A Conversation with Luther & Cody of NMA (cont.)

PM: What's Duwayne like as a person?

CD: Hilarious.

LD: I said in an interview yesterday, it was like: "He's a great peacemaker and troublemaker."

CD: Yeah.

[laughter]

PM: And you've known him since what?

CD: Well, we used to see him play in Junior Kimbrough's Juke Joint. I guess I'd seen him play now for almost ten years. But he was in a different world than us at that time.

PM: How so?

CD: Well, he was like a full blown pimp in Memphis. Like he had his own bar and restaurant--

PM: No shit.

CD: --and people who worked for him.

LD: Music was just something he did on the side.

CD: Music was just something he did effortlessly. But I saw how talented he was immediately.

PM: Yeah.

CD: I used to go around saying, "Man, I know this guy"--or, "I know guys"--but I'd be talking about Duwayne--"who are so phenomenonally talented." Like, "You think we're something, you should check out these guys who never even get out of the region."

PM: Right.

CD: They don't look at it like that. Music was something he did to entertain his friends and that and play in his own club, and that was it.

PM: Wow.

CD: Duwayne and I became friends at first. Around that time we were doing 51 Phantom, I would get home from touring, and Duwayne and I would drive up and down Highway 78 in between Memphis and Holly Springs and hang out. We'd hang out in the deepest hood in South Memphis, and we'd also hang out in our studio. And we started to make music together, in just kind of the most innocent way. We would get messed up and rather than go to the strip club, we would start to record. And we cut three songs, one of which, "Bad Bad Pain," is on our new record. And then I realized he wanted to be in our band. He wanted to play with us.

LD: He started hanging out and coming to shows, even riding with us a couple of times before we even asked him to play.

GN: Does he play with Junior or did he play with R. L.?

LD: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He played with Junior as a young kid. He grew up playing with Junior. Junior was a great trainer of musicians. He trained a lot of musicians.

GN: I loved Junior. I never got to come down there before he died, though.

LD: Such a great guy.

GN: Didn't the place burn?

CD: Yeah, it burned down. It's like totally gone now, yeah, that whole thing. It's sad.

PM: I think it's hard for people to really grasp what it must have been like growing up the way that you guys did. I mean, they think they can really get a sense of it, but I mean, some of your biggest and monstrous influences were family, friends, and friends of the family.

LD: It was incredible, because we grew up, of course, through our dad around the Memphis scene. And like we'd watch him cut the Replacements, or I remember when he was working with Big Star and stuff like that. But in Mississippi we had a home studio. But then once we got to know the Burnsides and the Kimbroughs, they had a Juke Joint and we had a studio, and it was just like musical families, and it just really clicked.

PM: It's unbelievable.

LD: Going down to Junior's, it was--man, like the late '90s were just a great time at Junior's. Junior was alive, his Juke Joint was jumpin' every Sunday night. R. L. Burnside was on the road. It was just really, really--Otha Turner, we were making records with Otha. It was just a great, great time. It's sad, man, because now it's like we're the old guys.

[laughter]

LD: R. L.'s retired, Junior's gone, his Juke Joint's gone, Otha passed.

PM: When did Otha pass?

LD: February. Yeah, that was sad.

PM: But, yeah, very advanced in age. Nineties, right?

LD: He was ninety-four. We went and saw him at the hospital before we left on the last tour. He's like, "Yeah, I'm 190."

PM: [laughs]

LD: It was catching up with him. Remember when he said that?

CD: I do. Oh, man, that was deep.

PM: It must have been amazing for R. L. and Otha and people who grew you up to see the boys get out and do so well--

LD: R. L. is real proud of us, I know.

PM: --and in just a handful of years, really.

CD: Yeah.  continue

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