Marc Ribot will release Map of a Blue City (New West Records) on May 23, 2025. The 9-song set was produced and mixed by Ben Greenberg based on original studio sessions produced by Hal Willner, as well as home recordings. 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, Map of a Blue City 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 center his plaintive, wise voice quite so prominently throughout. 

Map of a Blue City showcases songs colliding disparate traditions: roots, bossa nova, no wave, noise, free jazz, and sounds that have 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.”

Today, Ribot released the album standout “Daddy’s Trip to Brazil” accompanied by a visual created by his daughter Clara McHale-Ribot. He says the song is “a hungover post-punk echo of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s famous Wave importing the ennui of a late-capitalist touring musician into the tropicalismo paradise.”

Marc Ribot has been living with Map of a Blue City for nearly thirty years. He wrote some of the songs in the 1990s and made home recordings that were all the more intimate and immediate for being so lo-fi. He sent this first version to a label, but was told it was “too dark.” Other projects demanded his attention, but he never really abandoned the album. The songs just wouldn’t leave him alone. He says, “I just had an affection for them, so I never forgot about them. I wasn’t working on them constantly, but every once in a while I would take another lunge at finishing them.”

Marc Ribot Live: 

Solo Guitar/Improv – European Tour

May 9 – La Bisbal/ES Teatre Mundial
May 10 – Madrid/ES Recoletos Jazz
May 11 – Koln/DE Stadtgarten
May 12 – Oberhausen/DE Ebertbad
May 14 – Barcelos/PT Theatro Gil Vicente
May 16 – Fribourg/CH La Spirale
May 17 – London/UK Cafe Oto
May 18 – London/UK – Cafe Oto
May 20 – Vicenza/IT Teatro Comunale Città di Vicenza
May 21 – Budapest/HU House of Music Hungary
May 23 – Plauen/DE Malzhaus
May 25 – Bergen/NO Sardinen USF Verftet

Marc Ribot: Map of a Blue City (Record Release Show)

June 11 – Brooklyn, NY Roulette

Ceramic Dog:

June 22 – Ottawa/CA  Ottawa Jazz Festival
June 23 – Toronto/CA Hugh’s Room Live
June 25 – Albany, NY The Egg +Map of a Blue City (opening set)
June 26 – Montreal/CA Montreal Jazz Festival

Marc Ribot Quartet: Hurry Red Telephone (w/Ava Mendoza, Sebastian Steinberg, Chad Taylor):
 
European Summer Tour
July 16 – London/UK Jazz Cafe
July 19 – Hamburg/DE Nica Jazz Club
July 20 – Lublin/PL (soon TBA)
More TBA

Jazzaldia 60th Festival Residency:

San Sebastian, Spain Jazzaldia 60 Festival
July 25 –  Marc Ribot Quartet: Hurry Red Telephone
July 26 –  Solo
July 27 – Ceramic Dog

Marc Ribot: Map of a Blue City (Record Release Tour)

USA 

June 11 – Brooklyn, NY Roulette
Sept 4 – Minneapolis, MN Vivarium
Sept 5 – Milwaukee, WI Cedar Cultural Center
Sept 6 – Evanston, IL Evanston Folk Festival
Sept 24 – TBA
Sept 25 – Portland, ME Space
Sept 26 – Boston, MA City Winery
Sept 27 – Amherst, MA The Drake
Sept 28 – Fairfield, CT SHU Community Theater
Sept 30 – Philly, PA Solar Myth
Oct 3 – TBA
Oct 4 – Portland, OR Jack London Revue
Oct 5 – Seattle, WA Tractor Tavern
Oct 7 – Los Angeles, CA Zebulon

EUROPE

Oct 22 – Tampere/Finland G Livelab
Oct 23 – Helsinki/Finland – G Livelab

More European Tour dates TBA