Antigone Rising opened the second of four shows for the North Mississippi Allstars last night at the Rhythm and Brews in Chattanooga, TN, although the gig nearly didn’t take place. As Guitarist Cathy Henderson explains, on the previous evening, ‘We broke down at the Marriott where we were staying in Jacksonville. We called The Allstars and said, ‘we have our stuff in a trailer and our van broke down.’ They were absolute dolls. First, they hitched our van up and took us to FreeBird Live for the Jacksonville gig.’

Cassidy (lead singer) adds ‘Obviously, they couldn’t hitch us up and bring us all the way to Chattanooga – so they loaded our stuff into their van! Then they loaded in for us, so when we got to Chattanooga in our little rented vehicle, all of our stuff was not only at the club, but we were all set up.’

NMAS’s Luther Dickinson explains, ‘Those girls rock. We were glad to help them because we’re so happy to be able to do some shows with them. We have wanted to for a while, and we’re workin’ on doing some more dates with them.’

As for the show, Antigone Rising blazed through an hour set which included a segue of their originals ‘Nuggett’ > ‘New Jersey.’ They also did an extended take on ‘Storybook Romance,’ which featured a percussion jam by drummer Dena Tauriello and guitarist/percussionist Kristen Henderson, sister of Cathy (she played both on this song, and percussion during the jam) . Cassidy also dove seemingly spontaneously in and out of a rhythmically altered, haunting take on Pearl Jam’s ‘Daughter,’ which culminated with some emotional, but controlled hearty screaming by Cassidy. They closed the set with a raucous ‘Fat Bottomed Girl.’

The North Mississippi Allstars offered a number of newer songs that have only recently entered their repertoire. The set opened with their original, ‘King,’ and late in the set they offered another strong, new original, ‘I’m Leavin’.’ They threw in a spectacular cover of Odetta’s ‘Deep Blue Sea,’ and charged through Fred McDowell’s ‘Crazy ‘Bout You.’ However, the highlight of the night was the RL Burnside trilogy they offered, starting with ‘Goin’ Down South,’ then moving to ‘Po Boy’ (a debut), and then ‘Snake Drive,’ all with seamless segues (Burnside is the father of NMAS guitarist Duwayne). Dickinson adds, ‘We’ve been working a lot of new material in and making sure to keep things fresh, and change the shows each night. I have a bunch of new songs and the other guys have some too, and we’ll play them live and then decide which ones to record.’- Report by Rob Turner