2016 Grammy Award nominee, Cedric Burnside Project, all the way from Mississippi, USA, will perform their only NSW show at the Girrakool Blues Festival at Mount Penang Gardens on March 5.
Drummer, singer and band leader, Cedric Burnside (grandson of RL Burnside) and guitarist Trenton Ayers, are the Cedric Burnside Project. Fresh from the Glenn Frey at Troubadour Tribute show, and the Grammy Awards ceremony, the Cedric Burnside Project comes to the Central Coast to perform their brand of Hill-Country Blues with a relentless, highly rhythmic charged style and with strong hip-hop and funk influences.
Growing up at his grandfather’s side, Cedric Burnside began touring at age 13 playing drums for Big Daddy on stages around the globe. He attributes everything he knows, ‘from packing my bags … from playing music, to how to live in life”, to his Granddad.
He was nominated once again, for the 2016 prestigious Blues Music Award’s Drummer of the Year, which he has already won four times between 2010 and 2014; along with Best Traditional Blues Album, and Best Traditional Blues Male Artist. Cedric is widely regarded as one of the best drummers in the world — not bad for someone who is not yet 40.
The Cedric Burnside Project did not win the Grammy for Best Blues Album, it went to blues legend Buddy Guy, but purely to be nominated by industry peers is a testament to the fl ame they are carrying for the HillCountry Blues genre.
The highlight of the band’s career came when they joined Bonnie Raitt, and a star-studded line-up at the world famous Troubadour for a Pre-Grammy tribute to Glenn Frey. The Girrakool Blues Festival & BBQ director, Mr Bruce Jackson from Xabc Entertainment, said he is proud to host the only NSW performance of the Cedric Burnside Project on March 5.
Mississippi’s newest rising blues sensations will then depart for South Australia’s Womadelaide and the Port Fairy Folk Festival. “It is a bit of a coup for the Central Coast, having Cedric Burnside, who is so steeped in the history of Mississippi Hill-Country Blues, playing right here on our beautiful shores,” Mr Johnson said.
“The Cedric Burnside Project is the icing on the cake for what is already a stellar line-up.” Australian festival favourites, The Backsliders, will provide the blues ‘not roots” of the festival. Adding to the New Orleans theme is keyboardist, Clayton Doley with his 10-piece big band Clayton Doley’s Bayou Billabong.
This year’s The Voice finalist Gail Page will belt out some powerful soul drenched blues, while multiaward winning Buddy Knox and sultry singer Kate Lush will take to the Girrakool Stage, under the big Oak Tree in the Amphitheatre section of the Gardens
Media release, Feb 18, 2016 Bruce Johnson, Xabc Entertainment