The Door

1	The Door / Leon Ware 3:56
2	Loola Loo 4:12
3	It Hurts Me Too 5:27
4	Come on Back 4:57
5	Stand Up (And Be Strong) 2:26
6	Anyway 3:36
7	Don't You Know 4:20
8	It's All Coming Back 4:46
9	Gimme What You Got 4:11
10	Mommy Can I Come Home 3:10
11	Change 4:16
12	The Beginning 3:43

Barnes & Noble

Kevin Moore took the country-sounding name Keb' Mo' before emerging as a singer-songwriter in 1994. His music and guitar style is rooted in folk and the blues, but his original songs are strictly California contemporary -- introspective with touches of tongue-in- cheek humor. The Door, produced by Russ Titleman, who has worked with Eric Clapton, James Taylor, and Paul Simon, has a polished sound unlike Mo's previous albums. There are tasteful orchestral fills, organ swells, and appropriate choral support throughout the set, all of it enhancing the core acoustic sound. The title cut describes the songwriter's spiritual renewal with a gospely chorus lifting the song out of the blues. "The Beginning" is an inspirational hymn complete with a weeping electric guitar, while the activist "Stand Up and Be Strong" has a churchy feel with a rockin' Pentacostal bed firing it up. When it comes to love, Mo's songs range from the toe-tappin' "Loola Loo," about a girlfriend who has strayed, to the sad longing of "Anyway," a story song about class barriers. The obligatory catchy sing along is a funky, funny lust number, "Gimme Whacha' Got." A new facet of Mo' is also revealed on this recording. Both "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and "Change" have a soft jazz touch. Mo' scats on the organ-based blues of the former and comes off a bit like George Benson on the latter. But because he came to this career as a mature singer-songwriter, all of Mo's shadings of the blues are organic, au naturelle -- just what you'd expect from a California-bred artist. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

Keb' Mo''s self-titled first album, from its Robert Johnson covers to its appearance on a resuscitated Okeh Records, seemed to suggest the arrival of a Delta blues traditionalist, even though the former Kevin Moore was really a Los Angeles native who had kicked around the music business for years playing various styles of music. The follow-up, Just Like You, was therefore a disappointment to blues purists, since it clearly used folk-blues as a basis to create adult contemporary pop in the Bonnie Raitt mold. But to the music industry, that was just fine, since it fostered the hope that here was an artist (finally!) who could find a way to make the blues -- consistently revered but commercially dicey -- pay, and Keb' Mo' won a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy for his effort. Slow Down (1998) brought him a second Grammy and got even higher in the charts. The Door is more of the same. Keb' Mo''s slightly gritty voice and fingerpicking are the focus of the music, but he does not hesitate to add mainstream pop elements, beginning with writing partners who include Bobby McFerrin and Melissa Manchester, and continuing with a backup band that features such session aces as keyboard player Greg Phillinganes and drummer Jim Keltner. This is music that is folkish and bluesy rather than being actual folk-blues. Just in case anyone hasn't gotten the point yet, Keb' Mo' begins the album's sole cover, Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too," in authentic folk-blues style, after which the arrangement lurches into a heavily percussive, anything but traditional direction. It's fair warning that the singer/guitarist is interested in tradition only as a jumping-off point. Maybe that's what "contemporary blues" is. William Ruhlmann