Keb'Mo' & Amy Correia

The tall, gangly, and incomparably smooth Keb' Mo' returned to Chico last Tuesday, bringing along several more friends than last time - including an opening act - to a highly anticipated, sold-out appearance at Laxson. Amy Correia is a singer-songwriter from a small town in Massachusetts who hated it, wrote songs about leaving, and finally did, heading for the Big Apple to try and make it. Accompanied onstage by a cellist, Correia played guitar on most numbers, but featured just her voice on a few. The cello was put to good use, combining classical-style bowing and funky finger picking, often on the same number. For having spent time 'playing out' in New York, Correia seemed to have her heart prominently displayed on her sleeve. She commented once that she wasn't sure if the audience was just listening intently or if they were making noise and she just couldn't hear it. Even if she seemed a little hurried between numbers, Correia relaxed once she was singing, and she does have a beautiful voice, with a foundation that's raspy and sweet like cotton candy. On "Big Big Man" she moaned in a sultry voice about her man, a tuba player in a marching band, while the cello plunk-plunked like a dirty old Sun honky-tonk. In the middle of the song she broke it down, turned to her (female) bandmate, and said, "I think they believe it, I think they're buying it." I think maybe she and the cellist are lovers. Correia played several songs from her debut album, Carnival Love, my favorite being a funky ode to the joy of the phonograph: "I thought I was all alone / until I took a good record / and I threw it on the gramophone." Correia's voice is distinctive and powerful, and pulled heartstrings with the help of the cello.

Most people there undoubtedly came to see Keb' Mo', and were obviously anxious for him to come on. Last time he was in town, Mr. Mo' played a stripped-down, mostly acoustic guitar set with Clayton Gibb accompanying him on banjo and guitar. Gibb was back, and the crowd showed they remembered him, but along with him came Jeff Paris on keys, playing what looked like a Hammond with a regular ol' black plastic job on top. Over at stage right were Reggie McBride thrumming the bass strings (his interplay with Paris on one number was baaad) and Les Falconer beatin' the skins. A mysterious woman named Sally May or something kept popping in over there too, sitting at some kind of weird keyboard (it never looked like she played runs, just chords) and laying backup vocals on a couple numbers. In the midst of it all, of course, was Keb' Mo', singin' the blues and shufflin' the chords with his claw-hammer finger picks. He and Gibb kept trading a nice, shiny National steel guitar back and forth, and Keb' Mo' also threw a wooden steel string, a Gibson electric (I think - it was far away) and even Gibb's trademark banjo into the mix.

Keb' Mo's music is basically blues, but it occasionally veers toward gospel, because of its strongly positive, striving lyrical content, and even toward R&B. He played songs from the length of his career, including a few recognizable to those who attended his last Chico show - "She Just Wants to Dance" and "Slow Down" come to mind; a requisite classic blues (Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too" this time, instead of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" from last time); and several numbers from his latest release, The Door. Some of these songs had strong social messages, like "Change," which portrays the world through the eyes of a "spare-changer" and ends up making the point that even the folks with money are "looking for a change / that's gonna make everything alright." This kind of music can get tendentious, but Keb' Mo' plays it with enough soul, depth, and variety to make even cynics listen. Not to mention the badass sound of the slide-steel. Too gregarious to wonder, like Amy Correia, what was going on with the audience, Keb' Mo' walked to the very front of the stage (where he looked ten feet tall), out from under the lights, and played his guitar right in everybody's face. He brought his own sound crew this time, too, and they had it dialed in and loud, so they wailed occasionally, but never wanked. I got a little worried about those tiles on the ceiling of Laxson, but we were safely under the balcony overhang, so I relaxed. By the end of the second encore everyone was standing, and many were dancing in the aisles or swaying in their seats, clapping to the beat.

The rumor's been going around that Keb' Mo' is thinking of moving to Chico, and if Tuesday night was any indication, it'd be real nice having him around more often.

-Matt Meyer

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