Guy Davis
Event description
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2024
8:00 PM | DOORS OPEN @ 7:00 PM
$35 ADVANCED $40 DOORS
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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 theater 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.
His records, while terse and truthful, are softened by songs like “We All Need More Kindness In This World”, denoting lyrical inspiration from Pete Seeger’s “If I Had A Hammer”, then teased with lyrically strutting works nudged by Hip Hop and Honky Tonk, like “Kokomo Kidd”. The contrast between pieces provides a robust, balanced experience, while giving Guy and his audience a healthy outlet for frustration through song and dance.
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.