The hill country known as North Mississippi has long been a hotbed for soulful blues music, with life in the town known as Holly Springs offering enough material for the area’s talents musicians to deliver some of the most heart-filling tunes to grace a pair of human ears.

For the almost 80 years he graced the planet we call Earth, R.L. Burnside relied upon his expressive voice and drone-based delivery combined with several variations of the guitar to deliver what became popularized as the “Burnside style.” A sharecropper and a commercial fisherman, the trying times of Burnside’s life added a flavor to his music that characterized what it meant to be a blues singer.

Despite losing him to heart problems in 2005, Burnside’s music was thankfully not forgotten, as his legacy was passed on to his energetic grandson, Cedric. Now, at age 30, Cedric gracefully accepts the torch given to him by his grandfather and is representing R.L. like no one else can, including an electric performance with long-time friend and current musical partner Steve “Lightin’” Malcolm at the 12th Annual Doheny Blues Festival in Dana Point.

“I ain’t even got the words to explain what he did for me,” Cedric said of his grandfather. “He just told me a whole lot. Other than the music, he told me how to pack by bags for the road.”

While R.L. passed on before hearing his grandson carry on the Burnside legacy, Cedric and Malcolm have done everything possible to live up to expectations and stay true to the traditions of family and the musical genre. Yet, if it was not for R.L., Cedric and Malcolm may never have hooked up, despite their common roots in Northern Mississippi.

“We met through his grandfather,” Malcolm told Buzzine. “I’d go watch (his grandfather) with friends and stuff. For four years, we were busy doing our own thing, and we sat down and started working on some songs. We just started doing it for about three-and-a-half years full-time now, and people seem to enjoy it.”

Malcolm may have been introduced to the Burnside family through R.L., but it was through his involvement as a bass player in one of Cedric’s family affairs, Burnside Exploration -– a modern interpretation of the musical lineage started by R.L.

“We had this band called Burnside Expiration with my uncle, Gill Burnside, and Malcolm played with us for a couple years on bass,” Cedric said. “That band broke up, then Malcolm and I got together and started doing the duo thing, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

Now they travel across these United States of America and represent themselves to blues fans as the “Two-Man Wrecking Crew.” According to Cedric, while neither he nor Malcolm came up with the catchy moniker, it has become a bit of a calling-card.

“We was in the studio (with Delta Groove); they was like, ‘you guys be tearing up shit. Y’all have a name for your stuff?’” Cedric explained to Buzzine in an exclusive interview about the etymology of their name. “And we didn’t have no name for it, and they instantly came up with the name ‘Two-Man Wrecking Crew,’ and we kept the name ever since.

“Every time we play, we always announce on the mic, ‘Man, look, they call us ‘Two-Man Wrecking Crew,’ and we feel like wrecking some shit tonight.’”

Certainly, fans of blues music are taking note of the duo’s exhilarating performances. When both performed as Two-Man Wrecking Crew at the Doheny Blues Festival, a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people were dancing in the aisles as Cedric and Malcolm rocked the intimate porch-style stage.

“I can’t believe they like it because it’s a different style,” Malcolm humbly told Buzzine. “Our sound is very different from other artists. Our music has a little more rhythm. The further away we go from home, the better it gets.”

Cedric added that blues fans are able to relate to their homely, more personal style.

“It’s more like front-porch, back-porch grooves,” he said. “What you see is what you get. One thing about us — when we see the crowd having fun, it makes us want to tear it up even more.”

Even more touching to the duo known as the Two-Man Wrecking Crew is the reception they receive after the lights dim, the speakers are off and their performances are over.

“There are a lot of nice nights,” Malcolm said. “Like when we play and get a standing ovation, and just a lot of little moments when you see people really diggin’ our music. It reminds us it’s really not about the money; it’s about the soul.”

For Cedric, he gets excited when fans identify to blues the same way he does. To him, it is an indication people are truly listening to their music and allowing the Burnside legacy to continue on for a new generation of blues fans.

“When people come up to you and they can really, really relate to the blues like how I relate to the blues, grew up with the blues, lived the blues, and they come up to me after the show and tell me I took them home -– I love that right there,” Cedric told Buzzine with deep emotion and sincerity.

It is that sincerity that caught the attention of The Blues Foundation, which hosted the 30th Annual Blues Music Awards on May 7th in Memphis, Tennessee. There, both Cedric and Malcolm nabbed the Best New Artist Debut award.

“I never won anything,” Cedric said with a gleam in his eye. “I never been nominated for anything. I was loving it!”

Certainly, he is “loving it” because blues fans are loving both him and Malcolm, for they are the Two-Man Wrecking Crew and they are bound to cause gleeful havoc everywhere they travel.