Debbie Davies holds her own with the big boys of blues

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 5, 2001

By Steve Newton

When I hear the name Jay Geils nowadays, I remember how I used to whip over to an old Chilliwack High School buddy’s house at lunch hour for a quick fix of tuna on toast and the latest ’70s rock sounds. Sometimes it was Foghat’s Energized blasting from his tinny Sears stereo, other times Deep Purple’s Made in Japan.

But most often it was the J. Geils Band’s Live—Full House. We may have been insecure, adolescent twerps, but when the Boston boogiemen put the rejuvenating boots to blues standards, we were “hard-driving men” in our minds.

Apart from a couple of poppy hits in the early ’80s, not much has been heard from Jay Geils in the last 25 years or so, but the guitarist’s name does show up on the new CD by New York–based blueswoman Debbie Davies, Love the Game. He offers up a subtle but tasty slide solo on “Worst Kinda Man”.

“I’ve known Jay for a while,” reports Davies from a tour stop in Lincoln, Nebraska. “I just know all these guys because we’re all playin’ the same stuff and crossing paths. He’s got a band called Bluestime, and we actually did a Caribbean blues cruise with them, and got to jam. It was really fun.”

From the sound of things, serious jollies were also had during the recording of Davies’s latest disc, which sees the fiery, 48-year-old picker in the string-bending company of her former flame Coco Montoya (ex John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) and blues icon Duke Robillard.

The three of them really go to town on the aptly titled “Fired Up”, an instrumental tour de force that makes it clear Davies can hold her own with the big boys when it comes to the essential three Ts: taste, tone, and technique.

It’s no wonder that she’s just finished recording an instructional guitar tape for Arlen Roth’s Hot Licks video series. And her immense talent wasn’t lost on Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton—Stevie Ray Vaughan’s famed rhythm section, Double Trouble—who were all over Davies’s 1999 release, Tales From the Austin Motel.

“That was a relationship that I had nurtured from my days with Albert Collins,” notes Davies, who spent three years performing with the Master of the Telecaster before he succumbed to cancer in ’93. “We did a lotta shows with Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, so I knew all those guys.

“We had actually done a tribute after Stevie’s death at one of the House of Blues, and I had jammed with Double Trouble, and I just remembered how much I loved them as a rhythm section. It had been like one of those things that’s in your head for a while, and then you can finally make it happen.”

While Tales included cover versions of three Willie Dixon tunes, as well as Deadric Malone’s deathless “As the Years Go Passing By”, Love the Game forgoes proven blues standards in favour of tunes penned mostly by Davies and drummer Don Castagno, whom she’ll perform with—in the company of bassist Alan Hager—at the Yale on Sunday (April 8).

“This CD was just like a total in-house project,” she says, “where I really wanted to involve my band completely, because they were such good sports to let me do the other CD with Double Trouble. They didn’t give me any hassle about that. So this time we went in and just said, ‘Alright, we’re gonna go for it, we’re gonna write all the songs and we’re gonna play on everything together.’ And I’ll tell you what, it’s really made a difference in our live shows.”

When asked if she’s been blown away by any other female blues artists lately, Davies points to relative newcomer Susan Tedeschi (“She’s like a little sister”) and also gives a nod to veteran slide-guitar specialist Bonnie Raitt. But her biggest influence on guitar, by far, has been Eric Clapton.

“I first heard Eric Clapton when he was playin’ with John Mayall,” she relates, “and then later on Cream was a big deal to me. Even when I was real little, when I wasn’t even playing yet, I would just memorize the Clapton solos by ear, and I would sing ’em all. But the cool thing with Eric was, I’d read articles about him and he would always cite all the black American blues players as his influence, so he and John Mayall really taught us young white kids about our own country’s music.

“Like a lotta people my age, we kinda worked backwards to the real blues from the British blues.”

To hear the full audio of my 2001 interview with Debbie Davies subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can also eavesdrop on my uncut, one-on-one conversations with:

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John Sykes of Blue Murder, 1989
Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, 1998
Alice Cooper, 1986
Lars Ulrich of Metallica, 1985
Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon, 1992
Myles Goodwyn of April Wine, 2001
John Mellencamp, 1999
Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, 1999
Kenny Aronoff, 1999
Doyle Bramhall II, 2001
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Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers, 1992
Randy Bachman of the Guess Who, 2001
Little Steven, 1987
Stevie Salas, 1990
J.J. Cale, 2009
Joe Bonamassa, 2011
Rob Baker of the Tragically Hip, 1997
Tommy Emmanuel, 1994
John Petrucci of Dream Theater, 2010
Eric Johnson, 2001
Stu Hamm, 1991
Gene Simmons of Kiss, 1992
Ace Frehley from Kiss, 2008
David Lee Roth, 1994
Allan Holdsworth, 1983
John Mayall of the Bluesbreakers, 1988
Steve Vai, 1990
Tony Iommi of Heaven and Hell, 2007
Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1996
Geoff Tate of Queensryche, 1991
James Hetfield of Metallica, 1986
Stevie Ray Vaughan, 1990
Rick Richards of the Georgia Satellites, 1988
Andy McCoy and Sam Yaffa of Hanoi Rocks, 1984
Steve Morse, 1991
Slash of Guns N’ Roses, 1994
Brian May from Queen, 1993
Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers, 1991
Jake E. Lee of Badlands, 1992
Rickey Medlocke of Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1997
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Joe Perry of Aerosmith, 1987
Rick Derringer, 1999
Robin Trower, 1990
Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, 1994
Mick Ronson, 1988
Geddy Lee of Rush, 2002
Buck Dharma of Blue Oyster Cult, 1997
Michael Schenker, 1992
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Vinnie Paul of Pantera, 1992
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Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, 1988
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Paul Rodgers, 1997
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Walter Trout, 2003
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Tommy Aldridge, 2001
Donald “Duck” Dunn, 1985
Mark Farner of Grand Funk, 1991
Chris Robinson of Black Crowes, 1990
Jennifer Batten, 2002
Mike Fraser, 2014
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Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, 2002
David Gogo, 1991
Booker T. Jones, 2016
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Buddy Guy, 1991
Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers, 1990
Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers, 2016
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Lindsay Mitchell of Prism, 1988
Buddy Miles, 2001
Eddie Money, 1988
Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith, 1983
Gaye Delorme, 1990
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Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, 2016
Doc Neeson of Angel City, 1985
Rik Emmett of Triumph, 1985
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Leslie West of Mountain, 2002
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Uli Jon Roth, 2016
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Greg Lake of ELP, 1992
Robert Plant, 1993
Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson of AC/DC, 1983
Warren Zevon, 1992
Tal Wilkenfeld, 2016
Steve Clark of Def Leppard, 1988
Roy Buchanan, 1986
Gary Moore, 1984
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Ann Wilson of Heart, 1985
J.J. Cale, 1990
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Albert Collins, 1985
Ronnie James Dio, 1985
Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, 1984
Dick Dale, 2000
Greg Allman, 1998
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…with hundreds more to come