47 f “Y
ou can tell I’ve been lis- tening,” says Keb of Taj’s influence. “But it ain’t a copy. You have to find your own way. I learnt
that when I was trying to write pop music. ’Cos with the pop music, you listen to the radio and say ‘OK, I’m going to write me a hit record’. You listen to all that stuff, then you make something just like that and it might even be better. But it’s always too late. So, you’re never going to be able to catch a trend, because they’re too far in front of you. In the end, you’ve just got to be your- self. Because then no-one can catch you.”
Since their first meeting, they’ve bumped into each other backstage at numerous festivals. “My best memories of hanging with Taj,” remembers Keb, “is hanging out on the side of the stage when someone else was play- ing. The first time was watching George Clinton and the P Funk All Stars.”
“We were sitting on the side of the stage just cracking up,” explains Taj. “They were going through all their shenani- gans… just absolutely amazing. We were like ‘Lord have mercy, what happened? Where’d all this come from?’”
Keb: “Another time was on the side of the stage listening to Little Milton. You know, when you hear mastery. There’s a kind of agreement like ‘That’s great’.”
Recording together seemed like their natural next step and they’ve been working together on tracks in a Nashville studio on and off since 2014. When they first started recording they had one song, the Keb
co-composed ‘spread love’ style anthem All Around The World. “I didn’t want to drive it too far,” recalls Keb. “Just have a starting point and see where it went from there. We just wanted to do a record that was inspira- tional and that we enjoyed making.”
Taj was around for the initial record- ings, then had to hit the road. He and Keb would talk every day after that, sending files to each other, adding songs and embel- lishing the recording. “We’d bat the songs back and forth and say yay or nay,” remem- bers Keb.
“We didn’t do a whole lot of ‘naying’, I’ll tell you that,” adds Taj.
The result is tough but easygoing. They’re not trying to ‘out-clever’ each other. “Just one trick per song,” as Taj puts it. Was this conscious? “Well there was a lot of spontaneity,” says Keb. “But a lot of scrutiny too. A combination of things that just hap- pened on their own and other things that were well thought out. Very much crafted. They just come the way they come.”
There’s an interesting array of guests on the album. “Mostly they just dropped in,” Keb tells me. “The only one that didn’t was Sheila E. We invited her.” The Mexican-
American singer and percussionist, best known for her work with Prince, features on one of the more unlikely tracks on the album, a Creole-flavoured cover of The Who’s Squeeze Box. “The hardest thing was getting the band into Squeeze Box,” Keb chuckles. “They were all like ‘What is this Squeeze Box thing?’ Because it’s The Who and The Who are like from the 1960s.”
Taj “They were like ‘The what? … The Who? … The what?’”
“As we were finalising things,” recalls Keb, “we were listening back to the track Soul and we were like ‘There’s something missing on the top.’ So I went down to the store and I bought a triangle, a little orches- tral one and just added a little ding-linga- ling. I sat there and spent all day on it. Things that you wouldn’t think are such a big deal, but which made a big difference.”
“H
e just wandered over one day to see what we were doing,” Keb says. “We didn’t expect that he was going to play
on the album or anything.” But play he did, adding guitar to a cover of soul guitarist and songwriter Billy Nichols’ Shake Me In Your Arms and the aforementioned Squeeze Box.
“You gotta think about where all those guys got their inspiration to play,” says Taj of the unlikely appearance of such a radio rock big shot. “BB, Albert, Freddy. There was a whole long time when they were mixing it all up in the midst of all that. All those different kind of rock players. One of the things I liked about Ry Cooder and Jesse Davis was that those guys were not trying to regurgitate what those other musicians were doing. What they did is that they came up with their own sound on the blues and that’s exactly what you’re sup- posed to do. Then there’s some personality going on.”
“Joe Walsh is a guy with a sense of humour,”adds Keb. “And the blues has got a sense of humour. You know, it’s not some kind of serious, edgy thing. It’s not the angst of young teenage suburban white kids. Whereas rock is a kind of angst looking-inwards thing. The blues is funny!”
The finished album, with its mix of original material and sometimes unlikely covers, makes for a good calling card. If I owned a radio station, I’d put punchy, catchy opener Don’t Leave Me Here on heavy rota- tion. One of the most treasur- able moments happens away from the big noise guests and brassy production, when the duo eases through a version of Sleepy John Estes’ Diving Duck Blues, a song Taj first recorded on his debut album back in 1968.
The album has a strongly identifiable sound, that combination of in-the-groove funky blues, with other influences (soul, pop, Caribbean, African and gospel among them) easily accommodated, without knocking things off course. It sounds natural.
“We just concentrated on what was in front of us,” remembers Taj, of the record- ing sessions. “Just making it sound real good. Just being able to look at each other and laugh and say ‘That sounds great’.”
“It was all in the moment,” adds Keb. “And when you ask those questions and I look back at how it came about and I listen to the record and hear the results, I go yeah, OK, it was real. Because you can’t get those kind of results without it being real. The audience is very smart and they’ll pick up on it and know if you’re just trying to hood- wink them.”
Other notable contributors included harmonica player Lee Oskar, from ’70s rock-funk pioneers War, and the compara- tively younger jazz and gospel singer Lizz Wright (who features on the track Om Sweet Om). Then there was Joe Walsh. Yes, the plank-spanking rocker and former member of The Eagles. I mean, talk about an unlikely collaborator…
The obvious next step was to hit the
road. “We had to figure out who we are on stage,” says Keb, “because we know each other but playing together on stage is something else. We really wanted to work it out before we played live.”
Do they see TajMo as a project that will continue or as just a one-off? “It definitely has a lifespan,” reckons Keb. “But while we’re in it, we’re both really enjoying it, totally digging it. Although we’ll know when it’s time to turn it loose.”
“When to let the horses out to pas- ture,” chips in Taj.
They don’t envisage another album. “This is it,” continues Keb. “This is the culmi- nation. We’re not trying to become a duo.”
Live, they feel like a unified unit, not just something chucked together following the release of an album. “Oh yeah,” agrees Taj. “And it’s still growing…”
I think Mr Mahal had more to say on
that matter, quite probably a lot to share on other matters too, but my allotted time was up and that was that. Perhaps we can con- tinue the conversation in a decade’s time.
With thanks to Joe Baxter.
tajmo.com
F
Photo: Jay Blakesberg
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