‘SOMETHING DIFFERENT’
Guitarist Eric Bibb to play with string quartet in ABQ
The uneasiness recedes a bit for Eric Bibb when he doesn’t have to travel daily.
And he is thankful for a day of rest between dates.
On this day, Bibb is able to rest a little because he arrived in Canada a day early.
Not to mention that all of his gear — guitars and luggage — arrived in one piece.
“That’s one of the hardest thing to do,” he says with a laugh. “Traveling with your guitars and gear makes it tough. That’s another aspect of travel that we have to think about. It’s scary because without my guitar and gear, I can’t perform a show.”
The 65-year-old performer has had years to get used to life on the road.
Over the course of a halfcentury, he has released more than 35 albums and toured the world.
Yet each time he heads out for a tour, he has to get comfortable again.
In addition to a tour, the blues musician is gearing up to release his new album, “Migration Blues,” in March.
He recorded the album in Quebec with Michael Jerome Browne and Jacques Milteau over the course of nearly a year.
The two collaborators are core musicians on the record.
“It’s one of my best efforts, for sure,” he says.
The album was inspired by the current crisis of refugees and the topic of the Great Migration in 1920s, in which more than 6 million AfricanAmericans from the rural South were moved North, Midwest and to the West.
“I’ve become a writer who tends to appreciate simplicity more and more as I go on,” he says. “I don’t write as much as I used to. I just wait for the songs to arrive instead of going out searching for them.”
For his show in Albuquerque, Bibb is looking forward to doing something special.
“Albuquerque is my mom’s hometown,” he says proudly. “My cousin is a conductor, and we’ve been talking about working together. For the show, I’ll be performing with a string quartet. This is the first time in recent history that I will be performing this way.”