It’s been nearly a decade since Taj Mahal and Keb’ MO’ teamed up for their collaborative debut, TajMO, and though the album was a runaway success—it won a GRAMMY Award, garnered rave reviews, and spawned a massive joint tour of the US and Europe—neither artist ever expected to record a follow-up.
Though the two only began recording together as TajMO in 2017, the pair’s creative relationship (and mutual admiration) stretches back decades.
Rather than rest on their considerable laurels, Taj and Keb’ decided to continue pushing themselves into new creative territory with Room On The Porch, writing and recording the bulk of the album from scratch over the course of just two weeks in the studio.
Feel-good album opener “Room On The Porch (ft. Ruby Amanfu)” is a perfect example.
“That song started out as a little guitar piece I used to play by myself after shows when I was still wired from the stage,” Taj recalls. “I shared it with everybody in the studio, and then Keb’ and Ruby built this whole beautiful song around it.”
Like much of the album, it’s an earnest, tender affair, with Taj, Keb’, and Ruby all trading vocals in an ode to friendship and community. “Stay as long as you like / That’s alright,” they insist. “Come up on / There’s room on the porch for everyone.” The driving “Thicker Than Mud” honors the enduring bonds of family; the romantic “My Darling My Dear” and soulful “She Keeps Me Movin’” revel in the comfort of love and commitment; and the bilingual “Better Than Ever (ft. Wendy Moten)” finds the silver lining in every cloud.
“It was like a party every day,” adds Keb’, who later put the finishing touches on the album at his own home studio. “We had our sons in there playing with us and all the other musicians and writers were hanging the whole time, so it was a really fun place to be.”
It wouldn’t be a TajMO album without a heaping dose of the blues, though. The pair reach all the way back to 1923 for an aching take on Jimmy Cox’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” tip their cap to the next generation with a raw, stripped-down cover of Jontavious Willis’ “Rough Time Blues,” and embrace the genre’s ageless power on the sweltering closer “Blues’ll Give you Back Your Soul.” “They say jazz will give you back your mind / Reggae give you back your body,” Taj sings. “I know you like you like rock and I know you like the roll / But the blues, the blues will give you back your soul.”
Indeed, that excitement is palpable on Room On The Porch, which feels just as fresh and revelatory as the pair’s debut. No luck required.
