Guy Davis & High Flying Rockets entertain blues fans in BC

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Maple Ridge Jazz & Blues Festival Society is hosting a fund-raising concert with renaissance bluesman Guy Davis. Davis will entertain British Columbian blues fans at a special concert on Wednesday, April 5 in Maple Ridge, BC. As a Canadian first, the High Flying Rockets will join Davis on stage. These internationally renowned blues sidemen - Mark Murphy on bass and Nerak Roth Patterson on electric guitar - will create a unique blues music event worth attending. The trio, who work together in the studio, will give BC blues fans the rare opportunity to see them all perform live together for the first time in Canada.

Festival director Stormin' Norm Casler explained that this exciting development resulted from a tie-in with the release of Davis' new CD for Red House Records, called "Skunkmello." The legendary blues performer's concerts in western Canada will also be the first time fans can purchase this new compact disc.

Casler added that Guy Davis is the best-selling artist in Canada on the Red House Record label, a fact the musician appreciates when he plays to such responsive audiences.

"The headlines call him a renaissance bluesman, and an artist who defies the rural blues myth. Whatever you call him, Guy Davis is 100% pure blues. He's a musician, composer, actor, director, and writer. But most importantly, Guy Davis is a 'Bluesman.' The blues permeates every corner of Davis' creativity."

Hailing from Harlem, New York, the Red House recording artist is simply one of the finest Delta bluesmen on the circuit today. Davis is an electrifying performer who has wowed sold out houses from Halifax to Yellowknife to Vancouver Island, and has been featured at major festivals such as The Montreal International Jazz Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Calgary Folk Festival, Chicago Blues Festival and Philadelphia Folk Festival.

Whether Guy Davis is appearing on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" or David Dye's "World Café" radio program, in front of 15, 000 people on the Main Stage at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, or an intimate gathering of students at a Music Camp, Davis feels the instinctive desire to give each listener his 'all'…his 'all' being the Blues.

The routes, and roots, of his blues are as diverse as the music form itself. Throughout his career, he has dedicated himself to reviving the traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to as many ears as possible through the material of the great blues masters, African American stories, and his own original songs, stories and performance pieces.

Davis' creative roots run deep. Though raised in the New York City area, he grew up hearing accounts of life in the rural south from his parents and especially his grandparents, and they made their way into his own stories and songs. Davis taught himself the guitar (never having the patience to take formal lessons) and learned by listening to and watching other musicians. One night on a train from Boston to New York he picked up finger picking from a nine-fingered guitar player.

Throughout his life, Davis has had overlapping interests in music and acting. Early acting roles included a lead role in the film "Beat Street" opposite Rae Dawn Chong and on television as 'Dr. Josh Hall' on "One Life to Live." Eventually, Davis had the opportunity to combine music and acting on the stage. He made his Broadway musical debut in 1991 in the Zora Neale Hurston/Langston Hughes collaboration "Mulebone, " which featured the music of Taj Mahal.

In 1993 he performed Off-Broadway as legendary blues player Robert Johnson in "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil." He received rave reviews and became the 1993 winner of the Blues Foundation's "Keeping the Blues Alive Award" presented to him by Robert Cray at the W.C. Handy Awards ceremony.

Davis' writing projects have also included a variety of theatre pieces and plays.

It is Guy Davis that you'll see on an interactive video display at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, demonstrating and explaining the various Blues guitar styles.

He's also very proud to be involved with a project produced by his friend Larry Long, called "Teaching Tolerance". It's a CD collection of enriching songs combined together to help teach diversity and understanding. It was distributed in February 2004 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and sent to every school in the country.

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