Featured Interview – Debbie Davies

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Cover photo © 2023 Joseph A. Rosen

image“I always wanted an electric guitar but you know I came from a different era. Everything was very gender specific. There was no support for girls to play electric guitar. Nobody would buy me one so I had to wait. I went a long time putting that aside because it wasn’t a possibility. When I was trying to put myself through school I was always working too, so I was able to put a little money aside. I finally decided I’m gonna play electric, I still wanted to do it. So in my early 20’s I finally got my first electric guitar and went nuts trying to play it.”

Debbie Davies has been “nuts” for the electric guitar ever since. A determined, endlessly inventive and immediately recognizable practitioner, Davies is one of the most important Blues guitarists of her generation. Famous for being Albert Collins’s rhythm player before his death, Debbie Davies, however is not a household name. After spending a career blasting open doors for female Blues artists and confronting male chauvinism and bias head on, at 70, Debbie Davies still has to grind it out to continue to produce her art. It is this hard work and steadfast commitment to equality and opportunity that have made Debbie such a deep and lasting artist.

Debbie holds a unique style that bridges the gaps between old school emotive power like Collins, Albert King or Buddy Guy and the more modern multi-faceted approach that she and her contemporaries such as Ronnie Earl, Kenny Neal or Duke Robillard created. A road warrior, Debbie has spent much of her career traversing the US and Europe spreading her music while recording a catalog of superb Blues albums. But, it all starts with the guitar. While describing Ronnie Earl, one of your humble interviewer’s heroes, Debbie makes a definitive statement about guitar:

“I think what really makes somebody a great in the guitar world, cause there’s millions of us, right, is when you can just hear a few notes and they have such a strong style and tone you know who it is.”

This describes Debbie’s playing, and I told her as much. Debbie Davies’ guitar playing is simultaneously robust and muscular while being tender and emotive. A master of the Stratocaster, Debbie pays a great deal of attention to her tone.

“At this point in time the Strat is all I play. I’ve been through a lot of guitars and at one point in time I was into having a bunch of ‘em. I’ve ended up with the Stat except that I’ve sort of modified my Strats now. My main one, it has a humbucker in the neck position and a P-90 in the bridge position. They’re both from the 60’s. They’re both really cool pick ups I’ve had for a long time. I’ve moved them around in different guitars. I feel like I can get a lotta tones with those.”

“Basically at one point I was playing a Tele, prior to that, really crappy guitars, nothing name. I finally got a Tele and that was really cool. But at some point I kinda got that Strat fever. As soon as I got a Strat and had that option with that 5 position switch and then also  just the way it sits, I mean the way the weight’s distributed, I fell in love with it.”

This is some high-end guitar-hound tone chasing. Humbuckers and P-90s are used primarily in Les Pauls and other more Rock styled guitars with a heavier thicker sound. The Stratocaster is set up with single coil pickups that sound more icy and bright. Debbie is using the 3 pick up spaces and the possibility of mixing and mashing tones together with the referenced 5 position switch to ring a spectrum of tone out of her guitar.

Yet, Debbie Davies serves the music not her six-string ego. Debbie’s approach to her formidable playing is “play the song.”

image“You work really hard on your craft to become the kind of player who doesn’t need to think on stage. I mean improvising is the whole trip with the kind of music I play. It’s mostly stylistic to me, I mean play to the song. When you learn guitar licks, you know there are certain licks that work really well over a Rhumba, say. And other ones that are like strong Shuffle licks. I mean if I’m doin’ a Texas Blues that’s the style I’m gonna be playin’ in. I’m improvising totally but that’s where I’m at, that’s where I’m comin’ from. Slow Blues is like, it’s just like total improvising. But, it comes from learning tons of that kind of stuff. Sitting with all the records for a long time to get that stuff. Then it comes out as your own.”

“So really,” Debbie sums it up,  “like I’m not a shredder. I’m not playing to like show off all my licks. I’m playing to the song. If the song doesn’t need a big hellacious guitar solo, it’s not gonna get one.”

Debbie matches her guitar refinement with a talent for writing songs. Not just picking excellent material to cover, which she also does very well, Debbie often adds a number of original Blues to her albums. I remarked how Debbie’s 1996 political outrage on “Howling at the Moon” from the album I Got That Feeling still, sadly, feels relevant today.

“It’s a funny thing because the majority of Blues tunes and songwriting in the world in general is kinda about love, loss of love, falling in love, heartbreak, that whole stuff. And that’s fine, that’s what people write about and sing about and feel that. You know when I had the chance to work with John Mayall he’s like notorious for writing political based tunes and topical tunes. So I think I might have got a little bug in my brain to do that maybe from John.”

Debbie goes on to humbly describe her writing process. Not taking credit for being an excellent writer, which she is, Debbie instead shares her varied receipt of songwriting inspiration. At the heart is her consistent hard work and dedication.

“As far as my process goes I don’t consider myself a heavy songwriter,” Debbie demures. “I consider myself more a guitar player singer, you know. But, I can write. So what I’m saying is I don’t write constantly, I’m not like one of those prolific guys. But, there’s no one real exact way. I’ve had a couple of songs that just come to me. You know for whatever reason the words, the chords, the groove, the whole thing it takes not very long to write the whole song. And that’s kinda rare. Occasionally I’d be touring and when it’s not my driving shift just kinda sit and trippin’ on stuff and I’d write a song.”

“More likely I get an idea or a couple of lines and I’d write that down or record or whatever. And then know that I want to make a song out of that. Or I’d come up with some guitar riffs and be like yeah that needs to be a song. And then at that point you’ve gotta get into the craft of songwriting which means you actually set time and sit down and do the work until the song is done.”

“I’ve also written with other people. My drummer for years, Don Castagno, was my songwriting partner. He’s a great songwriter, he would write a lot more often than I. But, you know he would have ideas, I would have ideas and we would come together. That was awesome. Or sometimes he would write lyrics and he would need me to write music to it. There’s also that collaborative thing that can happen which is very cool.”

Debbie grew up in California to musical parents. She got an acoustic guitar at an early age, but as she mentioned, had to wait and find her heart’s sound in the electric guitar on her own. But the influence of the Blues early on was strong.

“Both my folks were musicians.” Debbie remembers, “my dad worked here in the Hollywood recording scene. I grew up hearing a lot of Jazz and Big Band and Swing and all of that kinda stuff. You know there’s like a musical corridor between LA and Texas. So a lot of the Texas Swing and the Texas Blues, that whole sound was always really attractive to me.”

imageAfter college and learning the electric guitar, Debbie started to make a name for herself. She became significant enough in the San Francisco scene to draw the attention of the Iceman, the Master of the Telecaster, Mr. Albert Collins. In 2017 Debbie told Blues Blast interviewer Don Wilcox all about her time with Mr. Collins and the many funny and instructional lessons she learned: https://www.bluesblastmagazine.com/featured-interview-debbie-davies/

Debbie left the Collins organization minted as a bankable artist. It was time for Debbie to build her career out. The highs and lows of the industry can be significant for anyone. Through her recording career, Debbie never lost sight of the impact of being a woman who is a badass guitarist. Debbie was able to draw on her experiences as a child and find a new facet of her art in the studio.

“I had the opportunity to be around recording as a kid because that’s where my dad’s job was. So I’ve always kind of loved the process. I had a slight idea and feel for it when I first started. But, the thing is when the record labels were happening, the indie labels were really doing stuff, the artist didn’t have as much say so or control. They wanted to take your publishing, they picked the studio. Like my first record they picked the studio, it was up in San Francisco even though I was in Southern California. They picked the players and (chuckle) I brought the songs.”

“It was kinda like I didn’t really have control practically over the whole thing. But, I worked closely with the engineer who was basically the producer at that time. We worked back and forth and I was certainly learning because it was my first album of my music.”

Many more albums followed. Some Debbie was able to use her touring band and get the kind of sound she wanted, some she wasn’t able to. Working with legendary producers like Jim Gaines and sympathetic colleagues like Duke Robillard. Then everything changed.

“Eventually a lot of the little labels went under. The whole landscape toward the latter years of my hard touring, the whole business of the recording industry, everything began to change. That totally affected me and what I do because there’s a particular business model that I operated under. I made a living doing this, you know. So I didn’t have any other job skills (chuckling).

When clubs began to close and CD’s became less popular because all the stuff was digital, and record labels began to go under and consolidate. It got hard for me to keep doing it the way I was doing it. I mean it got to the point where the record labels were like yeah we’ll put your label out but you’ve got to pay to make it. I began to do that but unfortunately it just put me temporarily out of business.”

“Record labels have figured out how to make money (haha), they just have. To the rest of us a lot of it is just mysterious. I entered the music business knowing absolutely nothing about business. My folks were musicians, there was no business goin’ on in my home. As time went on you gradually learn it and you gradually figure it out. You know young people today are all over business. They understand all the social media and this and that. I’m like a late bloomer. I have the iPhone and the computer and I’ve learned how to do certain things but it wasn’t what I was doing for the majority of the time of my career.”

Debbie has had a career at an incredibly dynamic time. After being goaded by a press agent to get a Facebook page, Debbie has made herself available to all of the modern, mostly digital, trappings of the music business and self-promotion. She shares a profound insight into the differences in her generation and the young people she is in the market with.

image“Honestly promoting yourself, having to learn how to promote yourself, from where I’m coming from, from my generation, that was just something that was so ugly. If anybody talked about themselves like that, that was a show-biz no no. You had press to do that, you had press agents, and labels and managers. But the artist, you were supposed to be humble and you never said anything like that. So for me, from that generation, trying to transition into the like (with a silly mock self promoting voice): ‘Hey, look at me, look at what I’m doing. Great, look at this picture of me doing that!’ You know what I mean, it took me a while. I think I’ve transitioned now.”

Debbie moved from Connecticut back to California to care for her mom. Both her mother and sister passed away and Debbie was able to be there for them helping them with their transition. Deeply sad and at a time when she was struggling with the financial and artistic realities of the drastically changed music industry.

“Yeah I went through hard times,” Debbie laments. “People go through that, you know.”

Having just gone through the struggles of supporting her family, Debbie was ready to get back at it. Then COVID hit. For an artist who has made their living pretty methodically using a touring business model, COVID seemed like the end. But, Debbie persevered like always, took some time to recuperate and characteristically was thinking of others.

“I had just kinda gotten a band back together and we had stuff on the calendar and getting going and COVID hit (giggles). So then it was COVID and you know I felt so bad for all of the younger people who were out there trying to pound the pavement full time, their careers just getting going. To me it’s like, okay I’ve done that for 30 years. It’s not like really keeping me from my career. I was like okay. I did a lot more resting and healing from a lot of things.”

Debbie Davies is a model for an artistic life well lived. She continues to be as potent and creative as she was when she got that first electric guitar in her early 20’s. A strong willed force, Debbie elevates her sisters such as Sue Foley and Joanna Connor who also blasted through the male dominated Blues world throughout the 90’s. Debbie is a survivor. We are lucky she is still feeling the Blues, still serving that creative spark in her soul. There is more to come from Debbie Davies, she has a lot more to give us.

“Now I’ve got another band together and we’re working again and doing some cool stuff. I’m still playing and I’m starting to write again which is really cool. I’m feeling really good and rejuvenated (laughing).”

Check out Debbie Davies website for her performances all around California and hopefully soon all over the US: https://www.debbiedavies.com/

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