Photo Credit: Zac Childs
JD Simo and Luther Dickinson have officially detailed Do the Rump!, the debut collaborative album from the psychedelic and roots rock powerhouses. Due to arrive on Sept. 20 via Forty Below Records, the forthcoming album arrives as the product of the artist’s respective illustrious careers, a connection with undeniable chemistry, and true mastery of the musical traditions they cite and blend. Relix premiered the project’s lead single “Street People” last week, and today Glide offers a first sample of “Lonesome Road,” which is available to pre-save now.
Simo, highly-regarded for work with Jack White, Beyoncé and more, and the Grammy-winning North Mississippi Allstars founder Dickinson first made their musical connection onstage, when a chance meeting in the Phil Lesh & Friends ensemble proved a perfect fit. “Playing with Luther immediately felt as easy as water flowing down a river,” Simo recalls. “We had all the same influences, but we played nothing alike. Our styles just fit together. We didn’t have to think about it—it was instinctual.”
To capture this magic on tape, the duo rushed to Simo’s Nashville, Tenn. home studio House of Grease, tapping drummer Adam Abarashoff en route to further elaborate the sound with his jazz and Afrobeat expertise. “Adam would play something cool, and once we had that groove, we’d build on top of it,” Simo says. “We couldn’t have done it with anyone but Adam.” Simo and Dickinson share production duties on the LP, and achieved the rawness and immediacy that supercharge its preview cuts with its live-in-studio recording style, as the duo passed on overdubs and production tricks to preserve the grit of that inciting live encounter.
The full effect of this decision is felt on “Street People,” the band’s heavy, hazy reworked interpolation of the Bobby Charles electric blues classic, which swirls Hill Country and swamp rock influences to sizzle like blacktop in the summer. Elsewhere on the album, those versed in the same blues traditions as the duo will catch quotations from John Lee Hooker, Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside, JJ Cale, Fred McDowell and more of the greatest bluesmen of all time, whose foundational records provide lyrics, riffs, and ideas that Simo and Dickinson make all their own.
Do the Rump! is available to pre-order and pre-save now. To support the record, will embark on an 11-date tour from Sept. 18 to Oct. 26; visit simo.fm/tour or.lutherdickinson.com/tour for tickets and more information.
Read on for the album’s complete tracklist.
JD Simo & Luther Dickinson – Do the Rump!
- Street People
- Right Down There
- Lonesome Road
- Come And Go With Me
- Serves Me Right To Suffer
- Do The Rump Louise
- Come On
- Peaches