Guitarist and producter Tom Rodwell with Coco Davis. Photo: Photo/Garth Badger
Guitarist and producter Tom Rodwell with Coco Davis. Photo: Photo/Garth Badger
Old haunts are reinvented when blues vocalist Coco Davis breathes new life into iconic early blues songs and performs at the Tauranga Art Gallery next week.
Davis has a powerhouse voice and her debut LP dismantles and rearranges a collection of early "revenge blues" classics into a contemporary travelogue ofwitty and ghoulish tales. Shorn of the musical cliches that beset the blues genre, Old Haunts is one for storytellers, an imaginative realm of runaways, night-owls and badmen.
The lyrics of an old blues tune take on a fresh longing when placed in the languid company of filmic synthesizers, razor sharp slide guitar and sultry baritone sax.
An instant classic, Old Haunts is set to chart Coco Davis as a true balladeer, bringing classic blues songs to a new generation.
Having performed at festivals around New Zealand and beyond (Hongerige Wolf [Holland], Ealing Rhythm and Blues Festival [London], Splore, Auckland Arts Festival and more), Davis is also widely acclaimed in NZ theatre circles; having loaned her talents to numerous Auckland Theatre Company shows (Cabaret, Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors), while her own production of Sam Shepard's surrealist cowboy operetta The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill has appeared widely on the arts festival circuit.
