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Friday, April 18, 1997     Page:

Echoing old-time blues
   
Blues revivalist Guy Davis will share his zeal for some old-fashioned,
southern-style blues tonight”OK, before you go … If you haven’t heard any of
my music, you can sample it right through the phone….”
    Blues revivalist Guy Davis, calling from New York, then holds up the
receiver as harmonica-laced acoustic blues echo through the phone line.
   
“Contemplate that for a while,” he says.
   
Davis’ work, based in traditional acoustic blues, is different than that of
most contemporary blues artists. Even the brief snippet he offers on the phone
has you feeling like you’re sitting on an Alabama front porch 100 years ago.
   
“The acoustic blues and old-time finger-picking music is my sound,” says
Davis. “It resonates inside me.
   
“It’s no longer cutting-edge, but to me, it’s gold and it’s treasure,” he
adds. “I don’t want it to be forgotten by other people, but if everybody else
in the world did forget about it, I’d still be playing it.
   
“I love it.”
   
Davis, in his 40s, has released two albums. “Stomp Down Rider,” a live solo
acoustic concert recorded in 1993, and his latest, “Call Down the Thunder.” In
addition to his original material, both offer Davis’ renditions of traditional
blues songs, including works by Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, Gary Davis and
Leadbelly.
   
Davis says his own compositions never stray too far from his roots.
   
“It’s very old-time sounding, ” he says. “I’ve just got my own words and I
might take chords and twist them around my way. A lot of it sounds as if it
were written a long time ago, and then some of it sounds fairly contemporary.
The acoustic feeling pervades.”
   
Davis’ appreciation for blues greats has transcended music. In 1993, he
performed off-Broadway in the role of a legendary blues player in “Robert
Johnson: Trick The Devil.” Davis received positive reviews and became the 1993
winner of the Blues Foundations’s W.C. Handy “Keeping The Blues Alive Award.”
   
Throw out the name of any folk or blues giant and he’s quick with a
response.
   
Leadbelly?
   
“What a fabulous storyteller,” says Davis. “I love the way … that
12-string of his comes on sounding like a freight train. It’s unbelievable.”
   
One contemporary artist also has caught Davis’ ear, although he too offers
a throwback sound.
   
“There’s one young guy — a fella named Eric Bibb,” he says. “He’s the son
of folk singer Leon Bibb. …He’s got an old-time sound that reminds me of
Lightnin’ Hopkins. There’s a living performer that I truly, truly, truly
admire.”
   
Davis, the son of actor/director/playwright/civil rights activist Ossie
Davis and actress/civil rights activist Ruby Dee, says being around performers
at an early age helped him see the human side of the industry. Still, he adds
that he’s received no special treatment because of his parents’ prominence.
   
“I grew up around entertainers,” he says. “I found out that they’re people
just like you and I. …My exposure to that didn’t get me any jobs. I might
have gotten jobs with my family, but not because of my family.”
   
One thing Davis says he did get from his upbringing is the ability to tell
tales, both with and without music.
   
“My music is just like my grandparents, it’s very southern,” he says,
adding that two of his grandparents were fluent storytellers. “Southern speech
to me is just like music. I grew up hearing it all the time, because of my
grandmother. My father can break into it very easily, because that was his
homelife. I’ve grown up so I can speak the language of the white man, the
black man and the southern man. Blues music just fits with the kind of speech
that I heard these stories told to ages ago. I’ve gotten to the point where I
can compose and create stories in the old tradition.”
   
Tonight’s show, which will feature Davis alone on 6- and 12-string guitar
and harmonica, will also feature those stories.
   
“(Audience members) get a show that they can be involved in,” he says,
“that they’re imaginations can run with. I want to take people back to when
they were kids and they used to hear stories, and the thrill that you used to
get when you could see everything a person was saying. When you’d hear words
coming out of somebody’s mouth and it just put pictures right in front of your
mind.
   
“I want people to have that kind of experience, not just with the stories
that I tell, but also with the songs that I sing.”
   
Random plays
   
Dakota, one of the most successful acts ever to come from the Northeast
Pennsylvania region, has a new web-site on the Internet. To check it out, go
to http:www.epix.net/~manny/dak.html …
   
Joan Jett will perform at Tink’s in Scranton on May 8. Tickets for the
over-21 show are $10 in advance and $12 the day of show. For more info, call
Tink’s at 346-8465 or Ticketmaster at 693-4100 …
   
Montage and Metropolitan Entertainment have announced a press conference
for 1 p.m. this Monday. They’ll likely announce the season’s opening concert,
as well as a few other summer shows. We’ll have the rundown in Tuesday’s Times
Leader …
   
This week on “The Cellar Full of Noise,” Mike Naydock will be spinning
original tunes by Buddah Baby, The Mange, Mancow and “other stuff.” Showtime
is 8 p.m. Sunday on WZMT-FM (97.9) — 98 Rock. This week’s TV version of
“Cellar Full” will feature Bret Alexander of The Badlees. Airtime is 11 p.m.
Saturday and 10 p.m. Sunday on WYLN-TV 35.
   
Blues revivalist Guy Davis performs at Chicory House tonight. Guy Davis
Tonight at 8 Chicory House Community Room of St. Stephen’s Church
   
35 S. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre
   
Admission — $7 for members, $8 for non-members
   
Info: 825-8772
   
Alan Stout