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Label puts new ear to old sounds

Photo: Label puts new ear to old sounds (Sara Brown)

Reed Turchi of Devil Down Records (pictured with artist Kenny Brown) has spent long stretches of time in North Mississippi recording hill country blues artists, whose style and sound are quintessentially Southern.

One day last September, junior Southern Studies major Reed Turchi was sitting on the porch of Kenny Brown’s house in Potts Camp, Mississippi, recording one of the most eminent blues guitarists in America.

Though he had just heard Brown’s music for the first time seven months prior, Turchi was in Potts Camp to cut an album on his own label, Devil Down Records, to help bring the North Mississippi hill country sound to the world.

“Sometimes he thinks I bug him more than I should,” Turchi said of Brown, who he has been visiting often while completing the new double record. “But I think it’s really cool to work with Kenny. That’s the cool thing about Devil Down. All the albums stem from relationships with the artists.”

Turchi started Devil Down in June of 2010, in part to help record the new crop of north Mississippi musicians. The rhythmic, sometimes monochordal hill country sound has lost many of its older champions in recent years, artists like R. L. Burnside and Otha Turner. Turchi wanted to see who was filling those giant shoes, so he attended the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic last June, held annually to showcase the style.

“Recording was pretty awkward at first because I was still an outsider,” Turchi remembered. “I had been down there five days. I had called all my contacts. I was running out of money.”

Two people he met there proved to be pivotal, though: Luther and Cody Dickinson of the Grammy-nominated North Mississippi All-Stars. Turchi recorded them at the picnic and a working relationship developed. Now the All-Stars have a track on Devil Down’s last release, the compilation North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic, vol II.

“I asked Luther what the major difference between hill country blues and delta blues is,” Turchi said. “Luther said a lot of it comes from the underrated psychedelic effects of corn liquor, which is the hill country drink of choice.”

“It makes me very proud to see Reed doing great mobile recordings,” Luther Dickinson wrote in an email. “Mississippi blues records should be made outside and Reed understands that. I love to see him paying the dues that come with it as well, the long drives and whatever manual labor Kenny Brown submits him to. That’s the real deal. They don’t call it the blues for nothing.’”

Turchi has collaborators at UNC too. William Ferris, senior associate director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South has worked with Devil Down to release an album of his 1968 field recordings of the late “Mississippi” Fred McDowell, a quintessential guitarist of the hill country style.

“He played this hard-hitting, bottle-neck blues style,” professor William Ferris said of McDowell and the album on Devil Down, Come and Found You Gone. “Because of the purity of his guitar style and his voice, he was a prince of the blues.”

When asked about what it means for a UNC student to start a record label devoted specifically to north Mississippi blues, Ferris put the matter in perspective.

“It’s exciting. It means the circle is unbroken. The tradition is alive and well.”

Contact the Diversions Editor at diversions@dailytarheel.com.

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