JD Simo & Luther Dickinson To Drop ‘Do The Rump!’ and share new single “Lonesome Road”
JD Simo and Luther Dickinson are pleased to announce the forthcoming release of their new album, Do the Rump! due September 20th via Forty Below Records.
The pair will hit the road on Sept 18th, kicking off in Old Saybrook, CT at the Kate. Scroll down for all tour dates,
Individually, JD Simo and Luther Dickinson are building their legacies as solo artists, sidemen, songwriters, and guitar heroes. Together, they’re a creative force to be reckoned with, making their version of amplified American roots music. On the pair’s first collaborative album, Do The Rump!, the musicians trade blistering guitar solos, take turns at the microphone, and turn their classic influences — including hill country blues, spirituals, swamp rock, and Afrobeat — into something contemporary, reinterpreting a number of their old-school favorites into eclectic, electrifying anthems.
The partnership began onstage, where Simo and Dickinson first shared the spotlight as touring members of Phil Lesh and Friends. Dickinson had already established himself as co-founder of the Grammy-winning duo North Mississippi Allstars and a celebrated guitarist for acts like Black Crowes and John Hiatt. Similarly, JD Simo built an audience through his solo project and as a session musician for Jack White, Beyoncé, Chris Isaak, and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie. Occupying the same stage felt different, though. “Playing with Luther immediately felt as easy as water flowing down a river,” Simo remembers. “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.”
Those instincts take center stage on Do The Rump!, whose eight songs were recorded during a series of live-in-the-studio performances. There were no overdubs. There are no production tricks, either. Joined by drummer Adam Abarashoff — whose background in Afrobeat and jazz helped push Do The Rump’s music into unexpected directions — the friends captured spontaneity in its purest form, recording most of the songs during a single take, allowing a natural combination of grooves and guitars to lead the way.
Listen “Lonesome Road”
Pre-order the album Do The Rump! HERE
Do The Rump! was recorded at House of Grease, Simo’s home studio in Nashville, where Simo and Dickinson shared production duties. “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.” Those inspirational drum parts motivated the two guitarists to develop new riffs and melodies. Equally inspirational were the songs that had inspired all three musicians to begin playing in the first place. They found themselves going back to those songs, borrowing lyrics from vintage classics like Bobby Charles’ “Street People” and John Lee Hooker’s “Serves Me Right To Suffer,” fusing those texts into the band’s newly-written compositions. The result is a mix of new and old — an album that reimagines songs by JJ Cale, Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside, and others, providing an updated setting for songs that stand the test of time.
Photo: Zac Childs
Don’t mistake Do The Rump! for an album of cover songs. It’s far more than that. Take the album’s namesake track, “Do The Rump Louise,” which fuses two blues staples with Afrobeat rhythms and a killer, haunting vocal. “‘Do the Rump’ is a classic song from Junior Kimbrough’s repertoire,” explains Simo. “It’s got a cool groove, but there aren’t many lyrics. The Fred McDowell tune ‘Louise’ was stuck in my head when we were recording, so we just fit those two things together. Then Adam took the original beat and reinterpreted it as though it was a Fela Kuti tune, and the whole thing just sounded awesome.”
Awesome, indeed. Nearly every track on Do The Rump! builds a similar bridge between past and present, from faithful versions of RL Burnside’s “Peaches” and JJ Cale’s “Right Down There” to radically-reinvented recordings of Kimbrough’s “Come and Go With Me.” An original track written by all three musicians, “Come On,” unfolds like a long-lost juke joint staple. With Abrashoff’s drums serving the album’s foundation, Simo and Dickinson weave a raw tapestry of sound, often switching between guitar, bass, and baritone to create a sonic landscape that’s earthy one minute and otherworldly the next.
Do The Rump! is a story of brotherhood and mutual admiration. It’s an electrified blast of grease and grit. Like musicologists with guitar amps instead of Master’s degrees, these three road warriors have taken the fiery, funky roots of Hill Country blues and grown them into a new sound, transcending genre along the way.
TRACK LISTING
Street People
Right Down There
Lonesome Road
Come And Go With Me
Serves Me Right To Suffer
Do The Rump Louise
Come On
Peaches
TOUR DATES JD SIMO
Aug 3-4 Happy Valley, OR Pickathon Experiential Music Festival
Aug 16 NorwiCh, NY Chenango Blues Festival
Aug 19 Oklahoma City, OK Beam Livee
Aug 20 Albuquerque, NM The Cell
Aug 23 SF, CA The Fillmore
Aug 24 Napa, CA Uptown Theatre Napa
Aug 25 Sacramento, CA Crest Theatre
Aug 27 San Juan Capistrano Coach House
Aug 28 -29 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up
Aug 30 Hermosa Beach, CA Saint Rocke
Aug 31 Scottsdale, AZ Scottsdale Centre for Performing Arts
Sep 1 Tucson, AZ Fox Tucson Thetre
Sep 5 Tulsa, OK Vanguard
TOUR DATES JD SIMO & LUTHER DICKINSON
Sep 18 OId Saybrook, CT The Kate
Sep 19 New York, NY Iridium
Sep 20 Syracuse, NY King of Clubs
Sep 21 St Louis, MO Bay St. Louis Little Theatre
Oct 15 Kansas City, MO Knuckleheads
Oct 16 Bloomington, IL The Castle
Oct 17 Nashville, TN City Winery w.Jake Shimabukuro
Oct 20 Huntington, WV Mountain Stage
Oct 23 Philidelphia, PA City Winery
Oct 24 Cohoes, NY Cohoes Music Hall
Oct 26 Annapolis, MD Rams Head
Love Luther and J. D.! Great drummer percussionist, too.They’ve created something new here! Love it. Love the article, too!