Grammy Nominees Include Local Producer
Amos Harvey
By David Howell
Editor
WATER VALLEY – Nominations for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards were announced Monday morning and a Water Valley producer has an album nominated for Best Blues Album. Amos Harvey produced Cedric Burnside Project – Descendants of Hill Country.
Harvey reported the 13-song album was recorded live at Electraphonic Studio in Memphis in late 2014, with musicians Cedric Burnside, Garry Burnside and Trenton Ayers each contributing multiple songs. Cedric Burnside, the grandson of blues legend R.L. Burnside, is the leader of the band. Each man played multiple instruments during the recording, with the two Burnsides also serving as vocalists.
“They mixed it up on every song,” Harvey said.
Studio owner Scott Bomar recorded the music and Harvey’s wife, Coulter Fussell, designed the artwork for the album.
“The really neat thing about it, there is no record label behind Cedric,” Harvey explained. The financing came from crowd funding, with Cedric also self-funding the release.
“This is unheard of for the Grammys,” Harvey added. “But I always knew this music was great, there is nothing like it in the world.”
The album was released in February and keeps the deep tradition of North Mississippi Hill Country Blues alive.
The recording came when Harvey took a brief stint away from the music world last year, working as assistant brewmaster at Yalobusha Brewing Com-pany. He explained much of the work on the album was done at night, laboring long hours for weeks in Memphis and returning to Water Valley brewery for work each morning.
Working on the album also rekindled a friendship between Harvey and Cedric Burnside that started over two decades earlier, when he first met the musician playing the drums as a teenager behind his grandfather, R.L. Burnside, at Junior’s Juke Joint. Harvey recalls the lineup that night also included Junior Kimbrough, Kenny Kimbrough and Garry Burnside, also a teenager at the time.
“I realized this was the best music I had ever heard. Little did I know how much of an effect this night and music would have on my life,” Harvey told the Herald.
Soon after that first night, Harvey started working with both the Burnside and Kimbrough families through Fat Possum Records, a connection that would last almost a decade. “We were touring world-wide when he (Cedric) was 13 and I was 22,” Harvey recalled.
Later Cedric Burnside and Harvey went separate ways, with Harvey working as a tour manager for other bands and Cedric Burnside starting his own career after his grandfather died. Harvey describes his job as a tour manager as “a little bit of an accountant, a travel agent and a little bit of mom and dad.” His role is to take care of the day-to-day details for a touring band, which allows the musicians to focus on their music. In recent months, he has worked in Paris, the United Kingdom, and across the U.S.
“But I love music and I enjoy producing records when I can,” Harvey added.
Reconnecting
A chance meeting in New Orleans last year was the connection for Harvey’s work on Burnside’s latest album.
“He asked me if I would be interested in producing this album,” Harvey explained. “I was honored and thrilled to help him produce this direct link back to his childhood and our first meeting.”
The songs are a reflection of the early sounds that Cedric Burnside, Garry Burnside and Ayers grew up with and are firmly rooted in the not-so-traditional Hill Country tradition, music that also honors their dads and granddads.
Another reconnection is planned in February, as Harvey and the group will travel to Los Angeles’ Staples Center for announcement of the winners during the 58th Grammy Awards. The show will be broadcast on CBS Television Network from 7-10:30 p.m.
