Keb’ Mo’ Mo’ Better Blues By Rod Campbell Man, don’t ask me anything about Robert Johnson.” Keb’ Mo’ was dead serious. And I had yet to say hello. Apparently, reporters routinely associate him with the legendary Mississippi Delta bluesman. Well, lash those wretches to a cheap set of speakers and force feed them a steady diet of Marilyn Manson. If Mo’s keeping score, though, the New York Times also described him as, “A latter day version of Taj Mahal.” “I don’t know. We’re both very different. But because we both have a steel guitar, and both play the blues — we’re both of the same generation — it’s about comparisons, you know. People need some way to describe it,” he said. He’s right, of course. His sweet, soulful singing, alone, sets him apart from Mahal. His links to Johnson are equally tenuous. Mo’ did play the part of Johnson in Danny Glover’s docudrama Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl. He also recorded Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” and “Kind Hearted Woman Blues” on Keb’ Mo’, his 1994, award-winning debut for Okeh Records. And last year he covered “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” on Just for You. Aside from that, these two albums feature original material. “When I think of blues, I think of Ray Charles, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Boy Fuller. I tend to listen to more melodic, more songwriters rather than blues guys. I love blues and I love songwriters; that’s my mix in a sense. My love of the blues allows me to present my other aspects to an audience. But I always know that the blues is what I focus on.” A charismatic performer and a gifted picker, he has opened tours for such diverse acts as Lyle Lovett, Joe Cocker, and Santana. If those high-profile gigs don’t indicate the broadness of Mo’s appeal, the appearance of Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne on the title track of his current album certainly does. “Bonnie wanted to do something with me a while ago. She’s such a troubadour; she loves to play with people. She loves music and she’s such a generous woman.... I had this song called Just Like You and there’s a line in it, ‘Well I’m not those women, I’m not those men.’ So I thought it would be cool if Bonnie came in and sang that line. “With Jackson, I wanted to have a multi-cultural... experience. The song is about growing pains, of evolution. We have to get over our fears about people that are different. We all have personal character flaws and you work on them a little bit and you get a little better. A few years, a few days, later it comes back and you have to work on them again as a people, as a society. “ ‘(Just Like You)’ was inspired during the (first) O.J. [Simpson] trial.... It was like I had seen how far society had come. America has a big history of racism, so I was thinking of the South and Jim Crow and the cosmopolitan open society we are now. This was an interesting case because a fluent black had expensive lawyers and power. Whether he did it or not no one knows. [This interview took place before the second trial]. “In the South if a black man went on trial, the lawyers — nothing was in his favor. He was going to hang. He was black. He was poor. So now it’s changed and yet it’s still the same things. You can see everything moving forward and society really growing but then you see the same old messages being learned. So that’s what the song is really about. It’s about getting along with people.” Keb’ Mo’ — Kevin Moore to his mum — was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. His initial musical inauguration began with gospel and stretched to include contemporary rock. Stints in local Top-40 cover bands and the occasional blues combo eventually earned him a berth backing former Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna violinist, Papa John Creach. “When I was with Papa John I got to play on records. I played on the road in front of larger audiences and diverse audiences.... Papa John supplied a bridge, you know, exposure.... He taught me how to work an audience, how to look at an audience. He was a master. He really explained it and then I watched him do it. That’s probably why I get results from an audience, from what I learned from big John.” Mo’ stayed with Creach as a lead and rhythm guitarist for three years before turning to studio work. He made Rainmaker, his debut solo album, in 1983 and went on to play in the house band at the L.A. club, Marla’s Memory Lane. There he jammed with the likes of Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Albert Collins. But then in 1990, Mo’ was offered the part of a Delta bluesman in the Los Angeles Theater Center production of Rabbit Foot. And he followed that with a similar supporting role in Spunk. “I’m not really an actor. I’ve done some acting but I don’t call myself an actor. Mostly I’ve been around a lot of characters — gabbers, guys in the studios who gave me gab, who don’t do anything but talk, talk shit,” he laughed. Still, his involvement with those two plays sparked an interest in country blues that eventually led to a deal with Okeh Records, thanks largely to producer John Porter, whose eclectic credits include The Smiths, Roxy Music, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. “John Porter went to bat for me at the record company. He took an interest in me when nobody else was interested in me doing a record. I met him in L.A. in a studio. I was going to meet Taj Mahal. A friend took me to meet him. I said, ‘Okay, let’s go.’ So I was going to meet Taj and I met John Porter and I gave him a tape. “At this time I had made a tape and was selling it in clubs to make a little extra money. People really liked the tape. Here I am trying to make it in music for years and never got a break so I just started saying, ‘Now I’m in it for the love.’ Because I realized I really love it.... I was 40 years old. I’d stayed around this long and it was still working. I’m not dead; I’ve got all my senses. I guess I had taken good care of myself. So John Porter came along and he was the man that made a difference.” Porter subsequently produced Keb’ Mo’, which won a W.C. Handy award in 1995 as best Country-Acoustic Blues Album of the Year. He also commanded the control booth during the recording of Just Like You, which won the Grammy for Contemporary Blues Album of the Year in 1997. These two albums, along with Alvin Youngblood Hart’s Radio Blues and Big Mama’s Door and Corey Harris’ Between Midnight and Day, sparked a renewed interest in acoustic blues. Nevertheless, Mo’s plans for the future appear a little more ambitious. “I have my dreams. I would like to get to the point where I could really do a big blues show. I would like to have a big production like any big rock act would have, like any top pop act. You come in and you bring your stage, props and your wave of musicians and singers to do different things, and tell a story and use video clips of different old blues guys, you know what I mean. That would be cool.” This is from the current issue of Dirty Linen The Dirty Linen Pages are all copyright ©1997 by Dirty Linen, Ltd, Baltimore, MD