Legendary New York City bluesman (and actor, and author, and songwriter!) Guy Davis finally returns to The Carleton on Wednesday, November 19th. Show time is 7 PM and tickets are $37.50 + HST.
Guy Davis is a two-time, back-to-back Grammy nominee for Best Traditional Blues, a musician, actor, author, and songwriter. Guy uses a blend of Roots, Blues, Folk, Rock, Rap, Spoken Word, and World Music to comment on, and address the frustrations of social injustice, touching on historical events, and common life struggles. His background in theatre is pronounced through the lyrical storytelling of songs God’s Gonna Make Things Over about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Welcome to My World, and Got Your Letter In My Pocket. His storytelling is sometimes painful, deep, and real, an earthy contrast to modern-day commercial music, meant to create thought, underlined by gentle tones from his guitar or banjo fingerpicking.
A self-taught “Renaissance Man”, he first heard the banjo at a summer camp run by John Seeger, the brother of the American Folk Musician, Pete Seeger, and soon after, asked his father for one.
Along with his music writing and performance, Guy has written several scripts for stage and film. He recently debuted his latest piece, Sugarbelly and Other Tales My Father Told Me at the famed Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. He previously presented his other New York Foundation for the Arts winning play at the Crossroads, “The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed with the Blues”, a one-man show whose Off-Broadway debut in 1994 received critical praise from The New York Times and the Village Voice.
Also at the Crossroads Guy appeared with his parents, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, in a show called Two Hah-Hahs & A Homeboy. Guy also starred in the Off-Broadway production of Robert Johnson; Trick The Devil at the New Federal Theater which earned him a “Keeping The Blues Alive” Award from The Blues Foundation. On Broadway, Guy was in the cast of the Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes play, Mulebone, which featured the music of Taj Mahal. And in 2009-2010, in a revival of Finian’s Rainbow, Guy undertook the role that was originated by one of his musical heroes, Sonny Terry, who created the role in the original 1947 production.
Guy sings, plays six and twelve string guitars, the five-string banjo, harmonica, and didgeridoo.
Guy has performed before the Crowned Heads of Denmark, and even the renowned explorer, Jacques Cousteau. He’s played alongside Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Levon Helm, Dr. John, Kris Kristofferson, Buffy Saint-Marie, T-Bone Burnett, Taj Mahal, Keb Mo, John Hammond, John Sebastian, and John Denver. He has opened for, among others, Chuck Berry, Joan Armatrading, James Cotton, and B.B.King. He has performed in 48 of the 50 states, throughout most of Europe, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Canada, Greenland, The Shetland Islands, The Faroe Islands, and The UK. He’s been chased out of Red Square in Moscow for trying to sing, sung in Soviet Occupied East Berlin, and performed standing in front of an iceberg in Greenland.
When asked about his experience as a performer, Guy has replied, “There is no tale so tall that I cannot tell it, nor song so sweet that I cannot sing it.”