Guy Davis performs at Centenary Stage Feb. 6
Guy Davis has the perfect cure for the wintertime blues: namely, the blues.
“The blues is fun music,” insists Davis, musician and raconteur. “It’s about communicating. It’s about telling stories.”
Though he appreciates the many styles of the blues, Davis is a particular devotee of acoustic or country blues, in the tradition of such artists as Robert Johnson, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie McTell.
“That old-time string music opened up a door for me,” says Davis, who released his first major-label blues record more than 20 years ago. “The quality of the storytelling was different from the Chicago blues of B. B. King or even Muddy Waters.”
Davis will offer his take on acoustic blues — both originals and traditional songs — when he performs at Centenary Stage Co. in Hackettstown Saturday.
Accompanying Davis will be Italian harmonica player Fabrizio Poggi, whom he first met in Switzerland about a decade ago. Poggi produced Davis’ 2013 album “Juba Blues,” and the two musicians have performed live frequently.
Only a couple of days before the Hackettstown concert, Davis and Poggi play at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan as part of a tribute to Leadbelly.
“There’s something mystical about this music,” says Davis. “Something prehistoric. Something rooted.”
In the tradition of those performers, Davis intersperses his songs with monologues and anecdotes about the songs.
“You can’t stop me from running my mouth,” Davis says with a laugh. “I can say whatever comes to my mind.”
Storytelling could be said to be in Davis’ blood. He was born in 1952, the son of two late performers and activists, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
“My folks never pushed me toward show business,” Guy Davis says. “They enabled me by making sure I had opportunities and things like guitar lessons. But they never forced me toward performing.”
However, Davis found himself acting and singing on film and stage. He even had the chance to appear with his parents at Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick in “Two Ha Ha’s and a Homeboy.”
The younger Davis also wrote a one-man musical play about a fictional bluesman called “In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters.” Davis has performed the work to both Centenary Stage and Crossroads, among other venues.
“When I did ‘Fishy Waters,’ there were lines I had to say and songs I had to do in a specific order,” says Davis. “A concert allows me to be more spontaneous.”
In keeping with his self-appointed mission of spreading the joy of the blues, Davis will lead a guitar workshop in Hackettstown before the concert.
“It allows me to release my inner teacher and my inner instructor,” he says. “I can tap the teachers I had who didn’t even know they were teaching me.”
The guitar workshop will extend beyond acoustic blues, according to Davis.
“We’ll talk about the different types of blues, what they have in common, what they have different. We’ll talk about Piedmont blues, Chicago blues, delta blues.”
“I feel like I’m passing along what I learned,” Davis says. “One of my mentors was Howard Armstrong, who was known as Louie Bluie. I have that Lightnin’ Hopkins energy, that Robert Johnson energy.”
GUY DAVIS
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
(workshop at 3 p.m.)
WHERE: David and Carol Lackland Center, Centenary College, 715 Grand Ave., Hackettstown
TICKETS: $25 in advance, $30 day of concert. Workshop: $10, which may be applied to the cost of a concert ticket. Reservations required for workshop.
INFO: 908-979-0900 or
www.centenarystageco.org