Keb' Mo' lives the blues, but likes to walk around the neighborhood
by Michelle Nikolai

Keb' Mo' (born Kevin Moore) once told musical director Michael Skloff that he was versed in Robert Johnson's songs so that he could audition for a key role in the play Rabbit Foot. Mo' had been listening to Johnson for a while but had no idea how to even do the blues tuning.

"I lied, so I had to go learn how to do it real fast," he laughs. "I started with 'Travelin' Riverside Blues,' and then it was all the slide things, because I really didn't know how to play slide so I had to figure out the tuning. I was doing the guitar to a G tuning and it was wrong - it was a G tuning but it wasn't the G tuning he used."

To remedy his somewhat desperate situation, Mo' went and found himself a teacher and took some lessons - he was a 39-year old student who had come from a funk and R&B background. With his blues career at the crossroads, so to speak, he learned the G tuning (with a low D), and he got the part playing a Delta bluesman in the 1990 theatrical production.

Mo' has since won two Grammy awards for Best Contemporary Blues Album, in 1997 for his album Just Like You and again in 1999 for Slow Down. In February of this year he was featured as a solo performer and member of the house band in a concert film documenting the Year of the Blues celebration at Radio City Music Hall. In addition, he's hosting a 13-part radio series, "The Blues," on Public Radio International that debuted September 26 and continues through December 19. He was a featured performer in "Feel Like Going Home," the first television installment of "The Blues" series directed by Martin Scorsese that aired on PBS in September. He also has an individual artist companion CD to the series, along with other wide-ranging artists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters and Son House.

An electric guitar player prior to 1990, he only really picked up the acoustic guitar to play scales. "When I got into the country blues, all the sudden I started playing all these different stringed instruments in different ways," he explains during a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. "I got into Dobro, and now I'm playing the mandolin and banjo.

"I never became a really accomplished guitar player," he continues humbly. "So now it's more about the sounds of what I'm doing, the message I'm trying to put over. All the things I like to play, Gibson makes."

Mo's first Gibson guitar was a Les Paul Junior. He also had a MelodyMaker at one time and a '79 ES-335 that he lost in a pawn shop in his leaner days - "That was the heartbreak of my life, the 335 always was my favorite Gibson guitar," he laments. When he started playing acoustic, he got an Epiphone Bluesmaster that he still plays and these days he has an ES-175 Reissue that he calls the "big box of jazz," an Advanced Jumbo, and a Blues King that he really likes. "You know it's funny, when you play a guitar, the proof in the pudding is in the recording of it. The Jumbo and the Blues King, they're like a set," he explains. "The Advanced Jumbo's a great solo guitar, the Blues King is the one you put on when you want a tighter fit within the realm of a track. It's a lot more interesting guitar for me."

When it comes to his affinity for other stringed instruments, he admits he has a Mastertone Earl Scruggs banjo that resides with his guitar tech. "I just love the banjo, but don't tell anybody," he laughs. "It's just happy, you got a banjo it always puts a smile on your face - it's such a rootsy instrument because it's an African instrument - it's a drum, it's a stringed instrument."

His last studio album, 2001's Big Wide Grin, is a testament to how much Keb' likes to smile. The project is billed as a musical bridge for family members and is filled with upbeat songs about family life. He also has a new album in the works, which will be released in January 2004. Although the title is being kept under wraps, he says he cut a couple of dead-on country and western songs in Nashville with some of Music City's most well-known studio musicians including Chad Cromwell (drums), Willie Weeks (bass), Paul Franklin (pedal steel) and John Hobbs (keyboards). He wrote a song with Nashville tunesmith Darrell Scott and another in L.A. with Alan Rich. "It was really cool, it was kind of a meeting of Nashville and L.A. The players were excited about playing something that was not the typical Nashville thing," he explains.

Though he came to the blues later in life, Mo' has been involved in several other blues-related theatrical productions and films. He composed the original score for the 2002 play "Thunder Knocking at the Door" and reprised the Delta bluesman role for "Spunk," an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's writings. Mo' even played the legendary Johnson in the 1997 documentary "Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson" and contributed original music.

As stories go, he was inspired to play the banjo under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Keb' tells of an older man named "James" who was the bouncer in a straight-up R&B club in the 'hood that he used to play called the Page Four Lounge. James had picked up a banjo in a pawn shop, and the next night he brought it to the club and handed to Mo'.

"He said, 'I saw a banjo in a pawn shop and for some reason I thought about you. Here, take the banjo, $125." And I said, "But James, I didn't say I wanted the banjo. I don't have the money." And he's like, 'Make payments.'

"I paid him probably five payments of $25, and that's the banjo I played on every record that I have. He disappeared, I don't know if he's still living," Mo' continues. "It's just the damndest thing. This is the banjo I learned how to play on. It's a no-name banjo. Then I got the Earl Scruggs. Earl is cool, I love Earl."

The blues is what Mo' is known for, but he's actually a versatile performer and songwriter who got his musical start playing French horn and trumpet in high school band at his mother's insistence and upright bass and steel drums in his first band, a calypso outfit. He's played guitar on three of former Jefferson Starship violinist Papa John Creach's albums, been in a Top 40 band, and earned his keep as a staff writer with A&M Records in the '70s. He loves all kinds of music.

"I'm not such a blues guy as people make me up," he confesses. "Blues is just one address where I live. I like to walk around the neighborhood and see what everybody else is doing."