An Evening of Explosive and Rockin' "Untraditional" - Traditional Blues with Guy Davis
 by Cliff Garber  ·  10 February 2007

Well, folks wondered (including myself) how many would venture out on such a bitter-cold evening like tonight to hear the blues. I’d not been able to shake this cold I’ve had for 5-6 weeks, so I thought getting out of the house for a night of listening to “THE BLUES” would shake it out of me, and it surely did! I toodled up along the oceanside to Marblehead while listening to “Skunkmello”, Guy Davis’ newest CD. It is his BEST PIECE OF WORK TO DATE, and shows the diversity and richness in his repertoire, masterful instrumentation and the fact that he’s a phenomenal songwriter. I arrived early and was kindly and thankfully let in due to the chilly outside temperatures. Knowing this evening’s performer and being a fan of several years, I was anxious for the time to pass and the show to begin.

People drifted in slowly at first, sipping hot drinks and indulging in sweets while shaking off the chill of this winter night. By show time at 8:30 p.m., a good-sized crowd filled the sanctuary. The evening’s entertainment began with a 6-song set by Kirsten and Dave. Kirsten has an absolutely beautiful 1st and 2nd soprano-range while sounding “very folky” and plays the guitar sweetly, and Dave’s folky tenor is accompanied by masterful guitar picking, as well. Oops, almost forgot, Kirsten played the flute exquisitely and flawlessly. My favorite song of their set was a humorous little ditty written by Dave called “Hello Kitty Blues”, if I remember the title correctly. Their effervescent and animated personalities were very well received by the audience.

Then Phil came out to give a little background before introducing the main performer of the evening, who was placing his instruments on stage and making sure that all wires were connected. Guy Davis was then seated center-stage on the piano bench and opened the first set with one of my personal favorites, “The Chocolate Man”, followed by a hilarious little piece, “Shaky Pudding” and several other rhythmic tunes. No one was going to nod off to sleep with this fellow on the stage shakin’ and wailin’ it up good!

The first set concluded 6 songs later with a driving, highly kinetic and very different new song not yet on any of his recordings called “ The Railroad Song”, which Guy wrote. It brought the crowd to a howling and loudly-applauding standing ovation. The tune spoke of two black prisoners working on a pick line while the others with them sang a work-tune so loud and rhythmically to the swinging of their axes that it distracted the bosses in charge, and the two ran off in attempt to escape by running for passing train. A hilarious tale was woven by Guy of their journey, where these two black men wind up and where the bosses and their pack of dogs winds up, which is not the same place at all. All the while he was singing, Guy was stomping out the beat with his left foot like the old bluesmen did, with the sounds of the men, the hounds, other animal sounds and the train being done most realistically by his own voice and a groovin’ harmonica. I closed my eyes and picture it all!

Half of the break between sets was spent with the audience walking up to the stage to speak to Guy and tell him what an exciting night of blues they were enjoying. As for me, I was feeling finer that I’d felt in weeks. I did also get to tell him what a huge fan I’ve been for several years and that “Skunkmello” was my favorite CD of his.

Guy opened the second set with my favorite tune from “Skunkmello” called “Blues in the Midnight Hour”, a sweet and gentle departure from all the other more raucous tunes in the evening’s collection. It showed the softer and smokier side of his voice. A song he wrote for his Dad, Ossie Davis, by the title, “Hooking Bull at the Landing”, shows this son’s love and respect for his father. Other songs in the second set were “Po’boy, Great Long Ways From Home”, “Skunkmello’s Dance of the Chickens” and an interspersing of tunes, between his own compositions, by Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt and other Blues greats of the past. There was also an audience sing-along to “Shortening Bread”. The final tune of the evening, “Blackberry Ramble”, segued into “Little Liza Jane”. Most of the tunes from “Skunkmello” were included in his repertoire this evening.

This young, well-seasoned bluesman is inimitable and very individual with a style very much his own. He shed light on the fact he’s been at it a long time when he told the audience that in 1960, when he was 11 years old and acoustic guitars were all the rage as the “instrument of choice”, his father gave him his first banjo. He made reference to the great Bob Dylan not caring what the press had to say about what he wrote, played and sang, but only cared about what made him happy— his own style of music. Guy particularly stated that Dylan gets a kick out of those that write “analytical” articles about his music, who he is and what he’s all about as a person, trying to “figure him out” by supposedly getting inside his head. He chuckled through this whole commentary, saying he was pretty much like Dylan in this respect, and the audience laughed along with his comparison.

Pardon me if I’m ignorant about the current crop of Blues greats other than BB King, Eric Clapton, James Montgomery and Keb Mo, Taj Mahal, Jesse Colin Young, and a couple more I can’t think of at the moment. To me there’s been no one since the likes of those mentioned above in an earlier paragraph, along with other earlier greats like Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Brownie Magee, Son House, Skip James (too many to list here) that have sung traditional blues quite the same. Along with those current artists mentioned belongs Guy Davis, who’s bringing back the old “traditional” Blues and keeping its flavor alive with the NEW traditional blues found in his own songwriting. This artist’s SOUL AND PASSION for Blues was most evident tonight in the facial expressions and body language that accompanied his singing. Putting the frosting on the cake was his truly masterful and richly melodic accompaniment on the 6 and 12-string guitars, the old slave-style claw-hammer picking on his banjo, and a collection of incredibly rich-sounding harmonica’s.

Shouts, cheers and loud applause followed every tune after the first. The audience just did not want to let Guy Davis off the stage. It was an evening of high energy and excitement. At the conclusion of the evening’s performance, Guy graciously and charmingly spoke to everyone who came up to to him and signed the CD’s they’d purchased in the same manner as during the break. It is my opinion that this is one of the most outstanding concerts that I’ve attended at the ME AND THEE in my 18 years of membership. I hope to see this incredible and very diversely talented folksinger-songwriter-storyteller and musician back on the stage of the ME AND THEE in the not-too-distant future.

Before heading home, I pulled up to “Caffe Italia” in the center of town and parked the car. My friend Donna and her son Mark own and run the restaurant, and I just had to tell them what a fantastic evening I’d just had. After quickly sharing my story with them, I left and speedily got in my car to get out of the frigid air.

My journey home wasn’t as mellow and laid-back as my ride to the coffeehouse. I popped “Skunkmello” back into the CD player and headed home with unbounded, wild energy, rather like “a runaway train!” When I looked down at the speedometer and noticed it reading too many miles-per-hour, I snapped back to reality and gained control, staying within the speed limit (the way I usually drive) for the remainder of the trip home.

Now here I am so wound up from tonight’s show that I just had to sit down and do this blog. To those of you who were there and shared in tonight’s great show, I’m so glad you were there, and for those who couldn’t make it that are reading this, you missed an incredible night of music. You can catch a sample of what you missed by buying yourself a couple of Guy’s incredible CD’s, especially “Skunkmello”. Tonight was a night in Blues history at the ME AND THEE COFFEE HOUSE. Goodnight and sleep tight!

YAWN, YAWN, YAWN…...Susie Pascar (3:30 a.m.)

Photos by Kathy S-B

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