Blues Pilgrims: Eric Bibb & Guy Davis

Tickets are $25 and $20, plus applicable service charges.  The show is reserved seating. 

We have one single ticket left for this show , so check the But Tickets button above and see if they are still there! 

After that, this show is sold out.  We don't really anticipate there being any additional seats at the door.  Only no shows.  If you would like to get advance word on our shows, please sign up for our e-mail announcement list.

- On February 8th, Guy will be heading straight from the airport for an in-studio performance with DJ Carol Boss on Afternoon Freeform.  He should get there around 2:15.

- Listen to Eric's Art of the Song special from our Concerts & Conversations show at the Outpost in January, 2011

Grammy nominee Eric Bibb [web site | Amazon.com] is a native New Yorker with deep roots in the American blues and folk tradition. The son of 1960s folk and musical theater singer and television personality Leon Bibb, Eric's uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Paul Robeson was his godfather. He has toured the world, performing at major festivals like London Blues Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival in Britain, Cognac Blues Festival in France, Byron Bay & Port Fairy in Australia, Vancouver, Edmonton & Calgary Folk Festivals in Canada, Montreal Jazz Festival, Chicago World Music Festival and San Francisco Jazz.

Booker's Guitar, Bibb's 2010 release, was inspired by the discovery of a 1930s vintage Resophonic National steel-body guitar that had belonged to Delta blues legend Booker White—an older cousin to B.B. King. The encounter inspired the album's half-spoken, half-sung title track, which Bibb recorded in England using White's guitar. The remaining tracks, although recorded in rural Ohio on Bibb's own guitars, sprang from the same well of inspiration. Booker's Guitar hit No. 1 on Billboard's Blues Albums Chart and won the 2010 DownBeat Critics Poll for Best Blues Album.

Bibb's latest effort, Troubadour Live, was released in May 2011. Featuring Swedish guitarist Staffan Astner and gospel trio Psalm4, Troubadour Live was recorded in December 2010 at Katalin and All That Jazz in Uppsala, Sweden (about 50 miles north of Stockholm) and captures a powerful live performance in an intimate but emotionally charged setting. "After many ambitious studio albums, I really wanted to document and share with a wider audience what I'd been doing live on stage," says Bibb. "Given my intensive touring schedule over the past couple years, there was a window of opportunity to involve some fine musicians whom I really love working with live as well as in the studio, and it all seemed to come together around this gig."

PopMatters wrote, "Troubadour Live provides a strong take at Bibb's work... he crafts a particular, coherent sound, full of both his musical vision and his personality. Combine that aesthetic with strong performances and fitting guests, and you've got a show worth hearing."

Handy Award winner Guy Davis [web site | Amazon.com] has combined a theatrical legacy, as the son of stage legends Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, with a deep sense of the blues as the central trunk of African-American culture. He has portrayed Robert Johnson Off-Broadway, and also appeared on Broadway in Mule Bone (music by Taj Mahal) and in the highly acclaimed revival of Finian's Rainbow, and recently as a Special Guest in Million Dollar Quartet. At the same time, as Playboy magazine noted, "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." He has appeared at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and a host of international festivals. His latest album, Legacy, was picked as one of the Best CDs of the Year by National Public Radio (NPR).

"There was a time when acoustic blues was seen as an integral and vital part of the American folk scene. Musicians like Son House, Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and the Reverend Gary Davis appeared regularly at folk festivals and were loved and admired by the likes of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Today that tradition, which has almost vanished, lives on with a small band of younger blues performers including Taj Mahal, Eric Bibb and Guy Davis... So much contemporary blues is weak and pallid. Guy Davis is never like that. He has a power and authenticity which makes him sound as though he is in direct contact with the old masters. And, interestingly, his own compositions... are so in tune with the tradition that they seem as though they were written after a hard day in the cottonfields." 
—Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald

Eric Bibb and Guy Davis join their blues lineages in a pilgrimage to find and preserve the mystical center of the blues in today’s world, and to forge from it a positive message for our times.

Come early for some pre-show lobby entertainment from Stagefright Slim [Amazon info]. After 40 years of playing guitar and studying with many country blues masters (John Jackson, Paul Rishell, John Cephas, Jerry Ricks, Corey Harris, Paul Geremia, Roy Book Binder, Mary Flower, Ernie Hawkins, Steve James, Stan Hirsch and others) Stagefright Slim has developed his own style of fingerstyle and slide guitar. Slim has released two CDs of original acoustic guitar instrumentals. "Half Century Blues" was released in 2008 and recently "Blues For Ed" in 2011.