Taj Mahal’s new album, “Time,” marks the first with his celebrated Phantom Blues Band since 2008. But the genre-exploring icon says the interlude was intended to be considerably shorter.
“Time,” he says, started before COVID, but was impacted by the pandemic shutdowns. “We kinda ducked in and out of different people having to deal with their health and stuff like that,” says Mahal, 84, who was born Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr. in Harlem and began recording during the mid-1960s with the band the Rising Sons. He went on his own in 1968 and has won five Grammy Awards, as well as Lifetime Achievement honors from the Recording Academy and the Americana Music Association.
He formed the Phantom Blues Band in the early 1990s, and Mahal says little has changed in the group’s working method since then, with “Time” recorded mostly at guitarist Johnny Lee Schell’s Ultratone Studios in Studio City, California.
“We pretty much hit it every time. It just gets better and better,” notes Mahal, who also appears on actor Morgan Freeman’s upcoming “Symphonic Blues Experience” album, out Aug. 7…