Season of the Song: Marc Ribot: Map of a Blue City

About The Show

Most renowned as a wildly inventive guitarist who has collaborated with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Wilson Pickett, Marianne Faithfull, Caetano Veloso, Solomon Burke, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Neko Case, among many, many others, Marc Ribot’s newly released Map of a Blue City (out on New West Records) features Ribot’s imaginative playing and leads to what may be his definitive statement as an instrumentalist, as a songwriter, and even as a singer.

While it’s not a traditional singer-songwriter album, it is his first to centre his plaintive, wise voice quite so prominently throughout. The Map of a Blue City showcases songs that collide disparate traditions, including roots, bossa nova, no wave, noise, free jazz, and sounds with no genre associations.

Mostly featuring original compositions, the collection includes Ribot’s rendition of the Carter Family’s “When the World’s on Fire” as well as his treatment of Allen Ginsberg’s 1949 poem, “Sometime Jailhouse Blues.” Marc Ribot has been living with Map of a Blue City for nearly thirty years, and now he performs it live in London.

Working on this album for so long, I’ve seen the world change dramatically and not really change at all. Some of the issues today are the same ones I thought about when I was just starting the album, but some are things I couldn’t have dreamt of at the time […] There are some hard truths and cold observations in these songs. I wanted the room to be small enough so that we couldn’t turn away; but warm enough to feel like you’re hearing it from a friend. – Marc Ribot

Line Up

Marc Ribot – Guitar & Voice

Supported by Serious