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, the
50-year-old performer helped revitalize the state of country
blues in the 1990s with a string of critically acclaimed albums
for Red House Records. Davis is the son of actors Ossie Davis
and Ruby Dee, and that theatrical inclination didn't escape Guy
himself: He also has authored and starred in several off-Broadway
musicals, and even weathered an early stint on television's One
Life To Live.
Davis' latest album is Give in Kind.
The title comes from a line in Sleepy John Estes' "What
You Doin'," one of a handful of cover tunes that accompany
his eight new originals. He nearly called the record "Loneliest
Road That I Know," after the Fred McDowell song also performed
within, but his manager convinced him otherwise. "Maybe
I was too tired to argue," Davis says. "But I do like
the meaning of the term 'Give in Kind' - that what's done to
you is what you do unto others, and vice versa."
You dedicate Give in Kind
to Davey Steele. Who was Mr. Steele?
In 1987, I was part of a theater company that
went from the States to Scotland. We went to an acoustic club
one night, and this tipsy Scotsman wanders in and starts to sing
a song called "Tae the Beggin'," which someone had
just sung minutes before, so they shushed him and got him out.
He stumbled back in and sat down at a table with four other guys.
He sang a song about his father called "The Ballad of Jimmy
Steele," about his dad being a coal miner, and it was one
of the most beautiful songs I'd ever heard. As a performer, his
voice was the carrier wave of his soul. I just couldn't get close
enough to this guy. Knowing him gave me permission to be a freer
part of myself.
He died recently from a brain tumor. He had
a little boy named Jamie Jo whom he very much wanted to see grow
up; he told me if he could have just 20 more years to see him
grow up, he'd trade everything.
I had him in mind when I wrote the song "I
Will Be Your Friend" in England not long after I saw him
in the late '90s for the first time since he'd gotten sick. I
wrote it in the home of Rod Davis, who used to be one of John
Lennon's original Quarrymen. I went up to Davey's and played
it for him, and although he had stopped performing by then, he
could hold his guitar up and we sat and jammed a little bit.
The rest of the CD is just what I felt, as
I felt it. I'm in pursuit of what Davey showed me: I want my
voice to be the carrier wave of my soul.
(continue
to part 2)
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