CEDRIC BURNSIDE MOST definitely doesn’t seem like he has the blues. Sitting in his car on the side of a rural north Mississippi blacktop, the third-generation blues man is all smiles when he logs onto our call on a recent Sunday afternoon.
His joy could be the afterglow of the church service he just left. It could be excitement for Hill Country Love, the album he’s getting ready to release, or the tour he’s about to start, which will take him across the continent and to Europe at least through the summer. It might have something to do with bringing home the Hill Country’s first Grammy award for his last album, 2021’s I Be Trying, and the doors it opened for him.
Truth be told, though, he’s always been this way. So was his grandfather, the late blues legend R.L. Burnside — Cedric affectionately calls him his “big daddy” — from whom he absorbed the Mississippi
