Eric Bibb

To say it simply the Eric Bibb show was the realization of dreams. He entered the stage and took his natural place behind the old microphone. The stage aged as his soul caught up with him and all things around him became antiques. He wore a purple v-neck up top and some brown suede pants down below, a simple bracelet around his wrist, and a single stud in his left ear. He cradled his guitar like a baby; you could tell he loved it. A flat-brimmed cowboy hat capped him off, and framed his steady eyes. His mouth began to open and an easy, gritty voice came forth, speaking hefty words of rhymes and tales of days today does not know.

Bibb came to town this Friday to a half full auditorium, to move the soul by his perform and song- some of the new, some of the old. Blues Folk are not words you hear often together and are even more seldomly heard apart these days, especially on your average college campus, but when struck just right they make a beautiful tune that pleases the right ears.

Born in New York to Leon Bibb, he grew up with many great musicians, and shared their love of music. "I would cut school and claim I was sick" said Bibb. "When everyone would leave the house I would whip out all the records and do my own personal DJ thing all day long, playing Odetta, Joan Baez, The New Lost City Ramblers, Josh White." He became caught up in the Folk-Revival in Greenwich Village, and became immersed in the pre-war blues. He says, “The hardest thing to write is a new Blues song that sounds older.”

Bibb fills a gap that is all too prevalent in todays pop culture- a gap that is for the moral, and the aged. His songs speak from an era that is all too important to be forgotten, that is the early 1900’s when folk songs were sung regularly by southern troubadours. From these roots sprung much of our pop music today. In a time when many are calling for reversion to an older or “truer” style of government, perhaps we should also look to the older or “truer” styles of our culture. In man’s appetite for progression, we many times over shoot the mark, trading what is already tried and good, for what is untried and new. There is much to be understood in these poetic tales that Bibb makes audible to the modern ear.

Of older times, he sang. He spoke of the 1927 Mississippi Flood as if he had lived then and seen it with his own eyes.  He sang of the famous Booker White’s Guitar as if it were a sacred heirloom. He reminisced of the days of country blues as if his soul was a part of them, and they a part of his soul. 

His time sadly came, the clock struck, and he bid his dues and tried to leave the stage vacant, but he could not ignore the roaring applause and shouts for an encore, and promptly returned to bless us with a gospel spiritual. 

If Tommy Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, Eric Bibb sold his to the Lord, because the Devil never made anything sound so good. 

 Bibb entered to an applause and left after a demanded encore to a standing ovation.



(Click on the "sang" and "Booker White's Guitar" links to melt your face.)