Luther Dickinson’s Dead Blues: Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow

“I would never claim to be a bluesman,” Dickinson says during a phone interview from the road, somewhere between Asheville and Nashville. For someone whose band, North Mississippi Allstars, has earned multiple Grammy nominations exploring roots music, it’s a surprising admission. “I’m more of a psychedelic folk rocker, you know? That’s what I claim, if anything.”

This perspective—reverent toward tradition but unbound by its conventions—defines Dead Blues Vol. 1. The album reimagines nine blues songs from the Dead’s repertoire, featuring the remarkable vocals of Datrian Johnson alongside contributions from Phil Lesh’s son Grahame Lesh, the Hold Steady’s Steve Selvidge, Dickinson’s brother and Allstars band mate Cody, and pedal-steel wizard Ray Ray Holloman.

The genesis of the record stemmed from two separate ideas colliding in Dickinson’s mind. In 2013, Phil Lesh invited Dickinson and his brother Cody to join Phil & Friends, the legendary Grateful Dead bassist’s rotating collective of musicians. As Dickinson studied up on the Dead catalog for rehearsals and performances, he and Grahame Lesh began performing casual Dead Blues shows focusing specifically on the blues songs in that band’s repertoire. “Grahame and I started doing the Dead Blues to do looser, easier shows outside of the Dead musician pool,” Dickinson explains. “We’d bring in musicians and artists outside of Phil’s scene to play with us. That was really fun.”

Around the same time, Strolling Bones Records approached him about doing a Grateful Dead tribute. “I was like, man, I don’t know,” he admits. “My only in was like, ‘Well, I could do a Dead Blues thing.’ But that was years ago, and I didn’t really consider it. It wasn’t at the top of my to-do list, you know?”