“I have to, I must, I want to bring myself, always, to anything I’m singing. I’m not going to choose a song, ever, if I cannot bring myself to the story. I have to be able to do that. I have to be able to be authentic in it, even if I didn’t pen the words.”

That cuts to the heart of the force guiding Janiva Magness as she sought out songs for her new album, Back For Me. Produced by her longtime friend, producer and collaborator Dave Darling, the album is a powerfully engaging, emotionally rich collection from a dynamic artist who continues to renew and redefine her widely celebrated relationship with the blues. Janiva’s far-ranging search for songs has unearthed a treasure chest of lesser-known gems by well-known artists (Bill Withers, Ray LaMontagne, Allen Toussaint, Doyle Bramhall II, Tracy Nelson, Irma Thomas) and deep-dive discoveries that connect with the rich feelings embodied in her voice and music, cherished by her fans.

Back For Me is the 17th album for Magness, who has been honored with seven Blues Music Awards (including being named B.B. King Artist of the Year in 2009) and a Grammy Awards Contemporary Blues nomination for her 2016 album, Love Wins Again. It follows the 2019 publication of her memoir, Weeds Like Us, a vividly portrayed account of both the traumas of her youth (her parents’ suicides and her often-nightmarish experiences in the foster care system) and the hard-earned triumphs that have fueled her growth as an artist and in life, stories that also inspired her 2022 album, Hard to Kill.

Darling anchors the album’s core band, also featuring drummer W.F. Quinn Smith and bassist Ian Walker, with keyboardists Sasha Smith and Phil Parlapiano, guitarists John Schroeder and Robert “Chalo” Ortiz, Nick Maybury and blues harp player TJ Norton also appearing on various songs. Ace guitarists Joe Bonamassa, Sue Foley and Jesse Dayton put their stamps on their respective special guest appearances.

It’s a powerhouse set moving from the Chicago-via-Texas churn of “Masterpiece” (written by Darling and featuring searing guitar from Bonamassa) to the aching gospel-soul-funk of Bill Withers’ “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh,” to the haunting resignation of Bramhall’s “November” and Nelson’s torch ballad “Down So Low,” to the sly release of “Hittin’ on Nothin’” (written by Toussaint and originally sung by Irma Thomas, here with Dayton’s blasting guitar).

Asked to describe the emotional heart of this deeply involving set, Magness cites lines from several songs:

There’s this, from “Masterpiece”:

I made a lot of mistakes, but you might be my masterpiece.

“I don’t know anybody who has been to the school of hard knocks or been around the block a couple of times who is not going to have had that experience,” she says.

And from the yearning title song, written by singer-songwriter Casey Hurt, who she got to know when Hurt opened for her not long ago at the venerable McCabe’s in Santa Monica:

I apologize for anything I’ve done, but I can’t repent for what you’re running from.

“I know that vulnerability,” she says. “I know that desperation. That line slays me every time I hear it, every time I’ve sung it.”

From “Good to You Baby,” by the late Louisiana musician Dave Egan, she cites this:

I was good to you baby, You’ll find out someday… maybe.

“Laughing at the pain, which we all need to do at some point or another,” she says. “If we’re lucky, we all learn that. ‘I was good to you, you idiot!’”

And there’s one from “You Can Bring Me Flowers,” a sultry betrayal shuffle written by Ray LaMontagne:

You can bring me flowers when I’m dead and gone.

“There is a sort of inside, smoldering bitterness,” she says, pointing to that LaMontagne swipe as summing up an arc through the album. “At the same time there’s a letting go. It’s the moment when I’m, or he’s, walking away. ‘You can bring me flowers when I’m dead and gone.’ Out. I am out!” There’s heartache and heartbreak, but at the same time self-awareness and accountability with the strength and power that comes from that.

In other words, it’s the blues.

“It’s been a theme in blues music and all of its iterations since the beginning of time,” she says. And there’s another set of lines that brings the whole thing to a fine point:

Sister, quit diggin’ them holes

Sister, quit diggin’ them holes

You keep working that shovel

You’re bound to meet the Devil

That comes from “Holes,” written by Julianne Marie Guidi, a young Canadian artist whom Magness happened across on YouTube while looking for new talent. Pushed by a pounding beat and stinging guitar from guest Sue Foley, Magness goes deep for some of the most exuberantly powerful singing of her career, building a sharply personal anthem not just at the core of this album, but tying together her whole connection to the blues.

“Holes,” she says, perfectly captures a moment of epiphany that can turn a life around. “In my experience when it’s like, ‘Wow, I’m really in a hole over here.’ and a voice comes in and goes, ‘Really? Stop digging.’” she says with an all-too-knowing laugh. “It’s like, ‘Why am I standing in the middle of this with a shovel?’”

As Magness chose songs for this album, she found herself flashing back to earlier in her recording career when she also made all-covers albums that, she later saw, subconsciously expressed a sense of sadness and despair in her own life and, in retrospect, forecast some rough personal upheavals. She confessed to having had some concern now, but immediately cast out those thoughts in the assuredness that things are vastly different this time around.

“I’m happier in my life in many ways than I’ve ever been,” she says. “I’m more peaceful in my life than I’ve ever been, which I think will always be a surprise for me. But it doesn’t mean the experience of heartbreak in these songs goes away. It doesn’t go away. It just lives in a different spot in me.”

On Back For Me, Magness goes back to her, back to some places deep within, reconnecting and renewing the things that have driven and empowered her through such a distinguished career.

“That history doesn’t go away,” she says. “My experience of it changes. I don’t walk around bleeding all over the place anymore. I’m really grateful that I’m not in that state of mind any longer, because it’s kind of torture-y. But I will never not understand, 'I can’t repent for what you’re running from.’ It’s never going to go that far away. ‘You know I was good to you. You’ll find out…. maybe.' Yeah, idiot! That’s never going to be that far away. So, I’m drawing on those places, which is part of bringing myself to the song.”

Finding the songs that held that power became her mission with this album.

“It’s going back to interpretive singing,” she says. “It’s a different experience than the original material. I’ve been in that landscape for a while now and it’s been wonderful and amazing. But the lion’s share of the early part of my career was covers. I was primarily interpreting other people’s songs. And it takes a different kind of headspace. It’s not that it’s less vulnerable. It’s differently vulnerable.”

It’s that vulnerability that Magness sought in songs as she put Back For Me together, a search that took her deep into the mines of the blues and R&B for material that she could internalize and personalize.

“I have always been into the B-sides,” she says. “There’s a freshness to doing a B-side rather than a well-known hit. I absolutely love the idea of shining a light on material that people are not familiar with.”

She gives credit to the band for bringing layers of dimensions to the songs. Aside from Darling, Parlapiano and Schroeder, the main musicians were new to Magness, but as soon as the sessions began she felt the fresh energy they brought.

“We tracked together live,” she says. “That’s one of the reasons that it sounds as solid as it does. And the other reason is because these guys have worked together on other albums with Dave and other projects, so they have a history. That brings an automatic intimacy to the backbone of the songs. And because they’re basically all a bunch of badasses.”