Terrebonne hosting fundraising tournament
May 29, 2012
Cecile Brou Mongrue
May 31, 2012
Reed Turchi, a 21-year-old slide guitarist, Mississippi blues fanatic and founder of a record label brings his hill-country-influenced funk and gritty voice to New Orleans this month.
The Ashville, N.C., native is prototype for how enterprising musicians can gain notoriety through an energetic blend of innovation, ambition, recognition and perspiration, interspersed with a dash of opportunity.
At 19, Turchi founded Devil Down Records – replete with a business plan and debut album, a compilation of archived Fred McDowell recordings – while taking an entrepreneurship class at the University of North Carolina.
Turchi’s mission is to have Devil Down Records serve as a bridge between the bounty of hill country music and its fans, which span the globe, he says.
The previous link is said to have evaporated a decade ago with the passing of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Otha Turna, artists whose influence helped carry the genre’s torch.
“Devil Down has sort of existed there,” Turchi says. “Now, things are going on really well. Aside from all of our digital stuff, we’ve got national distribution through a company in Memphis and a lot of international partners, too, in Italy, Europe, Japan and Argentina, and it seems pretty well received.”
Turchi began to forge connections after the McDowell release, building on his name through voluntarily recording the annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic, a hub for the style’s finest musicians, including Kenny Brown, who runs the festival with his wife.
He has since played a role in producing Brown’s “Can’t Stay Long,” Little Joe Ayer’s “Backatchya” and North Mississippi All Star band mates and brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson’s “Live in the Hills.”
He has also released compilations from the country picnics and plans to do the same with this year’s festival, which is scheduled for June 29-30 in Waterford, Miss.
In addition to his distribution tasks and abilities, the man knows how to play the music. Turchi is also the name of his southern rock blues band, most often a duo with Turchi the man on guitar and Cameron Weeks on drums.
“I’ve really been a fan of how the slide guitar – like how McDowell plays it – not only because of the sound of the slide, but because really of the rhythmic properties that (McDowell is) able to bring in through pretty mind-blowing finger-picking and strumming and palm mutes,” Turchi says. “It just really gets a lot of different sound out of a single guitar.”
Turchi’s first album, “Road Ends in Water,” which included Chris Reali on bass, debuted three months ago. Luther Dickinson also lent his talents to three of the album’s 10 tracks.
The band started to get serious about two years ago after a few iterations, Turchi says, and it has since recorded alongside Kenny Brown.
The band’s performance June 21 at the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse in New Orleans is part a nationwide tour, which includes stops in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Wisconsin.
Correction: This story initially listed the date of Turchi’s concert at Neutral Ground Coffeehouse in New Orleans as June 23. The correct date is Thursday, June 21.
Reed Turchi, a 21-year-old slide guitarist, Mississippi blues fanatic and founder of a record label, performs in New Orleans this month. Preview his band’s debut album at www.turchi.bandcamp.com.
