North Mississippi Allstars

With their rambunctious approach to American roots music, the North Mississippi Allstars have carried the torch for hill country blues into the 21st century. The offspring of iconoclastic producer and musician Jim Dickinson (who had worked with Aretha Franklin, Big Star and The Rolling Stones), guitarist Luther Dickinson and drummer Cody Dickinson spent a good chunk of their youth in Hernando, Mississippi, where they blasted punk records while soaking up the hypnotic grooves of hill country legends R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Since forming the North Mississippi Allstars in 1996, they have dropped a string of albums, including their 2000 debut, Shake Hands With Shorty, and 2013’s funk-fuelled World Boogie Is Coming, that treat hill country blues not as a fragile museum artefact but rather as a living tradition meant to be gnarled into rollicking new configurations. Besides helming the Allstars, the brothers have racked up innumerable side projects. They’ve collaborated with punk-blues pioneer Jon Spencer as well as jazz keyboardist John Medeski; Luther, meanwhile, is an in-demand session whiz who spent the late 2000s doubling as the lead guitarist for The Black Crowes.