Photo by Jeremy Cowart
Keb' Mo'
With Ukrainians fighting for their homes and freedom in a war halfway around the world, the future of the Israel-Hamas war still unclear and plenty of political turmoil on these shores, it’s hard to look on the bright side of the road. But that’s where someone like guitar-playing singer-songwriter Keb’ Mo’ comes in.
Keb’ Mo’ performs March 18 at the Bradley Symphony Center
On "Good To Be," his 16th studio album, the 73-year-old blues artist is all in on the warm and fuzzies in a way that avoids being Pollyanna-ish and more about basking in gratitude. And while it would be easy to think that the man born Kevin Moore went into this project with a preconceived notion of positivity, he insists it was a group of songs that came about organically.
“I get asked that question a lot in terms of what the inspiration for a record is,” he said. “The inspiration comes out of the time in which the work is created. I live my life and throughout that, writing sessions come up and whatever is going on at that time tends to seep into the music. Then when I look back at the year or year and a half of writing songs, there’s a natural kind of basicness to it because it’s all in the same time period. I’m not really looking for a theme, but this seems to have a theme of goodness. There are three songs with the word good in it so that’s why I called it “Good To Be.” It just made sense to feature it. So that’s the theme—gratitude.”
New Tricks
For his latest album, Mo’ (whose real name is Kevin Moore) worked with a host of collaborators. Producers ranged from good friend Vince Gill to Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy), while the roll call of musical guests include Darius Rucker, Kristen Chenoweth and Old Crow Medicine Show. And while trying to wrangle all these logistics is a challenge during the best of times, COVID-19 threw a few more wrinkles into the mix and forced Mo’ to learn a few new tricks.
“The pandemic proved to be a blessing in disguise because with things getting canceled, it was nice to stay home [in Nashville] and spend time with my family,” he said. “But as it dragged on, people started doing performances on their phones, which was very lo-fi and I was totally frightened of doing things like that. I sensed if this thing were to go long, production values were going to have to get better. We had to get all kinds of lighting and different plug-ins. I had to learn how to make things sound like they were done in the same room even if they weren’t. It was crazy, but you start figuring stuff out, and now a lot of us, myself included, have a new skill set.”
Most of the album was recorded while Mo’ renovated his recently re-purchased Compton childhood home, where his mother Lauvella Cole lived until her death at the age of 91 in September 2018. There’s plenty of love, nostalgia and memories baked into these songs, whether it’s the nod to his mother amid the gospel vocals, pedal steel and Rucker’s vocals in “Good Strong Woman,” the languid convergence of banjo, fiddle and harmonica Old Crow Medicine Show infuses into “The Medicine Man” or weaving a message of vulnerability into the horn-kissed shuffle “So Easy.” Elsewhere, Mo’ touches on the ideas of intimacy (the delicate ballad “Quiet Moments”) and social justice (the string-embraced “Marvelous to Me”).
Embrace the Blues
While Mo’ is now known primarily as a blues artist, that’s not how he started out in his career. His 1980 album, “Rainmaker,” was an R&B effort that flopped commercially. This put Mo’ back at square one with his career and a change in musical focus.
All that stuff on ‘Rainmaker’ had more of an R&B vibe to it. I figured nobody wanted to hear that, so I just embraced the blues,” Mo’ said. “I was with a bunch of guys who were really into it. I got in there and the phone started ringing again and I started getting gigs around town playing in the clubs. At some point, I heard the Delta blues—country blues, and something snapped in me.”
Fast forward to present day and Keb’ Mo’ is heading back out on tour. And if he’s learned anything from the pandemic, it’s a new approach to making music that technology has made possible for him.
“My goal going forward is three albums a year,” he said with a laugh. “Because I don’t have to work on them all at the same time. There are 365 days in the year. A record is about 10 or 11 songs on average, so that’s 30 songs. I figure if I’ve got even three months of workdays left over from touring and with the tools I have now, I can do these three records simultaneously. And everyone I work with has some ability to record remotely, if not in their own house, but their own neighborhood. We’ve been using this technology all along, but COVID-19 forced us to embrace it. I still like the old way too, but these tools opened up more opportunities for me.”
