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On his latest album, The Breakdown, five-time Grammy-winner Keb’ Mo’ strips his songwriting back to its most raw and revealing, offering up an intimate series of solo acoustic performances that grapple with the passage of time and the inevitability of change while still holding on firmly to the hope, faith, and love that have always guided him. Recorded at Keb’s home studio outside Nashville, TN, the collection is stark and deeply honest, reflecting on loss, mortality, and gratitude in the wake of life-saving open heart surgery and the end of a nearly twenty-year marriage.

“It felt like everything in my life was breaking down,” Keb’ reflects. “My health, my relationship, my whole world. The only way I knew how to respond was to break the music down, too.”

The result is a poignant mediation on the power of positivity to carry us through our darkest days, a masterful blend of folk, blues, roots, jazz, and soul music that sifts through the wreckage of a personal breakdown and transforms it into a work of profound growth and beauty.

Born and raised in Compton, Keb’ got his start behind the scenes as a guitarist, songwriter, and arranger before breaking out internationally with his 1994 self-titled debut, which earned widespread acclaim for its genre-bending take on old school sounds. In the decades that followed, Keb’ would go on to top the Billboard Blues Chart eight times; perform everywhere from Carnegie Hall to The White House; collaborate with luminaries like Taj Mahal, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, The Chicks, and Lyle Lovett; have his compositions recorded and sampled by artists as diverse as B.B. King, Zac Brown, and BTS; release signature guitars with both Gibson and Martin; compose music for a slew of television series; appear as himself in Martin Scorcese’s The Blues, Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, and the iconic children’s series Sesame Street; and earn the Americana Music Association’s 2021 award for Lifetime Achievement in Performance.