Black Joe Lewis

After all these years of writing about local shows in hopes that you, dear reader, will read about them and feel compelled to attend, I still am not sure how to convey to you how much you need to go see Black Joe Lewis and Cedric Burnside on Tuesday night at Volcanic Theatre Pub. I wish there was a way I could rubber stamp the words KILLER SHOW! DO NOT MISS! in red across this article. I do not want you to miss this one.

Black Joe Lewis is originally from Arizona, but the guy has been making muddy, punked-up blues, funk and Southern soul music for so long, he’s basically an honorary resident of the hill country region of North Mississippi. We’re talking earth-moving rhythms, deep-fried electric guitar licks, hellfire-preacher vocals and horns that sound like sunshine breaking through the clouds, all working together in perfect, highly combustible harmony.

Cedric Burnside’s residence in Mississippi’s Hill Country, on the other hand, is anything but honorary. He was born just across the Tennessee border in Memphis and raised in the cultural capital of the region, Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he grew up in the home of his grandfather, the legendary bluesman R.L. Burnside. By the time he was a teenager, he was touring with Grandad’s band.

Now, he’s a celebrated folk-blues singer-songwriter with nine albums under his belt, a recipient of the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Foundation of the Arts and a twice Grammy-nominated artist, with more surely coming after the release of his excellent 2021 album “I Be Trying” in June. Dark, meditative and deeply bluesy, its combination of wisdom, spirituality and trance-inducing grooves will transport you straight to the Hill Country if you let it.

These two dudes are the sound of two different kinds of blues: the kind you learn and fully inhabit, and the kind you’re born with, that flows through your veins. They’ll bring both to town Tuesday night.

Black Joe Lewis and Cedric Burnside: $18; 8 p.m. Tuesday; Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend; volcanictheatre.com.