Eric Bibb has built a career as Mr. Mellow with his soft-spoken, bluesy folk meanderings since his 1972 debut, Ain’t It Grand. For his latest, Ridin’, the global griot, soulful troubadour, street preacher, and mellow bluesman continues down the same trail, but never wears it out.
His tone may be gentle, but his message is often anything but. On the title cut, Bibb announces the return of the freedom train, derailed after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis but now back on track, picking up passengers along the ride to glory.
Bibb can even mellow down funk on “Blues Funky Like Dat” with the help of Taj Mahal doing some gritty background a-how-how-hows, well-well-wells, and yeah-yeah-yeahs and some tasty low-down blues harp. It’s a tale of a preacher’s son of Bibb’s acquaintance who spends Sunday morning in the pulpit filled with the spirit and his Friday nights having his blues funky like dat.
Bibb channels Son House, alleging that the frenetic Delta bluesman came to him in a dream singing “I Got My Own,” followed by a list of acquired treasures including his own railroad car and airplane sitting in his backyard. “I been juked and I been scorned,” Bibb has House saying, “but I got the key to all the doors … got my own, don’t need yours.” North African guitarist Amar Sundy provides spacy, electric ethereal effects.
The video for “Family” finds Bibb sitting in a chair outdoors with a banjo on his lap, pickin’ and grinnin’, but once again though the delivery may be mellow, the message is strong:
Let’s open our eyes, call a spade a spade
Someone makin’ money by keeping us afraid
Afraid of each other
Back in time we might have been
Brothers from a different mother
They called it a sin
I am like you
Woman born I am like you
A child of God
There’s a bunch of blues blasters and shakers popping up on various tracks, including Taj and Sundy as well as Habib Koité and country bluesman Jontavious Willis.
Bibb even breathes new life into the old folkie wheezer “500 Miles,” battered and cooed by a bevy of ’60s era folkies including The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Joan Baez and passed on to Glen Campbell, Elvis, and, more recently, Justin Timberlake for the soundtrack of the film Inside Llewyn Davis. Bibb’s take is hung on a banjo-dominated Appalachian framework sweetened with strings and overlaid with Bibb’s soft crooning.
Even though it’s always a pleasure to hear Bibb beefed up by a substantial cadre of backup singers and wire choirs, it’s nice to hear him stripped down a bit. He takes an acoustic resonator 12-string lead on the closer, “Church Bells,” sweetened with Esbjorn Hazelius’ fiddle.
Once again Bibb sits tall in the saddle, rounding up a herd of mixed breeds and marking them with his own unique brand.
Eric Bibb’s Ridin’ is out March 24 on Stony Plain Records and Repute Records.
