BLUES REVUE
5 Questions with
Guy Davis
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.
