Call My Name

Liner notes

As soon as they met, they knew each other. Daby Touré: a thirty-something musician raised in Mauritania, West Africa, currently a leading light on the Paris, France scene. Skip McDonald: an old school African American bluesman from Dayton, Ohio, long time resident of London, England. And having met and jammed one summer’s night at Real World they kept on meeting and jamming at festivals around the world.

For both men this was more than mere coincidence. “We just had this immediate musical connection,” says McDonald, eyes twinkling. “In the way our instruments and voices combined. In the things we sing about and the emotions we put into our songs. To meet a brother like this…” He shakes his head. “It’s a rare, rare thing.”

Welcome, then, to Call My Name. A six-track mini-album that captures the magic of this unique creative union, that sees songs —some by Toure, others by McDonald— transformed via imaginative, instinctive collaboration. Crafted in Real World Studio’s state-of-the-art Big Room, Call My Name is a spellbinding record, the superlative result of focused energy, creative license and a famously pressure-free environment.

The sound, for the most part, is pop. Compelling and catchy. Direct and frills-free. But pop unlike anything else you’ve heard before. “I sing what I feel, in whatever language I feel like singing it,” says Toure, whose lyrics embrace the personal and political in an often improvised mix of English and different African languages: Wolof, Pulaar and Hassaniya among them. “Skip would play me a rhythm and quickly establish a groove, the way a traditional musician from Mauritania or Senegal does. It’s a natural thing,” he adds. “It just happens.”

Being children of Africa helps, of course. “We’ve both got roots in the Motherland,” notes McDonald, the son of a blues guitarist who used to lull his son to sleep with bedtime songs instead of stories. “We’ve both ended up somewhere else. So we’ve got African/French culture. African American/English culture. We’ve got the blues combining with African music —which makes sense, since they’re relatives— as well as our huge range of influences. So we’re going in and out of Africa,” he says, “which is where all music comes from anyway.”

As front man for 21st Century blues project Little Axe —whose lauded albums for Real World include Champagne and Grits, Stone Cold Ohio and the forthcoming Bought For A Dollar, Sold For a Dime— McDonald has often likened himself to an archaeologist, ploughing the roots of American blues.

Daby Toure, member of a musical dynasty forged on the banks of the Senegal River – and the artist behind Real World albums Diam and Stereo Spirit, is forever seeking fresh sounds and innovative ways of applying them. “All the music I picked up when I was young is still in me and that doesn’t change. But in my music I am still searching, and mixing, and trying new things. I am African but I am also European.”

Also on board was drummer Keith LeBlanc, veteran of such respected outfits as Little Axe, Tackhead and the famed American hip hop and funk group, Sugar Hill Gang.