Dear America is bluesman Eric Bibb’s twenty-third album under his own name and the follow up to 2018’s double album, Global Griot. It is also Eric’s first album with the respected Provogue label, which has done so much to keep the blues flame flickering in recent years and to whom Eric signed in the March of this year. A deeply personal record, Dear America pulls no punches in the way it explores the darker recesses of recent years and yet it never devolves into empty rhetoric, with Eric focusing on real-life stories and experiences. It makes for a raw, emotional experience although the music, which ranges from expansive Delta stomps to subtly picked acoustic works, is often suffused with a sense of joy that comes from transmuting sadness via the act of creation. It makes for a remarkable album – both timely and powerful – that looks likely to be one of the year’s finest releases, blues or otherwise.
The album opens on a reflective note, Eric joined by Ron Carter for a beautifully picked acoustic number entitled Whole Lotta Lovin’. That dusty acoustic vibe remains on the heart-breaking Born Of A Woman. A duet between Eric and Shaneeka Simon, it sees the former recounting tales of abuse that make the blood run cold, while the latter reminds us that “every man on this earth is born of a woman”. A slow-building track that introduces Eric’s band piecemeal, reaching a powerful final chorus riven with slide guitar, bone-dry percussion and the duo’s voices raised in unison, Born Of A Woman mixes beautiful music with a powerful message, and Shaneeka proves the perfect foil for Eric. Next up, the previously-released Whole World’s Got The Blues sees Eric Bibb joined by the ferociously talented Eric Gales for a fantastic, trad-blues piece that evokes images of barren American landscapes, forged hard by the sun. Next, the album’s title track quotes Dr King before Eric offers a strikingly personal address to the country he loves, asking that hatred does not come to define this febrile era. Opting for a different approach, Different Picture is a taut acoustic piece (featuring Chuck Campbell) that instantly makes you want to stomp your foot, while the wiry electric guitar that emerges as the track progresses is nothing short of sublime. An album highlight, if you want to hear a piece that represents the heart and soul of Eric Bibb, this beautiful track is it. The first half of the album concludes with the short Tell Yourself, a sub-three-minute piece that asks what you can do in the face of so much turmoil.
Opening the album’s second half and arguably one of its most poignant cuts, Emmett’s Ghost sees Eric and guest Ron Carter recounting the real-life murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. A reminder, in this time of Black Lives Matters that the more things change, the more they stay the same, Emmett’s Ghost is a beautiful piece of music with a lyrical sting in the tail providing a timely reminder of the terrible human toll of irrational hatred. The gospel-infused White And Black is a similarly poignant lament that notes the way we all look at others through the lens of our own experience, eschewing preaching for a more confessional approach that relates directly to listeners from all walks of life. After the gorgeous climax of White And Black, the subtle acoustic Along The Way feels like a palette cleanser in advance of the two-part Talkin’ Bout A Train. Part one, featuring Billy Branch, opens with the distorted feel of an early Muddy Waters recording before snapping starkly into modern focus. Another album highlight, it combines modern production nous with classic song-writing skill and its sequel is no less wondrous. Funkier than its forebear, Part two packs one hell of a groove, and you can imagine these tracks forming the centrepiece of Eric’s live shows. Opening with a snippet of studio chatter, the laughter that leads into Love’s Kingdom (featuring Tommy Sims and Glen Scott) is entirely appropriate, for it’s a light-touch piece with funky bass and shuffling beat. With the album approaching its end, it sees some of the darkness that seeped into previous cuts swept away with a sense of hope for the future. Final track, One-ness Of Love sees Eric joined by Lisa Mills for the album’s finale and that same sense of hope remains in a duet that offers a genuinely unaffected vision of love.
Dear America is an album that offers a powerful vision for the future (“everything can change if we believe”), but it’s not afraid to explore darker areas in its quest to expose the America that is as well as the America that could be. Of course, this being an Eric Bibb album, there is a gloriously eclectic mix of music on hand, drawing the listener through Eric’s America to finally arrive at a Land of the Free that works for everyone. Above all else, Dear America is an album of great heart that, through its deft use of story-telling and personal experience, holds an appeal that is both universal and timeless. It is something very special indeed. 10/10
