Some will surely make the complaint that there are more famous musicians, higher up on the music career ladder and more advanced musically, so why would a complete unknown all the way over in England deserve a full profile in thecountryblues.com, ahead of them? One of the missions of this acoustic blues directory is not just to feature the famous, but those who should be and could be. Musical discovery is as important as crediting the accomplished.
Here is a talented player worth knowing. No, he has no international tours yet, no CDs to sell and no long resume to point to. He is just getting started. Were it not for the internet and social media, Kelvin Davies, who works in a guitar shop, would be just another one of thousands of unknown musicians in thousands of other guitar shops, playing great music to himself and small local audiences. In almost every local community music shop there are great unsung players. Here is one of them, a young bard from Stevenage, just north of London, whose promising talent came to light on the Acoustic Blues Pickers forum on Facebook. He works at the Coda Music store and, well, go figure, he plays guitar, and not just a little. Here is one fine fingerpicker and singer. Like any self-respecting guitar shop player, he is a self-admitted guitar snob who told us that he has many but that he mostly likes to bring his Collins to gigs.
The first appealing thing about this virtually unknown bluesman is his natural, easy style – unpretentious and classy. No fake American accent, no attempt to mimic African American lingo, no strange masquerade dressing up. He is being himself, and that works best. The upcoming musico is just thirty years old and he fingerpicks with a refined level of eloquence better than many who have decades of more experience. He makes the alternating bass fingerpicking look easy. If he does things right, he is one to watch, a great new talent on the rise. With some work and focus, the rookie has a potential shot not just to be among the future great players in England, but anywhere, with a little more work and experience on a bigger stage with musicians his equal. Hopefully, this article will catapult him to your attention. He needs to get with true blues players, to come to the US to blues camps and serious guitar workshops with some of the top players, to get to know some of the accomplished guitarists who can help him advance and network. That could be Tom Feldman, Toby Walker, Ari Eisinger, Frank Fotusky or any of the other heavy hitters.
Thecountryblues.com caught up with Kelvin Davies by phone to get his story:
Kelvin Davies: “I work in a guitar shop, and I played guitar. I worked there for just over eight years now, and played guitar for probably 17 years. Maybe about five and a half years ago we branched out and separated into two shops, acoustic and electric. I went over to the acoustic shop and heard more and more people coming in, generally older guys, playing ragtime blues and I really liked that, and figured I should give some of that a go. I tried it and it infuriated me because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get the thumb going. Because I couldn’t do it, I was like, blast it, I’m determined now and that I that year I knuckled down and that was that. After I started picking up some of these songs I heard guys playing in the shop, and I did a little research, found out who these old blues guys from the ‘20s and ‘30s were and that was it. I learned as many songs as I could, and went out to a couple of open mic nights and met a harmonica player at the first one I went to, and we sort of keep it up, we clicked, and that was that. In October-November 2016 I went out and did an open mic night. Since then it’s just been open mics and gigs. I regularly perform with the harmonica player Gary Jones, he’s 65 years old and lives in a town called Baldock.
My playing is probably most like Mississippi John Hurt, because he was the first blues musician I got into. I’ve got a demo CD which I recorded – one track –with one microphone in my bedroom which I’ve got on Bandcamp, which is just under my name there, Kelvin Davies. I recently supported Catfish Keith at a venue where I saw him play last autumn. We followed each other on Facebook anyway, and he suggested if I could get a gig close to home we could put on a show together. I ended up renting out this venue at home, but we rented out the back room because we weren’t sure how successful it would be. And we ended up so successful, we couldn’t fit any more people in that room. So the next time we know to go for the main venue.
There’s another guy called Danny Bryant who has a blues rock band and I supported him at Dingwalls in Camden, which is like a pretty substantial venue…I’m a guitar snob. I just want to keep the songs, keep many of the songs that I love alive – sort of comes alive – keep them getting played and heard. And of course I’d like myself to be heard by as many people as possible. But the most important thing for me is that I’m enjoying playing what I’m playing, and if people can enjoy it, then excellent.
It’s difficult over here, to be honest. There’s a club in London called St. Harmonica’s Blues Club, and every Friday they have a blues band that plays there, and I often go and do that 30-minute interval while the band takes a break kind of thing. There are places like that, but at the local blues clubs it’s good. But local sort of pub gigs and stuff, terrible.
I have for the last year been determined to learn some more Blind Blake style. I admire Ari Eisinger. I saw Ari a couple of years ago and took like a 3-hour trek to go watch a gig of him up north. I bought the Blind Blake DVD by Ari. I sat down with it the other day for the first time in a long time. This year I’m going to work on some of this. Definitely big on some Blind Blake songs, not necessarily note-for-note, but in the style of Blind Blake, more of a ragtime approach.
One of my other highlight is playing one of my own songs on BBC Cambridgeshire Radio.”
Here is the bard in his kitchen.