Eclectic Music and More

Guy Davis
Acoustic Blues and Storytelling

Saturday, February 4, 2012 • 8pm
Tickets: $20/advance, $22/door, $10/teens 12-17,
children under 12 are free with paying adult.
Unitarian Fellowship, 4th and C Streets, Ashland

We are so jazzed to be bringing Guy Davis back to Ashland. He appeared twice at the Rogue Valley Blues Festival. First time in 2003, he performed his one-man play "In Bed With the Blues: the adventures of Fishy Waters." The second time in 2005 when he performed on the main stage on Friday evening and also gave a children's presentation on Saturday.

Guy Davis (born May 12, 1952) is a blues guitarist and banjo player, actor, and musician. He is the son of actors Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis. Davis says his blues music is inspired by the southern speech of his grandmother. Though raised in the New York City area, he grew up hearing accounts of life in the rural south from his parents and especially his grandparents, and they made their way into his own stories and songs. Davis taught himself the guitar (never having the patience to take formal lessons) and learned by listening to and watching other musicians. One night on a train from Boston to New York he picked up finger picking from a nine-fingered guitar player. His first exposure to the blues was at a summer camp in Vermont run by Pete Seeger's brother John Seeger, where he learned how to play the 5-string banjo.

Throughout his life, Davis has had overlapping interests in music and acting. Early acting roles included a lead role in the 1984 film Beat Street and on television as Dr. Josh Hall on One Life to Live from 1985 to 1986. Eventually, Davis had the opportunity to combine music and acting on the stage. He made his Broadway musical debut in 1991 in the Zora Neale Hurston/Langston Hughes collaboration Mulebone, which featured the music of Taj Mahal.

In 1993, he performed Off-Broadway as legendary blues player Robert Johnson in Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. He received rave reviews and became the 1993 winner of the Blues Foundation's "Keeping the Blues Alive Award" presented to him by Robert Cray at the W.C. Handy Awards ceremony.

Davis creates his own work, looking for more ways to combine his love of blues, music, and acting. Davis created material for himself. He wrote In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters. He also wrote The Trial, (later renamed, The Trial: Judgement of the People), an anti-drug abuse, one-act play that toured throughout the New York City shelter system. Davis co-wrote and performed the music for the Emmy award winning film, To Be a Man. In the fall of 1995, his music was used in the national PBS series, The American Promise.

Davis now concentrates on writing, recording and performing music. He has been nominated for nine 'Handy Awards' over the years including for "Best Traditional Blues Album", "Best Blues Song" (Waiting On the Cards to Fall) and as "Best Acoustic Blues Artist" two times. His CD, Legacy, was picked as one of the Best CDs of the Year by National Public Radio (NPR), and the lead track on it, "Uncle Tom's Dead" was chosen as one of the Best Songs of the Year. This of course is ironic as FCC rules won't allow it to be played on the air.

Davis wrote a couple of songs and recorded with Dr. John for Whoopi Goldberg's Littleburg series, and appeared and sang in Jack's Big Show, both for the Nickelodeon network, Nick Jr. Davis has done residency programs for the Lincoln Center Institute, the Kennedy Center, the State Theatre in New Jersey, and works with "Young Audiences of NJ", doing classroom workshops and assembly programs all across the country and in Canada for Elementary, High School, and College students. Davis appeared in the PBS special on the late jazz and blues artist Howard Armstrong. He has also been performing with Pete Seeger and Tao Rodríguez-Seeger at select venues.