To make 'In Times Like These', noted activist, author, documentary filmmaker and theologian Rev. Osagyefo Sekou went back to his Southern home searching for his family's musical roots in the deep Arkansas blues and gospel traditions. Produced by six-time Grammy nominated Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars, featuring Luther's brother Cody Dickinson, Rev. Sekou's album is a new vision for what Southern blues and rock can mean today. In Times Like These is drenched with the sweat and tears of the Mississippi River, the great tributary that ties so much of the South together. The album's sonic landscape captures the toil of Southern field hands, the guttural cry of chain gangs, the vibrancy of contemporary street protest, backwoods juke joints, and shotgun churches—all saturated with Pentecostal sacred steel and soul legacy. Rev. Sekou's blues lineage runs deep. Rev. Sekou's biological grandfather, Richard Braselman played with legends like Louis Jordan, Albert King, and B.B. King. The grandfather, Rev. James Thomas, who raised Sekou, was an ordained Elder in the Church of God in Christ and a railroad union organizer. Carrying the legacy of his grandfathers, Rev. Sekou is a Pentecostal bluesman. During the recording of In Times Like These, Rev. Sekou made a pilgrimage home to Zent, Arkansas and stood at his beloved grandparents gravesite
