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The first time Taj Mahal heard the song “Time,” the title track from his newest album with the Phantom Blues Band, he noticed the movement. The song, penned by the late Bill Withers, is a mellow groove with just enough swing—a testament, Mahal says, to Withers’ unique approach to music, his timing that often defied popular convention.

“I had a lot of reverence for the brother,” Mahal explains. “He was able to bring that acoustic guitar and just sing. He wasn't trying to show up in sparkling platform shoes and jump up and down on stage. And it resonated so deeply people, because there was nobody doing that.”

Later, on the second or third listen of “Time,” Mahal locked in on the lyrics:

Just remember
To forget about your life
And get on with the new
Time will see you through

At that point, time had already seen Mahal through six decades in the music industry and nearly 50 albums. He’d mastered around 20 instruments and collaborated with a who’s who of musical icons, including the Rolling Stones, Etta James, Eric Clapton, and Ziggy Marley. He’d shared stages with Otis Redding and The Temptations and, in 1972, acted in the film Sounder while landing his first Grammy nomination for contributing to the movie’s score. Yet Mahal, who has since collected five Grammys on 18 total nominations, as well as the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame, never felt like the accolades were the true reward.

“I know I’m lucky, knowing that music is what I’ve been given to do,” he explains. “I’m 84, and I’m just thrilled to be doing it.”

The Withers track—for which Mahal got permission to cut from Withers himself—become the perfect anchor for a new body. Its message was both poignant and serendipitous, not just because of all the time Mahal had spent on this planet, adding his contributions to the Western musical canon. It was all that and more: the time he’d spent cutting records with his backing band, the Phantom Blues Band, and the stretch of years that had elapsed since their last project, 2008’s Maestro.

“It was time,” Mahal says.

He’d never intended to have a band, but the connection with the crew on 1993’s Grammy-nominated Dancing the Blues was undeniable. There was chemistry, a camaraderie. Percussionist Tony Braunagel and bassist Larry Fulcher call it a shared dialect. “Music is a language,” Fulcher explains. “If you understand it, you can get with other people who understand it and have a musical conversation.”

For the Phantom Blues Band—which Fulcher says is actually far from just a blues band—that language is Black music. Each of the band members grew up listening to it and learning to play it on their respective instruments while coming to understand it as the foundation of the American sound. Mahal, a product of the American South and the West Indies, was, of course, born into it.

“North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean...the music has been enhanced by our presence in the Western Hemisphere,” Mahal says. “I am a part of it, and that is a part of my DNA. It's also part of the DNA of the music that we're listening to nowadays.”

During the 18-year hiatus after Maestro, the PBB cut a couple of their own albums and continued picking up gigs and sessions with other artists. Yet the goal was always to return to Mahal, to the maestro himself. Braunagel set out to make it happen; he, too, knew it was time.

There are some changes this time around. Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band are still independent but releasing the project with Thirty Tigers, a Nashville-based marketing and distribution company that provides artists with label-like support without claiming ownership of masters or publishing.

The music also came together differently, with Mahal and the individual members of the PBB each tracking their parts separately. Braunagel laid drums before passing it to Jon Cleary for keys. Fulcher got it next, then Johnny Lee Schnell for guitar, Joe Sublett and Les Lovitt for horns. Mahal got it last, to listen and review and track his soulful vocals.

The result is a collection of covers and newly written songs by band members and friends that perfectly encapsulates Mahal’s musical aesthetic and career approach. In addition to “Time,” focus tracks include “Wild About My Lovin’,” a 1920’s tune reworked into a playful, island vibe, and the Afro-Cuban-inspired “You Put the Whammy On Me.” It’s real music, with real instrumentation, rooted in the African diasporic tradition. And all of the songs are decades old.

“I think it's important that people get to hear this kind of music at this particular time,” Mahal says. “I've always played the music that I want on every album, and what we're doing, essentially, is showing people that, just because you didn't hear a song when it came out, does not mean it isn’t good.”

“I’ve spent almost 70 years playing this music. It's time to listen.”

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The Bronson Music Theatre

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