“Music Was Mine to Experience.”

For all its ghastliness and heartbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has been good to Keb’ Mo’. When the virus hit the US, it forced the cancelation of a string of his concerts. “I was getting a little burned out on touring,” he confesses.

- By Rogier Van Bakel, Photography by Jeremy Cowert

For all its ghastliness and heartbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has been good to Keb’ Mo’. When the virus hit the US, it forced the cancelation of a string of his concerts. “I was getting a little burned out on touring,” he confesses.

In the subsequent months, he happily spent a good deal of time at home with his wife and their 14-year-old son. When his creativity needed an outlet, along came an offer from CBS to write and record the theme song and musical cues for a new comedy show, B Positive. And after the pandemic peaked, he told me, “I did some concerts, got a little gig-playing money. It was fine, really.”

Most of all, the pandemic hiatus was an opportunity to write and record Good to Be …, his latest studio album, scheduled for release January 21. Full of cozy blues grooves coated in a mellifluous pop-wise sound, it’s a safe yet sophisticated record. Its 13 tracks draw you in and make you smile. Standouts include “Medicine Man,” a country-blues stomper that, despite the 40-beats-per-minute tempo, will quickly put you in a party mood, and the bouncy “So Easy,” in which a Hammond organ, punchy horns, and exuberant vocals combine to sound as Pharrell Williams might if he recorded Philly soul. No obvious new ground is broken, and that’s okay: In a time when nerves are frayed and tempers are short, I’ll take solid and soothing any day.

Speaking by Zoom from his home-based Nashville recording studio, Keb’ Mo’ looks the part, too: trim, energetic, and much younger than his 70 years. What’s his secret, I ask—does he inject himself with the blood of virgins?