Keb' Mo' and a hundred buck pants. The American singer-songwriter will perform in Prague
I can't choose
"I've always considered myself a singer-songwriter," explains 67-year-old Kevin Roosevelt Moore, known in the music world as Keb' Mo'. "But at the turn of the eighties and nineties, I immersed myself in the study of the blues and finally understood what was missing from my repertoire until then."
Already with the eponymous album from 1994, Keb'Mo' earned a completely unique position in the blues scene as a singer of melodic songs with a pleasant, calm voice, who is equally good at the slide guitar as the profession of a wandering trouver.
Jazzman Rudy Linka: The path to true freedom leads through the rules“I don't have just one teacher, I would have to name so many! I never say who influenced me the most because I just can't choose,” admits the man who has played with Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and other blues aces.
“The best advice I ever got in my life was not given by any of them, but by Uncle Carrie,” he adds. “He told me to buy a pair of pants for a hundred bucks. I just put them on, I started to feel like somebody on stage. And that feeling never left me.”
Two years ago, Kevin recorded the album TajMo with veteran African American blues Taj Mahal. Now he comes out with the record Oklahoma, although he himself is from Los Angeles.
Latina and Native American
“How does a guy from California start singing about Oklahoma?” laughs Keb' Mo'. “The title song came to me when I met Tulsa-born jazz singer Dara Tucker. Together we then wrote this little tribute to her home state, where so much was happening: Indians, race storms in the 1920s…”
Jazzman Peter Lipa: I was swept away by Ray Charles in the Tatra MountainsThe composition based on a combination of bluegrass violin and Latin American rhythms gave rise to an entire record on which Johnny Cash's daughter Rosanne and the already mentioned Taj Mahal are guests. “And what are my own roots? My mother immigrated to California from Texas with my father, my grandfather. My dad came to Los Angeles from Louisiana, the birthplace of the blues.”
Keb' Mo' moved his family to Tennessee years ago. "I really didn't expect anything from it. But I discovered that there is an amazingly vibrant underground of musicians.” Today, Keb' Mo' has 17 albums to his credit and numerous awards. He performed at the White House and at the Glastonbury festival. Already on July 16, he will play to the audience in Prague's Arš.
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