Guy Davis, the celebrated Delta bluesman, has a variety of influences: some Blind Willie McTell and some Fats Waller, some Buddy Guy and some Taj Mahal. He’s got some Zora Neale Hurston, some Garrison Keillor, and some Laura Davis (his one-hundred-and-four year-old grandmother). He’s a musician, composer, actor, director and writer. But most importantly — Guy Davis is a bluesman. The blues permeate every corner of Davis’ creativity. Throughout his career, he has dedicated himself to reviving the traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to as many ears as possible through the material of the great blues masters, African American stories, and his own original songs, stories and performance pieces.

The routes, and roots, of his blues are as diverse as the music form itself. It can be soulful, moaning out a people’s cry, or playful and bouncy as a hayride. Guy can tell you stories of his great-grandparents and his grandparents, their days as track linemen, and of their interactions with the KKK. He can also tell you that as a child raised in middle-class New York suburbs, the only cotton he’s picked is his underwear up off the floor.

Throughout his life Davis has had overlapping interests in music and acting. He made his Broadway 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 W.C. Handy “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award. Guy’s latest CD, “Skunkmello,” recently received a 5-star review in Downbeat magazine.

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 — an engaging and moving one man show. The Off-Broadway debut in 1994 received critical praise from the New York Times and the Village Voice. Davis also performed in a theater piece with his parents, actors/writers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, entitled Two Hah Hahs and A Homeboy, staged at the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ in the spring of 1995. The show combined material written by Davis and his parents with music, African American folklore and history. Though raised in New York, 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.

Rockabilly artist Robert Gordon had this to say about Davis: “If the earthy power of Guy Davis’s sandpaper vocals doesn’t grab your attention and the resonance of his acoustic-guitar strings doesn’t turn your head, you need to make sure you’re still alive… He sings, ‘I ain’t no bluesman / I’m the bluesman’s son,’ a nice analogy for his music—it’s linked to the past but living today.”

Kirsten and Dave

Kirsten & Dave will be opening for Guy Davis. Their diverse backgrounds are the key to their success at performing a variety of musical styles. Whether they are playing acoustic pop, country, acoustic blues or folk/bluegrass, their love for music is obvious. Playing a variety of instruments, Kirsten & Dave swap off melodies and harmonies as they play a mix of covers and original tunes. They have many decades of performing experience between them and they have been playing together for four years.

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Like the best early bluesmen, Guy Davis is, at heart, a storyteller. A master at setting intimate, richly nuanced tales to stomping acoustic blues backing, often with folky accompaniment from mandolin, banjo, and accordion, he helped revitalize the state of country blues in the 1990s with a string of critically acclaimed albums for Red House Records. Blues Revue
A singer and guitarist in the rural mould of Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt, he has got a voice like Howlin’ Wolf dipped in honey. He is also an enchanting storyteller, able to deliver a shaggy-dog story while barking and simultaneously making train noises on a harmonica — a reminder of a time when the phrase "novelty song" didn't necessarily have music-lovers running for the exits. He utilised ye olde food/sex metaphor in “Home Cooked Meal” and made it sound dirtier than you would have thought possible. He is fabulous. The Scotsman