Talking To...Eric Bibb
#N It also goes back to the share cropper thing. You knew you were going to live fast and die young so it was about squeezing all you could into that lifetime and going to church on Sunday to try and make the afterlife that bit better.
#E The spiritual thing was really the backbone of the entire post slave share cropping community. That whole group of people survived basically on faith.
Regardless if they were the sort of people that revelled in a Saturday night juke joint and then went to church and prayed hard on the Sunday. It wasn't really a contradiction. They were supported by a community whose collected faith was so strong it could survive incredible oppression.
For me, people took their pleasure and joy where they could find it. I think the market place has a lot to do with separating the secular and the sacred sections of Afro American music, particularly in America.
There seemed to be a lot of market value, when pushing these 'race' records, to talk about the low down dirty blues. It was hooked up to the lingering racist attitudes where they needed to portray people in a one dimensional cartoon fashion. The reality is, we are multi-dimensional, complex people who live in a sensual world, live in a spiritual world and know they are the same.
#N Back to the tour. You've got your daughter, Maya, performing with you this time, how does that make you feel?
#E It's something very special and wonderful. I find myself repeating experiences I had with my father, when he first took me on tour, making music as a youngster, wanting to get involved professionally and him offering me opportunities to join him in the world of music making.I find myself smiling at the similarities between then and now and my position reversed. I find myself extending opportunities out to my daughter and a new generation..
She's a wonderful singer with great charisma and I think she has a passion equal to mine when it comes to music.
#N Will she be performing the Ruthie Foster, part in "Conversation" .
#E As that songs about a couple in a relationship, I don't think it would be right.[smiles] I'm not one for doing every track off a new album anyway. There's always other songs that want to come out.
#N It's not just Ruthie Foster that joins you on the album, Bonnie Raitt plays a guitar part on "If Our Hearts Ain't In It". Are there any artists that you'ld like to have had on the album that just never made it?
#E Mavis was somebody, Mavis Staples, that I thought about and approached. We couldn't get the scheduling considerations right to make it happen this time. I've worked with her before on records, as well as with her father, the great Roebuck 'Pop' Staples. I'd love to work with Mavis again. It will definitely happen soon.
#N Through Mavis and more so Pop, it bridges you back to the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, some three or four generations.
#E That's right, Pop Staples is known for his contemporary gospel sound, but through his family, he was tutored on the guitar by Charlie Patton, back in the Delta, because he is a Mississippian. That style of playing was in the gospel world and the blues world and sort of reinforces what I was saying earlier. The music was basically the same, the lyrics changed.
#N Thank you very much for your time.
#E You're Welcome