Product Description
TAJMO featuring TAJ MAHAL & KEB' MO' - ROOM ON THE PORCH'
RELEASE DATE MAY 23, 2025. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!
Taj Mahal and Keb' Mo', two generations of American blues masters, reunite to release their second album together, Room On The Porch, following their GRAMMY Award winning album, TajMo (2017). This historic collaboration between two blues giants and their extraordinary talents for an album of original songs and covers. In this 10-song set, the title track features award-winning singer-songwriter Ruby Amanfu.
- 1 Room on the Porch Ft. Ruby Amanfu
- 2 My Darling My Dear
- 3 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
- 4 She Keeps Me Movin'
- 5 Make Up Your Mind
- 6 Thicker Than Mud
- 7 Junkyard Dog
- 8 Blues'll Give You Back Your Soul
- 9 Better Than Ever Ft. Wendy Moten
- 10 Rough Time Blues
TAJ MAHAL & KEB’ MO’
TAJMO – Room On The Porch
Concord
“Easy Listening” is not a tag most musicians want attached to their work But some albums do just flow in a easy way – no rocks, no rapids, just an good drift for 40 or so minutes. And that’s not a bad thing. (You can always put something hard-edged on afterward.) And that’s the case with Room On The Porch, the second release from Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ under the moniker TajMo.
The duo, along with guest artists and backing vocalists, recorded the ten-song, 44-minute set in Nashville, and it has some of the smoothness associated with the product that comes out of Music Row there. But Taj still has one of the strongest, grittiest voices in blues, and Keb’ knows how to raise a rooftop as well. Both are masters on acoustic guitars.
Here they are paired with David Rodgers on Hammond organ and synthesizer, various bass players and drummers, a vibraphonist on one song, and a sax player on another. John Oates of Hall & Oates even turns up on one tune and gets a co-writing credit.
The album opens with the title song, which Taj says began as a little something he used to play for himself after shows. Keb’ and guest vocalist Ruby Amanflu (of Sam & Ruby and Jack White’s all female band The Peacocks) fleshed it out. It breezes along with Taj and Keb’ and Amanflu trading vocals while Jenee Fleenor lays violin over their acoustic and resonator guitars. It’s likable and could be the soundtrack for an auto commercial where smiling people cruise through eye-tantalizing scenery.
This title track sets the pace for the other nine songs – easy flowing and very listenable. Even a cover of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” has a polish you wouldn’t expect for a Depression-era tune about being broke and hungry. But things get grittier on “Blues’ll Give You Back Your Soul,” Taj’s one solo writing credit on the album. Plus there’s a mid-track saxophone solo, courtesy of Jeff Coffin (Bela Flack’s Flecktones, Dave Matthews Band).
The album ends with the two principals performing, sans band, “Rough Times Blues,” a Jontavious Willis’ tune about how a $100 won’t buy a bag of groceries these days and maybe the country needs another New Deal rather than the one where the rich get richer and the poor, well, you fill in the blank. They sing it easy, but there’s steel in the song.
– Bill Wasserzieher