Music
For the past two decades, Davis has concentrated on writing, recording, and performing music. In late 1995, he released his Red House records debut Stomp Down Rider, a live album. The album made top lists all over the country, including in the Boston Globe and Pulse magazine.
Davis's next album, Call Down the Thunder paid tribute to the blues masters but revealed more of his powerful originals. It too was named a top ten album of the year in the Boston Globe and Pulse. Acoustic Guitar said it was one of the "thirty essential CDs from a new generation of performers".
Davis' third Red House disc, You Don't Know My Mind which includes backing vocals by Olu Dara, explodes with passion and rhythm, and displays Davis' breadth as a composer and powerhouse performer. It was chosen as 'Blues Album of the Year' by the Association For Independent Music (formerly NAIRD). The San Francisco Chronicle gave the CD four stars, adding, "Davis' tough, timeless vocals blow through your brain like a Mississippi dust devil."
Charles M. Young summed up Davis's take on the blues writing in Playboy magazine: "Davis reminds you that the blues started as dance music. This is blues made for humming along, stomping your foot, feeling righteous in the face of oppression and expressing gratitude to your baby for greasing your skillet."
Davis's fourth album was Butt Naked Free, the first of his albums to have been produced by John Platania, former guitarist for Van Morrison. In addition to Platania on electric guitar, it includes musician friends such as Levon Helm, multi-instrumentalist, Tommy "T-Bone" Wolk; Carly Simon, 'Saturday Night Live' Band, drummer Gary Burke, and acoustic bassist, Mark Murphy. The musicians all performed "Waitin' On the Cards to Fall" from this album on the Conan O'Brien show.
Of the fifth album, Give in Kind, music critic Dave Marsh wrote, "Davis never loses sight of the blues as good time music, the original forum for dancing on top of one's sorrows. Joy made more exquisite, of course, by the sorrow from which it springs."
Ian Anderson, founder and lead singer of Jethro Tull liked the album and invited Davis to open for them during the summer of 2003. He wrote in his invitation, "Folk Blues (Sonny Terry, J.B. Lenoir) is where I started. Hearing Guy is like coming home again."
Notables who call themselves Davis fans include Jackson Browne, writer Maya Angelou, and actress Jessica Lange. Lange invited Davis to perform his cover version of the Bob Dylan song, "What's a Sweetheart Like You (Doing in a Dump Like This)" for a fundraiser that she and her husband Sam Shepard organized for Tibetan monks in Minnesota.
Chocolate to the Bone, Davis's sixth album followed. Accolades included a Blues Music Award nomination for "Best Acoustic Blues Album". Davis has been nominated for ten such awards over the years including for "Best Traditional Blues Album", "Best Blues Song" ("Waiting On the Cards to Fall") and as "Best Acoustic Blues Artist" two times.
His 2004 album, Legacy, was picked as one of the Best CDs of the Year by National Public Radio (NPR). The lead track on it, "Uncle Tom's Dead" was chosen as one of the Best Songs of the Year. The only other artist on both lists was Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Illustrator Guy Davis drew the cover for this album. The tongue-in-cheek cartoon strip is included in the liner notes, is a collaboration between the two men. A winery in California completes the triumvirate, as it is headed by a winemaker also named Guy Davis. He created a limited edition wine in their honor with the label artwork done by illustrator Guy Davis.
Davis has contributed songs on a host of tribute and compilation albums, including collections on bluesmen Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, for Putumayo Records collections including, From Mali to Memphis and the children's album called, Sing Along With Putumayo, for tradition-based rockers such as the Grateful Dead, songwriters including Nick Lowe, and for Bob Dylan's 60th birthday CD called, A Nod to Bob, plus on a Windham Hill collection of choral music, and alongside performers including Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Springsteen for a collection of songs written by Pete Seeger, called, Where Have All the Flowers Gone.
He has been involved with a famous project of his friend Larry Long, called I Will Be Your Friend: Songs and Activities for Young Peacemakers, in which Davis contributed to the title track. It is a CD collection of enriching songs combined with a teacher's aid kit to help teach diversity and understanding. It is all part of the national "Teaching Tolerance" campaign and continues to be distributed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and sent to every public school in the country to help combat hatred.
