Good To Be, which features guest appearances from Kristin Chenoweth, Darius Rucker and Old Crow Medicine Show, arrives January 21
(Image credit: Mary Kouw/CBS via Getty Images)
Ahead of the release of his upcoming album Good To Be next week, Keb’ Mo’ has unveiled the effort’s opening song and quasi-title track – Good To Be (Home Again).
It joins up with previously released singles Good Strong Woman – for which he recruited Darius Rucker – Sunny and Warm, The Medicine Man and Lean On Me, and will feature on Good To Be when the album drops on January 21 via Rounder Records.
When news of the album broke last October, Keb’ Mo’ – aka Kevin Moore – promised that Good To Be will be a celebration of his soul, blues and country roots. Judging by his new single, Mo’ is a man of his word.
It’s effortlessly suave, with Mo’s seasoned acoustic guitar touch shining through the laid back arrangement thanks to the stop-start arpeggiated passages of the verse. It gets a bit busier – but only just – in the chorus sections, with Mo' later layering his acoustics with some snappy electric guitar flourishes.
Good To Be (Home Again) clearly struck a chord with Mo’ himself, who described the three-and-a-half-minute number as “the title track to my life."
Of the effort as a whole, which was written between Nashville and Mo’s childhood home of Compton, the blues veteran observed, “You can’t bring an attitude to Compton. You can’t pose.
“You can’t be anything but real when you’re walking down the same streets you used to ride your bike on as a kid,” he added. “In a lot of ways, coming back there felt like it completed me.”
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(Image credit: Jeremy Cowart)
Good To Be is set to explore the notion of “staying true to yourself," and will do so by serving up new compositions as well as tracks that the five-time Grammy winner first wrote back in the ‘70s.
Country icon Vince Gill and three-time Grammy winner Tom Hambridge, whose credits include work with B.B. King and Buddy Guy, were brought onboard to helm co-production duties, alongside Mo’ himself.
Good To Be is available to preorder now ahead of its release on January 21.
Matt is a Senior Staff Writer, writing for Guitar World, Guitarist and Total Guitar. He has a Masters in the guitar, a degree in history, and has spent the last 16 years playing everything from blues and jazz to indie and pop. When he’s not combining his passion for writing and music during his day job, Matt records for a number of UK-based bands and songwriters as a session musician.
