vocal and guitar
Performance Dates
March 9 8:00 PM
Keb' Mo' Tour Presented By High Sierra
Singer-songwriter and guitarist Keb’ Mo’s music is a living link to the seminal Delta blues that traveled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America – informing all of its musical roots – before evolving into a universally celebrated art form. Born Kevin Moore in South Los Angeles to parents originally from the deep South, he adopted his better-known stage name when he was a young player who became inspired by the force of this essential African-American legacy. In the storied tradition of bluesmen before him, including Muddy Waters (formerly McKinley Morganfield) and Taj Mahal (who began his days as Henry St. Clair Fredericks), Moore became known as Keb’ Mo’. His acclaimed self-titled 1994 debut album introduced that now-famous appellation to the world, and his latest album, 2006’s Suitcase, brings it to new heights.
Mo’s music is also a purely post-modern expression of the artistic and cultural journey that has transformed the blues, and his own point of view, over time. His distinctive sound embraces multiple eras and genres, including pop, rock, folk, and jazz, in which he is well-versed. In total, it owes as much to contemporary music’s singer-songwriter movement, encompassing his longtime friends and collaborators Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne, as to the spirit of blues godfather Robert Johnson that dwells in his work. For Keb’ Mo’, the common bond between these influences is the underlying storytelling ethic, the power of song to convey human experience and emotional weight.
Kevin Moore was raised in Compton in a home filled with gospel music and the hit records of the ’50s and ’60s. He cut his musical teeth on a guitar his uncle gave him as a child, and as a teenager he also blew trumpet and French horn. After his stints with local R&B and pop cover groups, legendary roots violinist Papa John Creach, of Hot Tuna and Jefferson Starship fame, heard him and his band jamming at a rehearsal space. Creach hired them on the spot to play back-up for him, and on the first of three Creach albums on which he played, he was exposed to stellar guest artists Big Joe Turner and Harmonica Fats, indoctrinating him into the blues in a big way.
A staff position at A&M writing songs and contracting demo sessions followed, and in 1980, Moore released his own solo LP, Rainmaker (now a collector’s item), through Casablanca Records. He also began gigging with the Whodunit Band, a Monk Higgins-led ensemble of top jazz and blues players who were the house cats at the now-fabled L.A. nightspot Marla’s Memory Lane. The experience led to a role as a Robert Johnson-like Delta bluesman in Los Angeles Theatre Center’s production of Rabbit Foot, and another LATC role in Spunk, based Zora Neale Hurston’s writings, followed. Mo’s 1994 blues-heavy debut disc, Keb’ Mo’, flowed naturally out of this evolution. The second CD out on Epic Records’ just revived Okeh label, the album won immediate acclaim.
Subsequent albums have demonstrated the depth and breadth of Mo’s artistry, and three of them – Just Like You, Slow Down, and Keep It Simple – have been honored with Grammies for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Last year he was Grammy-nominated for Country Song of the Year for “I Hope,” a co-write with the Dixie Chicks which appears on their new album. Public Radio International’s award-winning Keb’ Mo’-hosted series airs on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluesville channel. He was also interviewed and musically spotlighted in the “Feel Like Going Home” installment of Martin Scorsese’s celebrated 2003 film series The Blues.
Mo’ has continued to be featured as an actor, including his portrayal of Robert Johnson in Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl, a docu-drama of the blues legend narrated by Danny Glover and featuring commentary from Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Robert Lockwood, Jr., and other music icons. He was featured on-camera in the motion picture All the Kings Men, and, playing himself, sang “America the Beautiful” during the inauguration scene of the moving series finale of the award-winning show The West Wing. For an artist who so genuinely embodies the confluence of multiple strains of profoundly American music, it is a transcendent moment and, like the treasure-packed Suitcase, another milestone in Keb’ Mo’s extraordinary journey.
website: www.kebmo.net
Updated: 3/7/07
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Keb' Mo' 
