Eric Bibb: Blues with a pedigree

Eric Bibb's extraordinary technique makes him one of the most recognisable blues guitarists. It helps to have the right credentials, he tells Keith Shadwick

The singer-songwriter-guitarist Eric Bibb, who kicks off his UK tour in London on Monday, has an easy, reassuring manner when you meet him that belies the intensity of his musical vision and commitment. Slim and casually dressed, his 51-year-old face unlined and suffused with a disarmingly friendly smile even at 10.30am in the busy bistro of a stuffy London hotel, he only reveals his keen intelligence and quick reading of situations as the interview progresses over liberal pots of tea and coffee.

This surface calm hiding an inquisitiveness about the world around him is reflected in his music. It exudes an unusually comprehensive understanding of the past present and future of many musical genres. Natural, really, given his background: born into a family with an illustrious musical pedigree, he was also exposed during his childhood to a parade of larger-than-life personalities from the world of American folk, blues and ethnic music. His father was the New York folk-music figure Leon Bibb, while his mother was the sister of the famed jazz pianist/composer John Lewis.

"I had an early, unquenchable passion for music which my dad had a lot to do with initiating – not just my dad personally, but all the people around him," he says. "I got a chance of going to rehearsals, gigs, and to meet the performers. It was not only folk music but, my uncle John Lewis being a jazz musician, I was aware of him from the start, and my godfather was Paul Robeson. So I started early."

Such a trio of mentors may seem an odd combination, but Bibb sees no dichotomy, pointing out, for example, Lewis's deep love of the blues. "I was fascinated to learn how enamoured he was of the blues, and I mean gut-bucket blues... I'd go to his house and he'd talk about Muddy Waters and stuff like that, not just Basie and Lunceford."

As a young man, Bibb hung out in Greenwich Village, plunging into the vortex of a newly vibrant Sixties folk scene presided over by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. "It was more than music," he recalls. "It was ideas, it was lifestyle, it was everything. Growing up at that particular time, it was all happening for me in those circles. It was a magnet, really." Bibb's father, a trained musician like Eric himself, led him through "work songs, spirituals, folk music from the British Isles, as well as the whole African-American canon of folk material. Then there was jazz influences, but he listened to opera and symphonic music and sent me to music school as a teenager."

This eclecticism became the fundamental driving force in Bibb's own developing portfolio. "I never really understood the really hardcore pigeonholing of music and musicians: it wasn't a reflection of anything I'd experienced; all the musicians I knew had wide musical palates.

"Today I make a point of letting people know that there are a whole load of interrelated genres that influence my writing and performing. I find it a little frustrating when people talk about me 'straying' from a folk-blues core. Nothing is pure like that. I think it's really important for musicians and music-lovers to resist the tendency of either reviewers or marketing people to pigeonhole their music and their tastes and their expression above all. Because the American music I bring forth is already a hybrid, a mélange of different cultures, different continents, and it's always going to be that.

"Musicians have always crossed the tracks, and always will. They've always been in the vanguard of the breaking down of socio-political barriers and accommodated the various musical cultures they've come into contact with. Look at Leadbelly, at what he drew together in his repertoire – he was possibly the greatest of them all."

Bibb is in a good position to judge, having lived a settled existence on both sides of the Atlantic. He recently moved to London after living in Sweden for 10 fruitful years and is aware of the positive aspects of each country's indigenous culture. "Touring the UK in the last five years I felt very much at home. I was also very impressed by the way British society in recent years has been dealing with the whole issue of multi-culturalism." This is something that may not even today be the case in the United States, a thrillingly diverse country but also one that has often undervalued its home-grown cultural output.

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Yet the Americas remain central to his music, partly because the cross-winds of influence are so tangled and rich, especially when it comes to the refreshing influence the Caribbean brought to more traditional blues and folk practise since the Sixties. Bibb is quick to recognise the towering importance of Taj Mahal in this respect ("Taj is such a trailblazer – his phrasing was so innovative in a blues context", he says admiringly of the musician who appeared on one of his recent albums. He is also enthusiastic about the invigorating input of such Caribbean-influenced contemporary performers as Corey Harris and Keb' Mo'.

But Bibb has his own approach, and one that has in the past half-decade in particular become instantly recognisable. His guitar style, as revealed on the acclaimed 2001 album Painting Signs, is beautifully clear and precise, but also has an easy rhythm that belies its strength and expressivity. Similarly, his voice, emanating from beneath a panama hat that is ubiquitous on stage and embodies his open professional demeanour, is rich and light but possessed of a quality that is best described as authentic.

On Natural Light, his new CD, that is taken a step further with references to BB King, Bukka White and Sonny Terry, as well as an appearance from the legendary Hubert Sumlin. Bibb is a man wholly serious about his art and dedicated to never singing a false note or portraying a false emotion while communicating with his audience. He calls this communing, and it's central to his artistic philosophy. "It's entertainment, yes, but it's not primarily entertainment in my mind. It's a kind of communal sharing, like with your neighbours on a porch. That's my approach, even in the concert hall."

There's little doubt that Bibb has tapped into more than a few deep truths about musical communication, and Natural Light reinforces this with its seemingly casual but acutely perceptive musical essays on life today. That is why he remains a performer to savour in concert as well as on record. The new tour, winding up in Dublin on 15 March, features his long-time associate Dave Bronze as well as the keyboardist/ accordionist Janne Pettersson. Bibb adds the percussionist Mark Walker this time in preference to drums: "I've submerged my own playing in the past perhaps more than I've wanted to," he says. "Having a percussionist will allow the sound of the guitar, which was my first love and something I still love, to come through."

Eric Bibb's UK tour starts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (020-7960 4242) on Monday. Full tour details at www.ericbibb.com