UCSB Arts & Lectures will present Taj Mahal and Patty Griffin, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17 at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara.
Mahal, winner of the 2025 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for Swinging Live at the Church in Tulsa, joins Griffin, two-time Grammy winner and Americana Lifetime Achievement honoree, for a night of roots music at its finest, A&L said.
“Griffin’s acclaimed new album ‘Crown of Roses’ affirms her place among the most vital singer-songwriters of her generation. In this rare co-headlining event, each artist performs a full set, showcasing the depth and range of two singular voices in American music,” A&L said.
“The blues is bigger than most people think,” Mahal said. “You could hear Mozart play the blues. It might be more like a lament. It might be more melancholy. But I’m going to tell you: the blues is in there.”
Taj Mahal is a towering musical figure, a legend who transcended the blues not by leaving them behind, but by revealing their vast and magnificent scope to the world,” A&L said. “Measuring the impact of the 83-year-old is nearly impossible, but people try anyway.”
Grammy wins for TajMo in 2017 (Mahal’s collaboration with Keb’ Mo’) and Get on Board with Ry Cooder in 2022 brought his tally to four wins and 15 nominations.
Mahal is a recipient of the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, an inductee into the Blues Hall of Fame and an Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I just want to be able to make the music that I’m hearing come to me, and that’s what I did,” he said. “When I say, ‘I did,’ I’m not coming from the ego. The music comes from somewhere. You’re just the conduit it comes through. You’re there to receive the gift.”
Griffin is an American artist whose wide-ranging canon iexplores the intimate moments and universal emotions that bind people together, according to Arts & Lectures.
Over two decades, the two-time Grammy Award winner (seven-time nominee) and Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement award winner has crafted a body of work in progress that prompted the New York Times to hail her for “[writing] cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people … [her] songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.”
In 2019 she released her Grammy Award-winning 10th studio recording “Patty Griffin.”
“One of the most deeply personal recordings of Griffin’s remarkable two decade career and first-ever eponymous LP, Patty Griffin made a top 5 debut on Billboard’s ‘Independent Albums’ chart amidst unprecedented worldwide acclaim and later earned a prestigious Grammy Award for Best Folk Album,” A&L said.
Tickets are $45-$125 for general public; $16 UCSB students (with current student ID). Limit six tickets per household; limit one student rate ticket per ID for UCSB students.
Orders in violation of the published limit are subject to cancellation without notice.
For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535 or buy online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu; or at the Arlington Theatre.
Taj Mahal and Patty Griffin are presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures with event sponsor Marilyn and Dick Mazess.