Separately Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ are pillars of the blues, each known for his distinctive sound within the genre using acoustic guitars and powerful storytelling, always honoring the origin of the blues while incorporating a variety of world sounds.
After decades of knowing each other professionally and developing a friendship, the two artists combined forces to create TajMo. They released their first album in 2017 to critical acclaim and a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
Last year, they went back to the studio and released Room On The Porch where the two men revisited their connection and positive messaging through the blues. TajMo will perform at The Arena Theatre on Saturday, September 26.
“It was very unexpected,” says Mo’ of Room On The Porch. “I thought that the first TajMo album that we did was just fine and I was like we had fun doing it, we did a tour, it was a success, let’s leave it alone,” he says laughing.
“We really always liked working together and we are good friends now too but we were hesitant about it because we planned on doing one and done and that was it but we went in and did it and it turned out good,” says Mo’ recognizing there was external pressure to make another album but now feels grateful to have worked with Mahal again and have a larger pool of songs to pull from at their shows.
Mo’ describes the vibe in the studio as a party with friends as they invited collaborators and their own sons to play in the band. Mahal credits Mo’ and his wide range of musical contacts and great production style for the album’s overall warmth and beauty.
“We basically put it together over a six-week period of him reaching out to different people and I brought some stuff,” says Mahal describing the satisfaction of hearing the title track with contributions from Ruby Amanfu.
“I rarely say this about my own music but that’s a classic tune that’s gonna be around for a while,” he says of the title track. “You can play it any way you want to. It’s got the real values of earlier music in this country but it’s in a modern time, it’s timeless.”
What shines the most on Room On The Porch is not only their respective talents as players and composers but the deep friendship between the two with seeds planted decades ago.
Mahal describes playing Mo’s high school back in the late ‘60s in Compton where at the urging of his shop teacher, Mo’ went and watched both of Mahal’s performances that day.
“He came and he said he was completely blown away because his idea of who the blues guys was were the older sort of slick suited down and here’s this guy with a cowboy hat, dark round glasses and buckskin fringe playing with a Native American guitar player and two guys that look like Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody and they’re playing this music. He says it just blew his mind.”
Mahal and Mo’ did not meet that day or even that decade. The two did not meet until the ‘90s when Mahal had been hearing the name Keb’ Mo’ over and over with people often making comparisons between the two.
“Both of us were young Black men playing acoustic guitars and not following the normal rhythm and blues direction,” says Mahal. “Not that we didn’t like it or we disliked it but we heard other music that was viable.”
For Mahal, seeking the roots of the blues and using sounds as language and a way of connecting with centuries of culture and experience has been essential to his development. He has never been one to chase a fad or hit singles.
“It’s never been a trend,” he agrees. “With the Rising Son and Ry Cooder in the early years all of us had come out of intense tutelage and mentorship from some of the older musicians and we saw all that there was a possibility to create this music. When we went to do it, there were no categories,” he says.
“For 25 years there was nobody out there, I was out there by myself and this industry didn’t know what to do because most people what they do is they see the genre and the form and they cut off their arms their legs, they’ll even cut off their head to get in there. I wouldn’t do that; this music stands up by itself and what that did was give people a lighthouse to focus on.”
Mahal has spent his entire career harvesting sounds and philosophies from all over the map making his blend of blues world-based, not just American. In the late ‘90s, he spent time in West Africa making his album Kulanjan where he incorporated African griot music, a historical storytelling tradition, with the blues.
“I’ve gathered all the remnants of that energy from West Africa through the different players here in the United States; Elizabeth Cotton, Son House, Robert Johnson. All those different people have a tone that comes out of that West African pentatonic mixolydian scale.”
He experienced firsthand the circle of the collective subconscious and the flow of musical knowledge. “I heard the music coming back to me from all these other parts of the world and wondered, how did I know this already? Is that communicating through your DNA all these centuries? Yup, it sure is. What’s happening is the soul of humanity is being awakened by the sounds of who they are.”
“He talks and I listen,” laughs Mo’. “He’s much more astute at musicology and the history of it and how it goes back than I am but listening to his interviews over the years and when I have the chance to hear him talk about stuff, I always welcome it. He really turned me on to the spiritual aspect of music and that when you make that sound, it wakes up the spirits and it does something that we can’t really describe.”
Much like Mahal embodies the centuries of music pushing through his stories in song, Room On The Porch projects he and Mo’s deep camaraderie and shared love of authenticity and the blues.
“It’s inviting people to really take stock in themselves,” says Mahal of the songs on Room On The Porch. “This is the life you live in and if you don’t take stock in yourself, you’re just being led down the road like so many cattle. You don’t really have control anyway but at least you can see the direction you want to go in.”
For both men, there is a strong sense that the blues will continue to carry until the end of time. “There’s no death to the blues, that doesn’t exist because it’s something that was created out of real lives. It was a crucible of real emotions, and this is real life. There’s no way to get around it,” says Mahal, adding that if the effects of it can hit tea drinking, cricket playing Brits, many of whom he worked with, it can hit anyone.
“The roots and the seeds have been planted,” says Mo’. “This music is essential to American music, and even if it went underground and you never heard about it, it’s already made its mark, it’s already in the history books and the mind and consciousness of the country and the world, so you can’t kill it.”
TajMo will perform on Saturday, September 26 at 7 p.m. at The Arena Theatre, 7326 Southwest Freeway. For more information visit arenahouston.com. $75-97.
