Kenny Brown

Hear “If Down Was Up” in a bar, and you’d think it was a hidden track off Beggars Banquet. Brown is from Nesbit, Miss., the northern hill country near the Delta where the Rolling Stones wished they’d come from. Brown has been R.L. Burnside’s adopted son/brilliant slide guitarist for 20 years. Six of these tunes are traditionals arranged by Brown; old songs like “Cocaine Bill” and “You Don’t Know My Mind” are more real than most writers these days can muster. “Fare Thee Well Blues”—with the mournful line “fare thee well, fare thee well, it’s the last time I get to shake ’em down with you”—feels like a window to the past in which Scottish balladry and African fife and drum mixed it up two centuries ago. Raw, hypnotic, funky—it make women shimmy and reach for another pull off the Knob Creek.