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BLUES REVUE

5 Questions with Guy Davis

<http://www.bluesrevue.com/>

 

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, he helped revitalize the state of country blues in the 1990s with a string of critically acclaimed albums for Red House Records. Davis 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.

You use some interesting instrumentation on give in kind, like the didgeridoo on "Layla, Layla." When did you have occasion to learn that instrument?

About four years ago I went to Australia. It took me a week to find an Aboriginal person, period, never mind one who could show me how to play it. The first time I saw two black men in Perth, way at the end of a block, I ran to them: "Hey, brothers, how are you doing?" And they said [forces accent], "We are from India."

It wasn't until I got to Adelaide and the Tandanya Cultural Center that I found Aboriginal folks, and lots of art, and rows and rows of didgeridoos. And anybody could blow on them, which is why I had a cold the whole time I was there, because people would blow on them and spread their cold. One guy showed me how to make the noise - he showed me "city slicker" style, out of the side of your mouth, since I couldn't get it out of the front of my mouth - and another guy showed me how to do the breathing.

Since then, I've run into players in the U.S. and Canada and Europe, and I've stolen from them. And every time I stole I got a little bit better. Now I can play it for 20 minutes; it's almost like meditation. I added the didgeridoo at the beginning of "Layla, Layla" to the part where the slide guitar is making the woman's voice, thinking it would make it into a dialogue. The didgeridoo becomes the aggressive guy, kind of that "barking dog" sound. Then the rest of the song just took shape around that.

You've also recorded an innovative version of Big Bill Broonzy's "Good Liquor," with a really cool guitar figure compacted into the seventh bar. When you cover someone else's song, how do you make it your own?

On "Good Liquor," I got the idea, "Wouldn't it be interesting if Muddy Waters was doing this song?" I'm not trying to be scientific about it. It's all pretty subjective. I just fool around because it's fun and it sounds fun. It's spontaneous; it's in the present moment.

I know guys who can play the transcriptions of the masters note for note. I've never had the desire to do that. I'd like to know the licks and be able to use them, but I'd rather mix and match them in my own way. It's like recombinant DNA. It's saying the same old thing in a new way.

Do any lessons learned from your theatrical background carry over into your songwriting?

When you're writing a song you've got to decide what it's about. "Best I Can" [from 1998's You Don't Know My Mind] used to have 30 verses. I had to trim it down because not all the verses were about the same thing. Some dealt with slavery, some dealt with hard times in the city - which is kind of what it settled on - and others were more sexy in nature. I had to decide exactly what the song was about. In acting, too, the way you do a scene depends on what the scene's about. A scene with a man and a woman walking by the river: Is it a scene about them expressing their love for each other, or is it a scene about them expressing their lust for each other, or are the getting ready to break up? Your acting has to express that. So whether I'm telling a story as an actor or I'm writing a song, I try to be clear. The clearer I am, the clearer the pictures will be in people's imagination.

You're still touring heavily. What's your live show like these days?

I do a mix of originals with covers like "Dust My Broom," "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day," and John Estes' "Black Mattie Blues." The live show is what I'm best at: telling the stories and singing the songs right in front of people. There's something about it that makes the song really become alive - it's not just a song anymore.

I'm playing solo, with rare exceptions. When I started this current tour in the New York area, I took my upright bass player with me and we did four or five gigs. It gave me a little variety. But at my essence I'm a solo performer. I need that attention.