternmost part of the city limits all the way to Soulsville, the original home of Stax Records. Southern Avenue is also the name of a fiery young Memphis quintet that embodies its home city’s soul, blues and gospel traditions, while adding a youthful spirit and dynamic energy all their own. “If Memphis music is a genre, this is it!” proclaims American Blues Scene, and Rock 103FM calls Southern Avenue, “The most-talked-about band in Memphis.”
Their self-titled debut album is a breath of fresh air with its own unique blend of gospel-tinged R&B vocals, roots/blues-based guitar work and soul-inspired songwriting. And Southern Avenue’s upcoming release on the fabled Stax label is a testament to the young combo’s talent and vision.

Southern Avenue features five young but seasoned musicians who came from diverse musical and personal backgrounds to create music that spans their wide-ranging musical interests, while showcasing the powerful chemistry that the group has honed through stage and studio experience.

Southern Avenue encompasses Memphis-born, church-bred sisters Tierinii and Tikyra Jackson, respectively a soulful, charismatic singer and a subtle, powerful drummer; guitarist Ori Naftaly, an Israeli-born blues disciple who first came to America as an acclaimed solo artist; versatile jazz-inspired bassist Daniel McKee; and the band’s newest addition, keyboardist Jeremy Powell, an early alumnus of Stax’s legendary music academy.

The band members’ diverse skills come together organically on Southern Avenue, scheduled for release on February 24, 2017 via Stax Records, a division of Concord Music Group. Produced by Kevin Houston (North Mississippi Allstars, Lucero, Patty Griffin), the 10-song album features guest appearances from Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars and trumpeter Marc Franklin of the Bo-Keys. But it’s Southern Avenue’s own potent musical chemistry that drives such sublimely soulful originals as “Don’t Give Up,” “What Did I Do,” “It’s Gonna Be Alright,” “Love Me Right” and “Wildflower.” The band also pays tribute to its roots with an incandescent reading of Ann Peebles’ Memphis soul classic “Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love.”
The seeds for Southern Avenue’s birth were planted when Ori Naftaly, who’d grown up in Israel with a deeply rooted passion for American blues and funk, came to Memphis in 2013 to compete in the prestigious International Blues Challenge. That experience led to Naftaly moving permanently to Memphis and successfully touring the United States with his own band.

Although his talents were embraced by American audiences, Naftaly felt constrained in his own band, feeling the need to include a more expansive, collaborative musical vision. That opportunity arrived when he met Memphis native Tierinii Jackson, who’d gotten her start singing in church, before performing in a series of cover bands and theatrical projects.

According to Ori, “When I saw Tierinii perform, I thought, ‘This is why I came to America.’ I met her and we clicked. At our first rehearsal, she told me that her sister was a drummer, and she thought it would be great to have her in the band. We had such a good vibe, and suddenly I didn’t care so much about my solo thing.”

“I initially clicked with Ori really well, but it was his project,” Tierinii remembers. “Then he came to me and said ‘I want this band to be a collaboration, I want this to be our vision and our music.’ So we started writing together, and that’s when I realized that we were really the same, musically.”

“We started over,” Naftaly continues. “We threw out most of the songs I’d been playing in my solo band, and Tierinii and I wrote a whole new set, and we became Southern Avenue. The more we played together, the closer we got, and the more we became a family. We started getting a different kind of crowd, and from there things escalated quickly.”

“Ori said, ‘My band is done, this is y’all’s band,'” Tierinii recalls. “We all quit our other gigs and started focusing on this, working and writing and living together in a way that you don’t experience when you’re playing somebody else’s music. Now we’re playing songs that we wrote ourselves and we’re playing them from our hearts. That is when I realized that we had something special.”

Despite not having a record deal, Southern Avenue quickly found success touring in America and Europe. They won additional attention playing some prestigious festivals and competing in the International Blues Challenge, in which they represented Memphis. Less than a year after the band’s formation, they were signed to the resurgent Stax label.

“I feel like being on Stax is a responsibility,” says Tierinii. “I grew up in Memphis, seeing the name Stax everywhere. It was a constant presence, and now it’s up to us to live up to that. I feel like this band can be a platform to do a lot of positive things for the city of Memphis. I want to change the world, but Memphis is home.”

Tierinii views Southern Avenue as “a perfect soundtrack to our first year together. We wrote these songs in our first nine months of being a band. We’d all done so many things and come from so many different places, but the music represents all of us.
“It’s been a real crash course,” she continues. “We haven’t been a band for very long, but what we have feels very special, and it’s made us a strong unit. I think that we represent something that people need to see right now.”

“This band has already made our dreams come true,” Ori concludes. “I’ve waited all my life to be in a band like this, and it’s amazing to me that I get to play with these people every night. Our goal is to keep doing this for a long time and leave our mark. We’re trying to build a legacy.”

High-energy, Rowdy, Raucous, Longhair Mississippi Glam Rock. That's the sound of Easy, The Week's long-awaited followup to their breakthrough album, Dear Bo Jackson. Recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis — a place filled with the ghosts (and gear) of the Replacements, ZZ Top, and Big Star, all of whom traveled to Ardent to create their own landmark albums — Easy finds The Weeks doubling down on a mix of groove, grit, and guitars. It's swaggering and sharply-focused, shining new light on a band of brothers who, although still in their mid-20s, have already logged a decade's worth of sweaty gigs together.

If Easy bears resemblance to the raw, rowdy attitude of the The Weeks' live show, it's because the album was written at the end of a busy, five-year period that found the group rarely leaving the road.

"We moved to Nashville in 2010," remembers frontman Cyle Barnes, who formed the band in Jackson, Mississippi, with his three longtime bandmates: drummer (and twin brother) Cain Barnes, guitarist Sam Williams, and bass player Damien Bone. "We spent 2011 to 2015 touring. November 2015 was the first time we ever spent an entire month in Nashville."

Those years on the road were eye-opening for The Weeks, all of whom were just teenagers when they began playing together in 2006. By their early 20s, the guys were touring Europe with Kings of Leon, promoting the newly-released Dear Bo Jackson in front of 20,000 people each night. Back in America, The Weeks continued playing their own club shows, too. The experience taught them how to bridge the gap between arena shows and smaller gigs. In short, it taught them how to be themselves, no matter the audience.

Appropriately, Easy consolidates the band's strengths. While the songs on 2013's Dear Bo Jackson were thick with horn arrangements, strings, and guest appearances, Easy is a leaner, louder beast. The Weeks began working on its 11 tracks after returning home from a long tour and taking some time to rest, reflect, and regroup. Newly energized, they began writing songs at Sam and Damien's home in Nashville, with Cyle and Williams splitting the bulk of the songwriting duties. The whole process relied on collaboration, with the full band fleshing out the newer songs.

"Everyone would come to the house, make food, hang out, and play music 'til four in the morning," Williams remembers. "We wrote 25 songs, then picked our favorites for the final tracklist.

Easy is driving and direct, captured in punchy sound by producer Paul Ebersold. The goal was to clear out any unnecessary clutter, focusing instead on The Weeks' biggest strengths: the elastic power of Cyle's voice, capable of a crooning drawl one minute and a roof-raising howl the next; the range of Sam's guitar playing, from Motown-influenced chord stabs to garage-rock blasts of sound; and the interlocking rhythms of Damien and Cain. They threw some curveballs into the mix, too, riding a lovely, lazy, organ-heavy groove on the southern soul song "Hands on the Radio" and punctuating songs like "Ike" with a small horn section. Along the way, they made good use the studio's vintage gear, finding room on a handful of songs for Elvis Presley's microphone, Big Star's snare drum, the "Green Onions" organ from Booker T. & the M.G.'s.

"We said, 'If we can do this song in five chords, let's do it,'" says Sam. "That way, whenever the curveballs do happen, they mean a lot. We focused on the songs first, and then we added stuff, as long as it didn't harm the energy or the groove. We wanted to pick our moments better."

Inspired by the real-life characters, places, and stories The Weeks encountered on tour, Easy is a record about where the band has been, as well as a sign of where they're going. "I wanted the stories to be real — a little dark, maybe — but I wanted them to be redeeming, too," says Cyle, who began turning the stories into proper songs once the tour ended. He tossed some personal tales into the mix, too, with songs like the autobiographical "Gold Doesn't Rust" focusing on the joy of plugging in, tuning up and rocking out.

"We just wanted to make a rock record," adds Damien, shrugging his shoulders at the simplicity of it all. The Weeks earned their road warrior credentials years ago, but they've never defined their ambition — or the wide range of their abilities — this clearly before.

And speaking of simple…what's the deal with that album title?

"We called it Easy because every time I make music with these guys, it's easy," says Cain, who has spent more than a third of his life as a member of The Weeks. "It feels good. But the other side of it is, there's nothing easy about being in a band. There's nothing easy about staying together for 10 years and still wanting to make music. We have the hardest and easiest job on the planet. But it works for us.”