Cover photo © 2026 Laura Carbone

Keb’ Mo’ is, by any metric, one of the most successful, talented, and popular blues artists of all-time. He’s played major stages around the world, has won five Grammy Awards (15 nominations) and 14 Blues Music Awards, and sold millions of albums. He also knows you can’t take that stuff with you.

His philosophical new album The Breakdown could have been called The Phoenix because despite the trials and tribulations of open-heart surgery and a divorce, our hero has emerged hopeful, with a new lease on life. For some fans, this new record (scheduled for August 21, 2026 release) will be their favorite kind of Keb’ Mo’ album. It’s mostly just the master with an acoustic guitar, telling stories.

It’s a gorgeous record. It feels more confessional, intimate, and personal than usual. Naming the record The Breakdown covered a lot of ground.

“The breakdown of the heart, of health, of personal things, of just one instrument. A little stomp here and there, a little handclap. I wanted to get it all with one main instrument,” he said.

“Fussing and Fighting” is the first track on the new album for a reason. It seems to capture the zeitgeist of this moment for him. It’s a nostalgic, sad, thankful, fatalistic, hopeful, prideful, catchy, but mostly bittersweet look at a relationship that has probably run its course. “Stitched Up Heart” is a double entendre that brilliantly covers both recent crises at once.

“Walking on Water” is ballad that most artists could only dream to write. While “More Yesterdays” bravely confronts the 74-year-old artist’s reality and mortality:

“Every day I count my blessings, doing a little less second guessing

This life and every breath you take is borrowed

I’m takin’ myself too serious, tell myself lighten up

You have more yesterdays than tomorrows”

For Keb’ Mo’, there are a couple songs on the album that are particularly meaningful. “The ‘Stitched Up Heart’ song and ‘Every Step of the Way’ are very pivotal songs in the record. Those two for me are probably the anchor songs, the other ones are relevant, and one ‘Living in the Moment’ is almost 45 or 50 years old,” he said.

“My sister liked it. She just had heart surgery herself. She’s like my biological twin. She’s three years younger than me, but we’re basically cut from the same genetic cloth. She had a much more extensive surgery. Mine was like a three-hour thing. Hers was like eight hours. She’s recovering now.”

The Los Angeles native has indeed been writing, recording, and performing for over a half century. His first record Rainmaker under his given name Kevin Moore came out back in 1980, but it was his 1994 major label debut Keb’ Mo’ that put him on the map. It was an acoustic, Delta blues-feeling record that immediately crossed over to many audiences and featured the classic “Anybody Seen My Girl”. The Breakdown has echoes of that stripped-down album, but at the time Keb’ Mo’ didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

“After I did the first one, people started expecting me to do the same, but better hopefully, and I didn’t do more of the same on purpose. I wanted to cut that concept off at the knees and get some freedom right away.”

He’d go on to release 18 more records in a variety of blues and roots styles.

The new album sounds organic, clean, and fully formed in concept, but it didn’t come easily.

“It was a challenge to do the songs with a guitar. It took a lot longer than the first record. It’s a whole trick. I’m no Segovia. I had to figure out where the meat was on the bone. Each song was a whole journey, an average of three days a song. Just to keep going through different versions of it. Try this approach, try this guitar, try this tuning, try this position on the neck, things like that, so that it had a difference across the board. At first, I used nylon string guitar on ‘Every Step of the Way’. It was a journey. I think overall I’m happy with the way it reads and communicates, talks back to me. Maybe people can have a similar experience or one of their own, but if it talks back to me, it might talk back to somebody else,” he said.

That kind of attention to detail is consistent through his discography. He remastered the last TajMo album Room on the Porch (with Taj Majal) four times before releasing it to the world. Does he always exhibit those perfectionistic tendencies?

“Yeah (laughs). The thing is, it’ll never be perfect, but I’m going to do my best efforts. It would be one thing, if I was so talented to the degree that everything I did was spectacular, mystical, magical like (British pianist) Jacob Collier. I don’t have to worry about something being too polished, but it’s processed. I ain’t perfect,” he said humbly.

Most of the new record is Keb’ Mo’ solo, but he did use the Soweto Gospel Choir for vocals on the track “Hand It Over”.

“That was done on a whim four years ago, before my surgery. I was in South Africa. The beginning of my sufferings and my breakdown. So, they wanted to do something. I figured you guys could do something with it and put it out, but I had it sitting around and nothing had been done with it yet, so I pulled it out and I had to figure out some kind of guitar part that reflected a South African feel. Even though it wasn’t an authentic South African feel, it was my take on the rhythm and something that fits to the song. I was really happy the way that came out. The choir and the sessions were amazing. We did it at Flame Studios in Johannesburg, right near where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. To be collaborating with the folks in the motherland was a cool deal.”

The Soweto Gospel Choir wouldn’t be the only guests invited.

“The concept of having an ensemble for a guest was good, so when I did ‘They Don’t Make ‘Em Like The Used To’ I said, ‘OK, what can we do with that? We can get a gospel group or we can call Take 6 (laughs)’. That was the most fun choice. I had been on a Chris Botti cruise with them hanging out with those guys and joking around and we could do Keb’ Mo’ and Take 6 and call it SixMo. So, I took them up on it. They were like, ‘that would be really cool’. It was great, I love those guys. They’re just so badass. Those guys are real musicians.”

So, back to that whole open heart surgery thing. I spoke to Keb’ Mo’ for an earlier interview a few weeks prior to that 2024 surgery and it turns out he had no idea at the time how sick he was.

“Oh, yeah, that thing. No, I didn’t know that was coming. I started coughing on the road. I was having trouble living and breathing. I got back home and went to the doctor and he said, ‘You need to go to the emergency room right now.’ So, I went there and they kept me and the rest is history. I’m still here, so that’s good.”

And he’s not wasting time. In addition to the new album, Keb’ Mo’ has hit the road in earnest. He just completed a successful solo swing through Europe. He has TajMo shows starting in September that will cover the western and southern United States. Then he’ll bring his own band around through the South and Midwest and several cruises in a schedule ranging from November through February.

“I hope folks enjoy the new record. We’ll do a little band tour, then I’m going to disappear. I gotta slow down. I’m just glad to be around. I thank the fans for their support.”

He specifically mentioned looking forward to the upcoming shows with one of his early heroes, Taj Majal, to support last year’s Room on the Porch record.

“I liked that album. That was like walking blind through the forest. What I learned about that record is that we can do it in our sleep. I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t read what we were getting and we were getting something. Sometimes my perfectionist head gets in the way, but it was working. When the dust cleared, I took about a two-week break and I was scared to listen to it. Oh no, finally I botched something up. I don’t want to be late and I don’t want to waste money.”

Room on the Porch ended up being a worthy successor to their first joint project, TajMo, which won the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album and reached #1 on the Billboard blues album chart.

In Europe, the only new song that Keb’ Mo’ played on the tour was the first single, “Fussing and Fighting”, but now with some time between tours and the album about to be released, he’ll lean into the new record more this Fall.

“I’m working my way into it. I’ll have a chance to get in and suss it out. Because I obsessed over them so much, I know where the bones are buried, so I can go out and do it now.”

One noteworthy stateside appearance this year was playing the opening night of the “Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us” at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, which coincided with the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. The concert took place over two days and touched on many eras of American music, with the first day (June 4) concentrating on pre-Elvis Presley artists.

“That was cool man. We got to go out for the second line with Trombone Shorty. Whenever The Boss calls you, to be in the presence of guy with that kind of iconic energy, creativity, and character, that’s always a ‘yeah, I’m going’. He’s a great human,” he said. “I played two Robert Johnson songs. ‘Walkin’ Blues’ and ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’.”

Keb’ Mo’ has taken opportunities like that his entire career. He’s appeared at various benefits. He played on the Vote for Change tour in 2004, on a No Nukes project in 2007, and Playing for Change in 2015. He did a children’s album called Big Wide Grin and appeared on Sesame Street. He played at the White House multiple times for Barack Obama. He’s appeared in films, including Martin Scorsese’s The Blues, John Sayles’ Honeydripper, and the Robert Johnson documentary Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl? He’s appeared on many TV shows, including The West Wing and Touched By An Angel. He appeared on stage in the George C. Wolfe musical, Spunk. He’s played Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival multiple times. In 2012, he played the Hubert Sumlin all-star tribute show at the Apollo Theater in New York. He’s played the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum concert, the Glastonbury Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, and much more.

Keb’ Mo’ has been one of the main torchbearers for the blues over the last 30-plus years, so he has great perspective on the genre and its future. He’s bullish on the crop of young artists on the scene, including Harrell Davenport.

“He’s great. There’s a whole bunch of them. Harrell, Sean McDonald, Kingfish (Ingram), Jontavious Willis. I was on cruise with them. They’re friggin’ fantastic. They’re turning the younger generation on to the roots. It’s really cool to watch. They’re all great, they’re not one trick ponies, these guys can play. They’re broad-based musicians. It’s crazy. They got it. If you’re worried about the blues, you ain’t gotta worry none. I never worried about it. Don’t worry, they’re coming.”