Lee Roy Parnell Are You Happy Baby (Feat. Keb' Mo')
Keb' Mo' has lived in Nashville for more than a decade, but his latest anthology, Good to Be, out Friday on Rounder, owes much of its genesis to the 70-year-old music icon's childhood home in Compton, Calif.
"In the years gone by, I would go to Compton and see my mom quite often, when she was live — and I have one sister that even so lives in Compton," he tells Billboard. In 2018, just prior to his female parent's passing, Keb' Mo' purchased and renovated his childhood home.
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"She had been renting it out for some time," he explains. "We bought it from her estate and stock-still it upwardly. We knocked the wall out betwixt the piffling living room and the kitchen. We wanted to make information technology all it could exist, to honour my mom and our family, and to make information technology a place where we can all come up together. It as well gives me a stake in the neighborhood."
The album's title rails is a breezy celebration of returning to the stomping grounds of his youth, recognizing both the inevitable changes wrought past time, merely also the enduring spirit of his hometown. It is i of two tunes Keb' Mo' wrote while visiting Compton during the early days of the COVID-xix pandemic. In the other, "The Medicine Man," Keb' Mo' welcomes Onetime Crow Medicine Show for an audio-visual jam that manages both a laugh-so-you-don't-cry sense of humor and a keen cataloging of recent world events, from the 2020 presidential election to the effects of the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
"I attempt to think [with] 'Medicine Man,' I was channeling Jeff Foxworthy or something," he says, quoting the line, "Friends and neighbors are dropping like flies/ You better cover your face, sanitize."
Skillful to Be also features Vince Gill, Darius Rucker, Quondam Crow Medicine Show and Kristin Chenoweth. "I love the title cut, sitting in the room with Vince and that was some of the old-school Nashville cats on that song," he says. "Gordon Mote, Paul Franklin — and you've got Wendy Moten on at that place, too, with the background vocals."
Keb' Mo' wrote "Quiet Moments," featuring Chenoweth, in the 1970s. The track sits comfortably alongside a rendition of the Bill Withers classic "Lean on Me" and a host of songs Keb' Mo' wrote during the chaotic past few years, giving the album both a breadth of sound and a depth of heart. One time the songs were adamant, Keb' Mo' returned to Nashville in January of concluding year, with the aim of making the entire project with longtime friend Gill.
"I kind of got the good fortune of having a friend like Vince, who, when I came to town, continued me to folks like Wynonna and Brad Paisley," the v-time Grammy winner says, adding, "Vince was supposed to produce the whole anthology, just with the COVID-19 [pandemic], none of us knew what to do. We had some sessions where you had to separate the singers and we used this thing that sanitized some electronic things. We got tests, nosotros did everything nosotros could. Finally, I said, 'Why don't you practise these three songs?'"
Gill co-produced "Good Strong Adult female," "Good To Be (Home Once again)" and "'62 Chevy," while Tom Hambridge, known for his work with Buddy Guy and B.B. King, co-produced several other songs on the album.
On "Expert Stiff Woman," which Keb' Mo' co-wrote with Jason Nix and Jason Gantt, Rucker lends his voice on the admonition to find dear with someone who will support you emotionally.
"Darius is a kick, man. I would say he's a hoot, simply that's too right on information technology," Keb' Mo' says with a chuckle of the Hootie & the Blowfish frontman. "He is merely all centre and sincerity. Darius starts singing, and by his presence he made the whole record elevator upward. I was very much impressed past his energy, considering I operate on the same kind of thing. I don't operate on vocal or guitar playing prowess. I operate on, 'Can I make people believe me?' He just lays it, he simply cuts his chest open up and bleeds on it, yous know?"
Of class, Keb' Mo'due south new album is far from his offset collaboration with country artists. In 2001, Keb' Mo' was a performer and producer on "I'm And so Lonesome I Could Cry" from the tribute album Timeless: Hank Williams Tribute. The anthology won a Grammy for best country album.
He also played on Trace Adkins'due south album The Style I Wanna Go, and co-wrote "Remedy," which appears on Zac Chocolate-brown Band'due south Jekyll+Hyde album. Keb' Mo' co-wrote "I Hope" on The Chicks' album Taking The Long Manner (the vocal earned a best country song Grammy nomination), and played slide guitar on Wynonna's album Sing: Chapter i. He also covered Don Williams' "Lord I Hope This Solar day Is Practiced" for the anthology Gentle Giants: The Songs of Don Williams, and Johnny Greenbacks's "Folsom Prison Dejection" on a Cash tribute album. He's also collaborated with Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks (on Brooks'south Double Live 25th Anniversary anthology) and Lee Roy Parnell (on the soundtrack for Happy, Texas and on Parnell's 2001 blues album). Keb' Mo'south previous albums, such equally BLUESAmericana, accept featured co-writes with other Nashville songwriters such as Victoria Shaw and Jim Weatherly.
Elsewhere on Skilful to Be, Keb' Mo' works with another previous collaborator — his longtime friend Ernest "Rip" Patton, a legendary ceremonious rights leader and Nashville Freedom Passenger, whom Keb' Mo' counted as a neighbor while growing up in Compton. "I'm here knowing this giant for years, but I didn't find out he was a Liberty Rider until I got to Nashville. I never knew considering he was ever just Rip to me," Keb' Mo' recalls.
Keb' Mo' says he had not seen his childhood friend in nearly two decades, until Patton showed up at one of his shows not long afterward the latter moved to Nashville. Patton previously appeared on Keb' Mo'due south 2014 album BLUESAmericana. On Adept to Be, Keb' Mo' and Patton recorded a joyous rendition of "Lean on Me," captured not long before Patton's passing in late 2021.
In the studio, Patton "sabbatum downwards and did that in one accept," Keb' Mo' says. "A few weeks afterwards I called, he was in the hospital and I went down there. I spent a little fourth dimension with him, about three days. His time was well spent. He left a mark."
Since the release of his self-titled album in 1994, this acclaimed musician has left his own mark, and music fans and industry organizations are celebrating his accomplishments and contributions. Last year, Keb' Mo' was honored with the Americana Music Association's lifetime achievement performance award, and volition be inducted into the Music Metropolis Walk of Fame in Apr.
He has only launched a slate of tour dates for the start half of 2022, and plans to head back in the studio, but not earlier the songs are right.
"When I'one thousand finally fix to do the tape, I don't have like 40 songs written. I'thou usually virtually one or 2 songs short. But every time I'm writing, I try to make certain I'm right, and telling the truth," he says. "I don't care how long a song takes to write, as long as everything I have is resonating. So so I don't accept to go through and effigy out what'due south resonating for an anthology, because everything resonates."
Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/country/keb-mo-good-to-be-album-1235020539/
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