Keb’ Mo’, or Kevin Moore as he would just as soon be called off stage,
may seem to have hit pay dirt pretty soon after surfacing back in the
early ’90s, but he actually spent more than two decades making music
professionally in L.A. before signing with OKeh Records in 1994. He
worked as a staff songwriter, cut tracks as a session guitarist, and
played in local bands. After releasing his self-titled debut, Moore
was typecast as a Delta blues revivalist, but a listen to his music
made it clear from the get-go that there was a lot more going on under
the retro chapeau and behind the shiny resonator guitar. He could pick,
play great bottleneck slide, and sing in a creased, comfortable voice
that was both rugged and flexible, but he also wrote or co-wrote nearly
all his own tunes, cutting some of them with a full band, and they were
hardly all just 12 bars long or three chords deep. And when he did cover
Robert Johnson, he wasn’t afraid to turn the band loose on a signature
tune like "Come On In My Kitchen," recasting it as a funky,
percolating groove tune. Fans and critics responded enthusiastically,
and Moore earned Grammy awards for his second and third releases, Just
Like You and Slow Down.
Moore has been exceptionally busy in recent months. He released his
fourth album, the critically acclaimed The Door, has been working
on a kids’ album tentatively titled Big Wide Smile, is pursuing
a hectic touring schedule that has included dates with Bonnie Raitt
and Lyle Lovett, and has found time to knock out a tune or two with
vocalist/mouth percussionist Bobby McFerrin. Moore appreciates the success,
while viewing it with the perspective and appreciation you might expect
from someone who’s arrived a little later than most in the pop world.
He clearly enjoys talking about guitars, songwriting, band-leading,
acoustic amplification, his studio days, and even the dreaded influences
question. He sat down with me last November before a concert in Dallas.
You’ve been asked a lot about your influences, about discovering
Robert Johnson and country blues relatively late in the game, but what
about prior to that? What made you want to play and sing when you were
a kid?
Mo’ [Cuban percussionist] Mongo Santamaria
made me want to listen to music. Because drums and rhythm, you know,
that’s pretty important. But I learned about performing and being on
stage and about putting songs together from people in the neighborhood.
Everybody listens to the radio; we’re all influenced by pop culture,
what comes over the media. But the influences right under your nose
[have more impact]. Charlie Tuna and Monk Higgins really made me want
to play the blues. It wasn’t Robert Johnson. And listening to Bobby
McClure sing, Lermon Horton, Vernon Garrett, people I played with in
the clubs.
How does the guitar contribute to the way you put songs together?
Mo’ The song usually starts with the
guitar, because that’s my base. And then I start with the subject. Usually
the music, the subject, then the words.
How do you come up with a subject?
Mo’ It doesn’t have to be a fancy
subject, or something different than what everyone’s written about,
but the subject has to have had some kind of effect on me.
Do you end up contributing all the words in a cowrite?
Mo’ I’m usually a big contributor
of words. I’ll sit down together with somebody, and we’ll start something
from scratch. But if I start getting the idea going, I’ll finish it
up. Sometimes when you cowrite you have to bring an idea to get things
going. So I’ll have some ideas.
How did you get started with Bobby McFerrin?
Mo’ He started "Loola Loo."
He had that change [sings turnaround], that sequence. He had
sussed it out on keyboards. We got together for a couple of days in
Minneapolis and started the songs, and then I finished them up.
"Mommy Can I Come Home" is probably the song I had the least
to do with on the cowrite. That was more on the side of Melissa Manchester.
She had the idea, "mommy can I come home," and we added the
words and music to it. I’d say that song was about 65/35, in her favor,
where it’s usually the other way around.
Were the tunes on The Door written specifically for the album?
Mo’ Why else is there to write [laughs]?
You start touring, your career takes off a bit, and time management
becomes a little more of a problem. So there’s no sitting around writing
whenever I feel like it. My day is filled with, "OK, we gotta take
care of this, so-and-so wants an interview, the label wants to talk
to you, go sign this . . .", and all of a sudden there I am, a
self-promoting commodity, rather than an artist. That’s the unfortunate
side of having a little success; it becomes a little hard to maintain
your creative integrity.
Does it work then to set aside time for yourself to write?
Mo’ If I’ve got an album to do, I
see the goal, and the moments kind of appear. Time [to write] does show
up. I can’t write on the road. I hate writing on the road. I need to
be sitting down, talking with someone, having some life. I don’t want
to end up writing songs about lonely hotel rooms.
When you record, do you cut the vocals live?
Mo’ Yeah. Some of the vocals on The
Door, like in "It Hurts Me Too," are the track vocals.
On this record the vocals were probably the most painless vocals of
any of my records. For some reason I was able to get the vocals really
fast and I didn’t labor over them.
What made it different this time?
Mo’ On the other records I was putting
my own vocal too loud in the headphones. I wanted to really hear what
I was doing, to hear if it was in tune. But there wasn’t enough of a
relationship to what I was singing to. This time my reference point
was more the instruments. My vocal was something in the distance, not
right in my face.
I was real relaxed during the sessions. I liked every track. So when
I was singing, I wasn’t thinking, "I wish I had . . ." Greg
Phillinganes, the keyboard player, he just played brilliantly. The guy
just delivered, over and over and over. And the combination of him on
the track with Jim Keltner supplied this meeting of something slick
with something swampy. They took a long time on the Keltner track; they
went slow. I was sitting in the studio going [mutters],
"Man, this is Jim Keltner. What’s taking him so long?"
[Laughs.]
But Keltner creates an environment. He creates something special every
time he goes in to record. Once you’ve got that track Keltner plays
on, you don’t have to add percussion, you don’t have to go, "Oh,
how are we gonna make this work?" When you’re adding a lot of overdubs
to a basic track, layers and layers, you’re basically trying to put
some magic on there that’s not on the track. And it never happens. It
feels the way it feels.
What was your own experience as a session musician like?
Mo’ I got to rub elbows with a lot
of really great session players living in L.A. I was always on the outer
rim of the session loop. Probably my biggest problem was that I had
no gear [laughs]. Making records now, I’ve found how important
it is to have a few axes, to help a song or a record come to life in
a whole different way. I had a Gibson ES-335 and a Fender Deluxe amp--great
sounding guitar, great amp, but that’s all I had. I remember going to
sessions and I’d get there and start playing the song, and I’m thinking
to myself [whispers], "This should be a Strat!" [Laughs.]
And I ain’t got one. That was probably one of my biggest problems.
I was always an L.A. session-guy wannabe. I mean, I did sessions, sometimes
I even had steady work doing sessions, but I never got there. But that’s
how I think: like a session guy. That’s why I go for guys like [keyboardist]
Jeff Paris and [bassist] Reggie McBride. It’s all about telling stories,
having fun, getting a groove going, and leaving some breathing holes
for the imagination.
Do you stick to the acoustic guitar when you play live and let the
other guys do the electric stuff?
Mo’ No, I get on the electric. But
my problem in the past with guitar players, the second guitar, is that
guitar players are notorious for playing too much and too big in band
situations. It’s so easy with a guitar to play too much or play the
wrong things, too thick. In that midrange, the keyboards, the vocal,
all that stuff is in the same range, fighting for a place to exist.
Playing subtle rhythm guitar is such an art. That’s what the guitar
players who influenced me did. I listened to Cornell Dupree. I wasn’t
interested in the Jimi Hendrixes, the big flashy lead guys. I always
liked to listen to the guys that were playing little parts in the back
of the record to make it go. So when a guy doesn’t have that sensitivity,
I start flipping out, when he starts playing big chords [sings power
chord riffs], too much on the bottom strings, compromising the textures
that are coming out of the whole band, not finding those little sweet
spots that help deliver the message.
Do you perform with a regular touring band?
Mo’ I make changes sometimes because
I tend to get a little meticulous. Sometimes I might be asking too much.
When you’re demanding all the time, there’s an air of contempt that
starts to build.
What are you asking for?
Mo’ Their attention. I’m asking them
to be attentive to helping me tell a story. I don’t sing in the high
tenor range where it cuts over. And then, in live circumstances, you
have the resonance of the room, and vocals tend to get lost. My solo
shows work all the time, because people can hear the words; it’s very
focused. But when you add the band, all the other frequencies in there
in the same range as the vocal, you start to dilute that communication
with the audience. Your band becomes a bigger, fuller sound, but they
become a hindrance to the storytelling that you’re working to do.
So what do you want from the band?
Mo’ I want them to really be dialed in. I want them to know
the songs. I want them to pay attention to me, not to how cool they
can play their instrument. They can already play cool--I wouldn’t have
called them if they couldn’t play cool [laughs].
I don’t want them to cover up the story.
If you can tell the story with a solo show, then why tour with a
band?
Mo’ I like to represent the recordings
more, and I think having a band show is fun. It’s fun to see a band.
I can have different textures and do little solos with a band, different
colors. It’s great.
Discography
KEB’ MO’
The Door, Sony 61428 (2000).
Slow Down, Sony 69376 (1998).
Just Like You, OKeh/550/Epic 67316 (1996).
Keb’ Mo’,
OKeh/550/Epic 67316 57863 (1994).
Excerpted
from
Acoustic Guitar
magazine, May 2001, No.101.
That
issue also contained a transcription of Keb' Mo's "Loola Loo"
plus feature stories on bluesmen Jerry Ricks and Eric Bibb.
Click
here to read about Keb' Mo's instruments and gear.
