Cover photo © 2026 Deke V. Rivers

Kenny Brown learned Hill Country blues by growing up inside it. As a child in rural Mississippi, he was drawn to the sound of fife-and-drum bands riding through his community, announcing weekend picnics that lasted from Friday to Sunday.

“I was out playing in the yard one day, and I heard music coming… there was this truck coming up the road, and there was a Fife and Drum Band in the back of the truck. That was the way they advertised having a picnic,” Brown recalled. The music drifted into his bedroom at night, becoming part of the landscape before he ever picked up a guitar.

“A lot of it came out of the Fife and Drum bands… it’s more rhythm, right? Then chord changes and stuff… A lot of us [use] one chord,” he explained. His first guitar, a “little plastic guitar, but it would tune up,” came through a childhood blend of ingenuity and stubbornness: “I started, rode my bike around, sold seeds that I ordered off the back of a comic book to get my first guitar.”

Everything changed when blues musician Joe Callicott moved in next door, about 50 yards from Brown’s house. Brown introduced himself and began visiting every day.

“He wasn’t trying to teach me reading music,” Brown said. “He [was] just, like, hit it like this, boy.” Callicott became his best friend, the place Brown went whenever his parents couldn’t find him. By the time Callicott died when Brown was 15, the music—and the way it was passed down—was already ingrained.

Brown became a central torchbearer of North Mississippi Hill Country blues. Mentored by Callicott and steeped in the tradition from childhood, he formed a decades-long partnership with R.L. Burnside that helped define the sound for a new generation.

“He played kind of hard to describe, just a lot of one chord stuff… the rhythmic stuff, kind of hard to explain,” Brown said of Burnside. By the early 1990s, Brown and Burnside were a formidable force, carrying Hill Country blues from juke joints to national stages. He also worked with George “Mojo” Buford, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Johnny Woods, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

For 20 years, Brown and his wife Sara have organized the Hill Country Picnic, a multi-day festival featuring the region’s top talent. “I just invited a bunch of my friends from the area to come play,” Brown said. “The first year… we had like 1,000 people show up. And now, we might have 3,000 people, and we’ll have 25 bands, all Hill Country stuff.” Brown calls it a “family reunion” for Hill Country musicians.

A master slide guitarist with a deep traditional repertoire, Brown blends songs passed down over generations with Burnside compositions and his own originals, keeping the music rooted while evolving.

“Man, I just play with feeling,” Brown said. “I’m not the most technical player at all, but I put everything I can into it. It’s good music, feels good, and so much stuff came from the blues, like Elvis Presley—you can hear it, rock and roll is just blues too…it’s the root of all American music,” he said.

Brown notes that the term “North Mississippi Hill Country Blues” is a modern convention, reflecting the geography between the flat Delta and the hills to the north. “Back years ago, everybody was calling it Delta blues,” he said. The area and style have since inspired bands like The White Stripes and The Black Keys.

Brown worked for years balancing construction work with weekend and nighttime gigs before Fat Possum Records helped him transition to full-time music.

“I’d been out on the road with Mojo Buford… we ended a tour in Clarksdale, just happened to be on Muddy Waters’ birthday. Me and him played together, and a little while later, Fat Possum called me and said they were doing a record with R.L. and wanted me to play on it,” he said.

That album, Too Bad Jim (1994), launched Brown into steady touring and recording.

Brown also played with Junior Kimbrough, whose distinctive, deeply funky style often involved tuning his guitar down to match his voice—a sound Brown says is similar to the lower pitch associated with classical composers like Mozart and Beethoven.

“Junior was great, man. Funky. Women loved him. He was fun to be around,” Brown said.

Among Brown’s notable recordings are his solo debut Goin’ Back to Mississippi (1996), the Black Keys collaboration Delta Kream (2021), and his guitar work on Robert Finley’s Black Bayou (2023).

“It’d be nice to write a song that sold 10 million copies, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Brown said. “I just want to make some good music, get some of it recorded… something good to leave behind.”

Hill Country blues, he says, is hard to describe in words: “It’s just droning. I’ve seen people say they don’t like that kind of music—but when you play a Junior Kimbrough song for 10–12 minutes, by the second or third minute, their foot starts moving. Words just don’t capture it.”

The community shares a large repertoire of songs, each artist adding their own spin. Brown’s life and music are grounded in a straightforward philosophy.

“I might not get paid much, but if I’m gonna go broke, I’m gonna do it sitting on my porch,” he said.

He reflects on the racial dynamics of his upbringing with a sense of openness and simplicity: “There’s, I guess you’d call it a racism…maybe reverse racism to some extent…my family, you know, never did that. We all lived right there together, blacks, whites. So, we’re just people…I’m not a racist. I don’t think I am. Today…people concentrate on it too much now, when they should just let go and be people.”

Despite an aging audience and a changing music landscape, Brown is optimistic about the future. Young musicians like Sharde Thomas, Othar Turner’s granddaughter, and the grandchildren of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside are carrying the music forward. Cedric Burnside won a Grammy in 2022 for Best Traditional Blues Album, and Brown, along with Eric Deaton, earned a Grammy nomination in 2021 for their work on Delta Kream.

At 72, Brown continues to tour, acknowledging the challenges of travel, lower pay, and fewer club gigs.

“You get a lot of adrenaline, you get a lot of energy from playing gigs for people. When you’re doing a gig, you’re putting out energy, and the people are putting it back to you,” he said.

Brown remains confident in the next generation: “The Hill Country blues…will be here…Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cedric Burnside, Dwayne Burnside, the young cats…they’re carrying it on.”

Writer Jack Austin, also known by his radio DJ name, Electric Chicken (y Pollo Electrico en Espanol), is a vinyl collector, music journalist, and musician originally from Pittsburgh.