Individually, JD Simo and Luther Dickinson are building their own legacies as solo artists, sidemen, songwriters, and guitar heroes. Together, they’re a creative force to be reckoned with, making their own 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 All Stars, as well as a celebrated guitarist for acts like Black Crowes and John Hiatt. Similarly, JD Simo had built an audience not only with his solo project, but also 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 just instinctual.”

Those instincts take centerstage on Do The Rump, whose eight songs were recorded during a series of live-in-the-studio performances. There were no overdubs. No production tricks, either. Joined by drummer Adam Abrashoff— 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.

Do The Rump was recorded at House of Grease, Simo’s home studio in Nashville, with Simo and Dickinson both sharing production duties. “Adam would play something cool, and once we had that groove, we’d build on top of it,” Simo says. “That’s how this album was made. We couldn’t have done it with anyone but Adam.” Those drum parts were inspirational, motivating the two guitarists to come up with 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 to 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. 

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 really cool groove, but there aren’t many lyrics. When we were recording, the Fred McDowell tune ‘Louise’ was stuck in my head, 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.” There’s even an original track written by all three musicians, “Come On,” which 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.