A full 20 years after he co-formed North Mississippi Allstars with his brother Luther, Cody Dickinson, the band’s drummer, delivers his first proper solo album. It won’t surprise any fans that, like the NMAS and Cody Dickinson’s Hill CountryRevue, Leeway for the Freeway is 100 percent devoid of pretense and glitz. If your task was to demonstrate genuine contemporary American roots music at its slammin’-est—music that casts a direct line back to real-deal Delta blues and hard honky-tonk and stirring soul and rock-and-roll, when it really rocked and rolled—then this recording, produced by Cody’s mom Mary Lindsay Dickinson (wife of the late producer/musician Jim Dickinson), could serve as your Exhibit A. The title track alone would satisfy your search: a smooth, adventurous arrangement somewhere between classic Allmans (Duane Betts, son of Dickey, supplies the sublime guitar) and What’s Going On-era Marvin Gaye, it’s a jam that does not require any fallingin- love time: One play and you’ll want to hear it again the second it’s finished. Ry Cooder’s “Boomers Story,” featuring bro Luther, perfectly juxtaposes grit and smooth, and Robert Randolph’s steel elevates “Wing and a Prayer” to something approaching angelic. And “Johnny B. Goode?” Not since Johnny Winter has anyone ripped into that one the way Dickinson—who plays nearly everything on the record himself—does here.