Guy Davis (Club Helsinki, 5/3/01)
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., May 4, 2001) - Sometimes it doesn't matter what a performer does. His personality is so big it just fills a room. That was the feeling at Club Helsinki on Thursday night, when blues singer and storyteller Guy Davis filled the small club with his warmth and congeniality.

Davis also filled the club with the blues, both traditional numbers and his own contemporary updates on the old styles. And while some of what he sang was of heartbreak and defeat, it was mostly leavened with Davis's gentleness and good humor.

While Guy Davis is primarily a concert artist, and a somewhat theatrical one at that, the intimacy of a club setting only served to heighten the drama inherent in his songs and persona. While Davis doesn't quite act the role of the old Delta bluesman, he certainly channels his spirit, especially when performing songs by the likes of Robert Johnson, the Reverend Gary Davis, Sleepy John Estes, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Accompanying himself on six- and twelve-string acoustic guitars, occasionally supplemented by harmonica on a wire rack, Davis's hour-long opening set was a generous journey through the blues and his own recorded work. He growled and spat his way through "Waiting on the Cards to Fall," the opening number, an original slide blues based on a funky Son House riff and inspired by Zora Neale Hurston's description of a card game called "Georgia Skin."

Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom" and Gary Davis's "Candyman" were representative of the mischievous side of the blues that Guy Davis is so fond of, and to which he has contributed several of his own compositions that rank with the classics. The Johnson rendition, performed on six-string, made clear rock 'n' roll's debt to the master. "Candyman," which featured strong, deft fingerpicking and which Davis underlined was "not the one by Sammy Davis Jr. - it's the dirty one," elicited a communal call-and-response with the audience.

Davis introduced "Georgia Flood" with a story about a boy and a mysterious, guitar-playing hobo. The story, adapated from a play Davis has written, served to heighten the song's impact, and reminded one of Davis's theatrical lineage: he has appeared on and off Broadway in several blues-oriented stage pieces, and he is the son of actor/director/writers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

"Home Cooked Meal" was Davis's contribution to the "Dust My Broom"-school of blues. In this case, the exercise in double-entendres pushed the kitchen-as-bedroom metaphor to delirious heights. If you find yourself dining with someone who breaks out in guffaws of laughter the next time you order sausage, chances are he was at Davis's show.

Davis closed out his first set with a stunning bit of artistry on the mouth harp. He told the story of a man named Madison who was calling his pigs to dinner. Instead of illustrating the story with pictures, Davis's Sonny Terry-derived harmonica effects drew the pictures, including a train, a train whistle, chickens, dogs, Madison yelling "come and get it!" and the whole dinner menu.