BRATTLEBORO — Strolling of the Heifers presents An Evening with Guy Davis - a fundraising event for Strolling of the Heifers on Friday evening, Oct. 9 at the Robert H. Gibson River Garden, 157 Main St.
A widely-known American blues musician, Guy Davis last appeared in Brattleboro in a memorable concert alongside the legendary Pete Seeger in 2008 (also a Stroll fundraising event).
Seating is limited to 200, and all seats are priced at $20. There will be no reserved seating. Tickets are available via Brown Paper Tickets at www.guydavis.brownpapertickets.com.
Davis has just released a new album, his 13th, called Kokomo Kidd. He has just returned from a European tour promoting the release.
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.
Davis's much-praised 1995 debut, Stomp Down the Rider on Red House Records, marked the arrival of a major talent, earning acclaim for his deft acoustic playing, his well-traveled voice and his literate, yet accessible songwriting.
He's barely rested since then, taking his music to television (the Conan O'Brien and David Letterman shows) and radio (A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, World Cafe, E-Town), and performing at theaters and festivals. He's played the four corners of the world, with a recent tour taking him from the Equator to the Arctic Circle.
His parallel careers - as a musician, an author, a music teacher, and a film, television, and Broadway actor - mark Davis as a Renaissance man, yet the blues remain his first and greatest love. Growing up in a family of artists (his parents were Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis), he fell under the spell of Blind Willie McTell and Fats Waller at an early age.
Davis's one-man play, The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed With the Blues, premiered Off-Broadway in the '90s and has since been released as a double CD. He went on to star Off-Broadway as the legendary Robert Johnson in Robert Johnson: Trick The Devil, winning the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive award.
He followed the footsteps of another blues legend when he joined the Broadway production of Finian's Rainbow, playing the part originally done in 1947 by Sonny Terry. Along the way, he cut nine acclaimed albums for the Red House label and three for his own label, Smokeydoke Records; and was nominated for nearly a dozen blues awards.
Continuing his mission to spread the blues around the world, Davis has lately been doing more teaching.
“I've had beginning and intermediate students, and I try to give them enough of the basics that they can go into a jam session, and create more licks out of the ones they know. And I try to give them a bit of my philosophy. To my mind you can treat these songs as recombinant DNA, you can own it and you can create something new with it. And I didn't sign any papers, but I can claim an ownership to the blues.”