"Today, blues is a global music, known and cherished by people all over the world. But its roots are in the American South - in places like Memphis and Mississippi, where I first met the blues, and in nearby outposts like St. Louis, where I now live. New Southern Vintage pays homage to this iconic Southern folk form as well as the heroines and heroes who created it, including my greatest inspirations: blueswoman Memphis Minnie (“World of Trouble,” “Shout the Boogie”) and my own great-uncle Will Roy Sanders (“I’m in Trouble”), who fronted the Fieldstones, the best Memphis blues band of the 1970s and 1980s. The album also features several living legends, from Jimmy “Duck” Holmes (caretaker of the Bentonia, Mississippi school of blues guitar) to folk-blues éminences grises David Evans and Andrew Cohen. And because blues is an ancient-to-the-future music - vintage and new - I invited a number of brilliant younger artists to join me on New Southern Vintage. My longtime collaborator Robert Allen Parker, Public Enemy’s Khari Wynn, and the other members of my Memphis-based band the Blue Bloods appear on several tracks, as do Ben Levin, Damion “Yella P” Pearson, and Chris Stephenson. There are also some special international guests - Jan Hartmann, Antonio Vergara, Takuto Asano, and Yubu Kazungu - who hail from around the globe and nonetheless fit right into the Southern sounds of New Southern Vintage, showing that no matter how far we travel down the blues highway, we can always go back home to the land where the blues began.” Candice Ivory