Inside Columbia

kevin’s world l by entertainment editor kevin walsh
Shows Of Note
Two concerts celebrate traditions
and talents during Black History Month.
February is Black History Month
and this year we find some progress
being made in integrating the black
experience into this city’s heritage and
current culture.
Plans are in the works to improve and
expand Douglass Park’s facilities, giving
better access to this crucial green space
for safe community activities. And recently,
$1.5 million dollars went to the adjacent
Frederick Douglass High School to
support and expand its coursework and
keb’ mo’
community services. The Blind Boone
House Project has finally been stabilized
and seems ready to move forward. Most
importantly, I come across more and
more local black talent that has empowered
itself by embracing social media and
new personal recording technologies to
promote regular, local gigs enervating the
local music scene.
I recommend a couple of solid
February shows from purveyors of
tradition in black music.
Keb’ Mo’
7 p.m. Feb. 11 at Jesse Auditorium
It is appropriate that Keb’ Mo’ (real
name: Kevin Moore) burst onto the
contemporary blues scene in the early
1990s under the auspices of the Sony/
CBS revival of the iconic Okeh Records
imprint. The “new” Okeh releases
would come to include hundreds of
lovingly remastered, extra-track-laden
reissues of Okeh classics from black
music pioneers such as Bessie Smith
and Duke Ellington. Also featured
were promising new artists like Pappa
Chubby, G. Love and Keb’ Mo’, whose
hi-def approach to acoustic blues music
was timed right for the about-to-break
digital era.
Although a traditionalist (his debut
included two Robert Johnson covers)
who had spent time backing Bobby Bland
and Albert Collins, Moore’s passionate,
intimate style was recorded with stateof-the
art-attention to equipment and
technique, putting heretofore bespoke
subtleties into deep, deep audio focus.
His “postmodern” blues style brought
a made-to-measure attention to detail
to a genre historically plagued (or
sometimes blessed, given the hands-off
successes of the Chess Brothers and a
few others) with an off-the-rack sound.
Over the next few decades, Moore
continued to write and record material
in the blues idiom, but has also branched
out to movie work, both soundtrack and
acting (he played Robert Johnson in
1998’s “Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl”),
and even Broadway.
Christian McBride Trio
3:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at Murry’s
The opportunity to see bassist Christian
McBride, who has always been the
very soul of sophisticated intimacy,
in a small club setting like Murry’s is
a luxury we owe to the prestige and
connections of Jon Poses’ “We Always
Swing” Jazz Series.
Many may not remember that among
McBride’s many Columbia appearances,
he was the host and mainstay of 1995’s
WAS 10th anniversary band. That event
was emceed by Bob Costas and the set
list was jazz-baseball standards only. The
26 inside columbia february 2014