(BLAIRSTOWN, NJ) -- Roy's Hall presents an evening of Roots Blues and Americana with Guy Davis on Friday, March 11 at 8:00pm. Davis once said, “I like antiques and old things, old places, that still have the dust of those who’ve gone before us lying upon them.” Blowing that dust off just enough to see its beauty is something Guy has excelled at for over twenty years of songwriting and performing. It’s no wonder his reverence for the music of the Blues Masters who’ve gone before him has been evident in every album he’s ever recorded or concert he’s given. 

Guy Davis has had his musical storytelling influenced by artists like Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy, and his musicality from artists as diverse as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Babatunde Olatunji. However, there’s one man that Guy most credits for his harmonica techniques, by stealing and crediting from him everything that he could, and that man is the legendary Sonny Terry.

Guy’s last album, “Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train – A Look Back at Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry” is an homage to these two hugely influential artists, not only on Guy’s career, but to thousands of musicians around the world. One such artist is the Italian harmonica ace, Fabrizio Poggi, who collaborates with and produced this recording. When Guy Davis got a Grammy nomination for that album, he characteristically took it all in stride.

“In my line of work, you don’t depend on winning anything,” he says. “I was telling my friends that if I won, I’d start being really obnoxious — so whatever’s good in me, they’d better get it before the Grammys, just in case! But I had a ball at the ceremony. I ran into my old buddy Eric Bibb, and we had a good laugh about us being up for the same award. But it wasn’t going to affect what I do.”

As it turned out, they both lost to an upstart combo called the Rolling Stones. And Guy Davis went back to work. Never an artist who fit any narrow definitions of the blues, Davis regularly finds new outlets for his warm singing and deft acoustic playing. Both are evident on his new album, Be Ready When I Call You. But this time it’s his songwriting that really comes forward. For the first time in over a dozen-album career he wrote nearly everything on the disc, Howlin’ Wolf’s classic “Spoonful” being the sole exception. At the same time he’s broadened his musical reach to include everything from modern electric blues to banjo shuffles, even a touch of rap on one number.

“I call it Americana, but I slip a little world music in there too,” he says. “When you’re trying to create beautiful music, you don’t think too much about categories. You know, I came up in the Pete Seeger tradition– Folk songs, topical songs, the Woody Guthrie kind of tunes. And then the delightful entertaining kind of tunes, songs like ‘Kisses Sweeter Than Wine’. I have all that in me and I tried to let it flow a little bit in this opus.”

His parallel careers — as an author, a teacher, and a Broadway and film and television actor—mark Guy 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. Guy’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. More recently he joined the Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow, playing the part originally done in 1947 by Sonny Terry—an experience that helped inspire the acclaimed Terry/McGhee album.

Tying all his work together is his love of a good story, and a willingness to speak out when there’s a point to be made. “That’s what I consider myself, a musical storyteller. I tend to create music but even if I didn’t, I would use somebody else’s music — and if I didn’t have that, I would speak poems or prose. I think that all these things increase me as a performer….The songs, the plays, the descriptions, everything I do with words. They’re all part of each other.”

Though he’s stayed busy writing and recording during the pandemic, he looks forward to playing live as soon as circumstances allow. “I love doing what I do and I’m aching to get back out there. Don’t get me wrong, the computer screen is OK. But I want to get back in front of people.”

Tickets are $30 – $35 and available for purchase online. At this time Roy’s Hall REQUIRES proof of COVID vaccination OR a negative COVID test. Click here for the venues full COVID-19 policy.

Roy’s Hall is located at 30 Main Street in Blairstown, NJ. The venue is operated by Blairstown Live-Arts, Inc., a NJ (501(c)(3) non-profit cultural institution with the goal of promoting a broad appreciation of the interplay between culture and artistic expression. It does this by acting as a forum for artists who best exemplify world traditions, reflect contemporary trends and explore artistic frontiers, and by nurturing the artistic and cultural life of its own community in and around the Skylands region of New Jersey.

Toward that end, they nurture the work of emerging artists and celebrate the achievements of acknowledged masters. They educate and engage audiences as active participants in the artistic process. They work to build strong links between disparate elements inside and outside the “arts community” and to remove barriers, both perceived and real, which currently prevent many within their greater community from participating. They seek to generate support for multi-cultural expression and the promotion of active arts for all people.

Photo by Joseph A Rosen