Broad musical canvas for blues expert

LA bluesman Keb' Mo' can sing as sorrowful a tune as anyone, but with a wide grin. MIKE HOULAHAN reports.

Los Angeles-based blues singer Keb' Mo' bursts into a huge gale of laughter when his career is described as a 20-year overnight success story. "It's been a long night," he says.

This is one happy bluesman today but Mo' - born Kevin Moore and raised in the tough LA suburb of Compton - had to serve a long apprenticeship before graduating to become a two-time Grammy winner.

After a decade or more as a session musician and record label staff writer Moore decided his musical career required more depth. He had played music from a bewildering range of styles, from calypso to country, but he kept returning to the blues tunes.

Moore then learned music a second time by moving to the Mississippi Delta and hanging out with veteran blues musicians. The experience eventually crystallised with his renaming as Keb' Mo' and the release of a self-titled debut album.

"It wasn't hard to keep the faith because music keeps you happy," says Mo', who is touring New Zealand. "I keep playing music and that's enough for me. I wasn't necessarily attached to success, and the more I attached myself to music the more joy it gave me.

"For most people the 'success' never comes. If you measure success by popularity and dollars and cents that's a good way to set yourself up for disappointment, rather than just being grateful for what you're given and what you have and what's good about your life."

Having cemented his reputation as one of his generation's leading blues singers, Mo' has headed in a different direction on his most recent album, Big Wide Grin. In part inspired by his son Kevin jnr, who sings on a track on the album, Mo' wanted to record a fun family record.

Selecting songs as diverse as Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi, Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely, the Ojays' Love Train and the standard America the Beautiful, Big Wide Grin is tinged with the blues but paints a much broader musical canvas.

"I wanted songs that had family themes, songs that were up and happy and showed family in all its different dimensions. I didn't just want the typical happy families, but situations that weren't so normal," Mo' says.

What was meant to be a fun record has come with a small amount of heartache, he says. Despite it being pitched as a family record and as a sideline from his usual line of work, some fans didn't take at all kindly to their hero's swerve in direction.

"Some people were a little offended, saying, 'Wait a minute, what's this crap?' I expected a lot more flak than I actually got from it but I have people around me who do a good job of keeping it away from me," Mo' says.

"They always try to let the artist have a positive view of themselves, but I know there's rubbish out there. You've got to know people are saying bad things about you. It goes with the job. It goes with life.

"I don't have a problem with diversity at all, but some people, they want you to do what they like you doing. People take stock in you, they take a little ownership in you, they like you doing that one thing they like. Some people are very open to what you do. I think you have to make your music to please yourself first. If you don't like it, no one else will."

Mo' makes music every day and has a studio set up at his home so he can record whenever he wants to.

Nothing is set down on the calendar for release yet and, at the risk of irritating those picky fans still further, he's taking time to explore another musical dimension.

"When I have a project going, I never know what it's going to turn out to be," he says.

"Right now I'm working on writing a lot of singer/songwriter-type songs, in the blues/country kind of genre.

"That's what's intriguing me right now. The Big Wide Grin was kind of fun because we got different rhythm sections in to play and just had a bit of a hoo ha.

"Now I'm just sitting down with a guitar and playing, looking right back at just vocals and guitar. I'm really enjoying just working with those simple things right now."

* Keb' Mo' plays the Auckland Town Hall on Saturday.