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Guy Davis brings his murky blues ballads to Red Deer

Davis performs Nov. 10 at the Elks Lodge
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(Contributed photo).

New York bluesman Guy Davis has one foot in the present and the other planted in the murky past.

Although he grew up listening to folk and jazz music in North America’s largest, most cosmopolitan city, part of his childhood was spent at his grandmother’s elbow, listening to her stories from rural Georgia.

Maybe it was his early exposure to those smoky tales of love, death and longing that made his first experience with blues music, at the age of 15 or 16, strike so deeply. “It felt like it was already alive inside of me somewhere,” he recalled.

Tales about his own southern ancestors, as well as stories that Davis (rather mysteriously) said “were whispered to me by dead people,” have influenced a song cycle he intends to perform at the Red Deer Elks Lodge on Nov. 10.

While he doesn’t care to elaborate on the ‘dead people’ remark, Davis explained that the ballad Sugar Belly, lies at the heart of the song cycle. “It’s about a very beautiful young girl of mixed race who was brought up during her short life in a house of ill repute.”

Audience members will have to listen carefully to the lyrics, because “sometimes the tale is larger than the person” it’s about, he cryptically added.

Other tunes from Eastern Texas and Georgia will be woven into the same cycle. “Some songs are about moonshine… and there are some elements that incorporate my own family history…”

Davis was brought up during an era of integration, in which the goal was to “unlearn” African-American dialects and learn to speak English like an educated white person.

But although he learned to talk as grammatically as any North American, Davis’ has repeatedly been drawn back into the African-American past by influences such as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, blues artists born in the early 1900s.

Davis taught himself to play in Terry’s idiosyncratic harmonica style, managing whoops and hollers while blowing into the mouth organ. “There were no lessons. Sonny’s been dead since the 1980s,” said Davis, who learned over 20 years, by practising from old videos and albums.

Davis’s latest album, Sonny and Brownie’s Last Train, pays tribute to the two old-school blues masters by covering many of their songs. The album has an original title track but, like all of Davis’s music, it’s also written in the old style.

“Tell people not to be sacred about (his reference to) ghosts,” said Davis. “They should come to the show because it’s going to be a lot of fun! I like transporting people from where they are to someplace else… Music, song and stories have the power to do that.”

For tickets visit www.centralmusicfest.com



lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com

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