Eric Bibb: More vital than ever right now, right here, at a time when his eloquence and his conscience are most needed
By David McGee
RIDIN’
Eric Bibb
Stony Plain Records
In addition to traveling the globe, Eric Bibb has done a lot of riding, metaphorically and metaphysically, in his life and times. Growing up the son of acclaimed folk artist-activist Leon Bibb, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma and whose Greenwich Village domicile was a gathering place for the reigning folk and blues legends and soon-to-be legends, Bibb was immersed in the issues of his youth, most especially those relating to the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. When he set out on his own singer-songwriter career, he embraced a duty to speak for the displaced, the disappeared and the downtrodden. His has been one of the most eloquent voices for those whose voices are too seldom heard. In Ridin’, he speaks louder than ever for those ever-striving souls, past and present.
To that end, as he explained in a recent interview with Jamie Dickson in Guitarist, a painting by Eastman Johnson, circa 1862, titled “A Ride for Liberty,” galvanized his conceptual thinking about his album-in-planning. As he told Dickson:
“So there’s a dad and a mom and a baby child on horseback. At dawn, it looks like, and they’re fleeing slavery–the painting is called ‘A Ride For Liberty.’ I thought that title kind of just summed up where everybody, in one way or another, seems to still be: on some kind of ride for liberty, you know? Liberty from war, liberty from systemic racism, misogyny, whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of things that the human community needs to fix–and ‘A Ride For Liberty’ just seems to embrace all of that.”
‘Ride for Liberty,’ Eastman Johnson, circa 1862, the painting that inspired Eric Bibb’s Ridin’
‘Family,’ Eric Bibb, from Ridin’
In an even earlier interview, with the album very much in its gestation stage, he summarized its concept as focusing on “the ongoing task of understanding systemic racism and purging it from our world.” Which he proceeds to do on Ridin’, over the course of 15 impeccably constructed, passionately rendered songs recounting incidents in which brave souls tried to make a difference in their own time. “Family,” released as the album’s first single, references both Emmett Till and Dr. Martin Luther King as Bibb describes an emotional train ride through the Southern states, which leads him, ultimately, to an observation applicable to the philosophy Bibb advances here in decrying “someone making money by keeping us afraid of each other” while sensibly pointing out, “I am like you, woman born…you are like me, family.” All this plays out first to a lone picked banjo setting a stark ambience before the song opens up into a funkified, bluesy strut that complements the immediacy of Bibb’s testifying, especially when he’s joined in rousing, house wrecking fashion by a bevy of big-voiced background singers, including the UMOJA Choir.
‘Tulsa Town,’ Eric Bibb, from Ridin’
‘The Ballad of John Howard Griffin,’ Eric Bibb with Russell Malone, from Ridin’
In the galloping rhythm propelling “Tulsa Town,” Bibb surveys T-Town’s Black Wall Street before (“not just survivin’, business was thrivin’”) and after the 1921 Race Massacre (“You might wonder why nobody told you/why they never taught it at school/keepin’ truth about race from the history page/it’s not the exception, it’s been the rule”), and then saluting “the young ones/standin’ up, speakin’ up, speakin’ out/’bout things like the massacre in Tulsa Town.” It’s a showcase example of the tack Bibb pursues throughout, finding hope emerging from the detritus of hate. Bibb’s own rhythmic acoustic picking, plus some atmospheric finger snapping along with tasty electric blues guitar interjections courtesy Russell Malone, the artist describes another real-life event in “The Ballad of John Howard Griffin,” a white man who underwent a chemical procedure to change the color of his skin because “he just had to know how it feels to be a black man,” only to “get a shock because life as a black man was harder than a rock.” Indeed, Griffin once found himself nearly beaten to death by white men in Mississippi, but he lived to pen the best-selling Black Like Me, “written by a good man who believed in equality,” as Bibb sings in tribute as this straightforward ballad comes to a thoughtful close, again emerging from darkness into the light of truth.
‘Free,’ Eric Bibb with Habib Koité, from Ridin’
‘People You Love,’ Eric Bibb, from Ridin’
Bibb fans can only be uplifted by the presence of the Eric Bibb String Band on a rousing live workout of “Sinner Man,” recorded at the Wheatland Festival, and fans of the artist’s classic 2012 duo album with West African singer-guitarist Habib Koité, Brothers in Bamako, will not be surprised by the force of convivial energy the two friends bring to a gospel-inspired celebration of breaking through one’s self-erected barriers to happiness and fulfillment, especially when Koité jumps in wailing in his native tongue with so much intensity as to render language barriers moot—you get that he’s seconding Bibb’s personal course correcting. As an aside, here’s suggesting a second volume of Brothers in Bamako is in order. In the album’s strongest one-two punch, “Free” is followed by an exquisitely beautiful ode to those who have passed on, the austere piano-and-steel-driven “People You Love,” which has some latter-day Jesse Winchester spirituality informing it, especially in lyrics such as the whispered “every day they bring Heaven closer to me and to you…” Of the many “rides” Bibb takes on this Grammy-nominated album, “People You Love” powerfully articulates the greater message of love, faith, and resilience he advances in Ridin’. Herein Bibb has done our souls a great service, and even with so many outstanding albums under his belt he sounds more vital than ever, indispensable, right now, right here, at a time when his eloquence and his conscience are most needed.
