Handful Of Blues

On Robben Ford & The Blue Line's third CD, Handful Of Blues, the leader/guitarist/singer gets back to what he's always been about, even when he wasn't playing it: the blues. "It's like my brother Mark said," Ford laughs. "'Well, you've regressed all the way now.' I have a tendency towards simple music, but it has to be a real, authentic, artistic statement, and it's never done without complete sincerity. There's something that happens when you get the music down to such basics. Rather than needing to make the music simpler so I could feel freer, I just sort of rediscovered that kind of openness that exists in the blues. That is the beauty of the blues, from a technical point of view. It inherently has an openness, due to the simplicity that I personally love." Harmonica chores on four tunes are handled, naturally, by Mark Ford, who augments the Blue Line along with Kortchmar's occasional rhythm guitar (and solo on "I Just Want To Make Love To You"), keyboardists Ricky Peterson and Russell Ferrante (the former having worked with Robben on David Sanborn sessions, the latter's association with Ford going back to 1972), and pianist Henry Butler.