Blue Mother Tupelo: BluMa2plo
Blue Mother Tupelo
About Blue Mother Tupelo ... the husband and wife team of Ricky Davis (acoustic & electric guitars, dobro, vocals) and Micol Davis (piano, tambourine, vocals) began performing as a duo in 1995. Soon thereafter, drummers, bassists, harmonica players, fiddle players and other friends would sit in. BMT primarily performs as a trio with guitars (acoustic, electric & slide), piano, tambourines, drums & percussion. Ricky & Micol also perform in the original duo format as well.
Unique, passionate, inspired and unaffected by musical genres, Blue Mother Tupelo is pure heart and soul.
Nothing like NOW ...
Most recently, BMT's dreamy southern ballad rendering of the 1959 Paul Anka hit, “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”, has been included in the motion picture Daltry Calhoun (Johnny Knoxville/Juliette Lewis), released September 2005. The soundtrack for the movie features the ballad and includes, as a hidden track, BMT's “Put Your Head On My Shoulder Jam", a foot-stompin, sanctified soulful back & forth vocal w/Ricky's dobro & Micol's tambourine. The Daltry Calhoun movie DVD, hitting stores in February 2006, includes BMT's music video as an 'extra' featuring Micol & Ricky and the "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" ballad from the film.
Ricky + Micol ... gettin 2gether ... the early years
Micol was drawn to Knoxville’s thriving live music scene during her college years at The University of Tennessee when she and Ricky met. He invited her to sing with his band (Soulchaser) a couple of times, and they found their mutually strong interest in artists like Delaney & Bonnie, John Lee Hooker, and Van Morrison to be an undeniable force in their friendship. They got married in 1994 & in 1995 they began performing as Blue Mother Tupelo at local open-mike and songwriters' nights. Their own roots-rock sound was being created. Landing a weekly gig led to the addition of Ed Corts on drums and Jim Ladd on bass and a progressive rock-blues sound that soon became a staple in clubs in east Tennessee and western North Carolina.
The band's first recording was intended solely as a club-booking demo CD but, due to overwhelming requests from their audiences, was released to the public in 1997. My Side Of The Road included ten original songs and received good reviews from local media and several national publications.
Nashville Years ...
Ricky and Micol moved to Nashville in 1998. The four-piece band played throughout Tennessee, western North Carolina, and Georgia in clubs and opened concerts for Delbert McClinton, Grand Funk Railroad, and Pat Travers - and, in between gigs, the Davis duo performed at open-mike nights and songwriters’ rounds in Music City. A change in musical direction led to regrouping, and Ricky & Micol set out on their own again.
Their 2001 release, Delta Low - Mountain High, is an experimental, eclectic blend of songs and styles reflecting their love of southern roots, earthy rock, soul, and mountain music. Several musicians, including Bobby Keys on saxophone (Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, Delaney & Bonnie) and the superb rhythm section of Chucki Burke on drums (Willie Dixon, Isaac Hayes, Little Milton) and Dave Ro on bass (June Carter, Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam), lent their creativity to the recording which resulted in a well-received and respected collection of primarily Davis penned songs. It caught some attention among their peers in the music industry and garnered favorable reviews from their fans and local, national, and international critics.
Over the next two years, BMT performed as a duo with several guest musicians joining in from time to time. From 2003 - 2005 Johnny Richardson (Chuck Berry, Leroy Parnell) performed regularly with BMT on drums and percussion. In 2006 Rick Lonow (June Carter-Cash, Buritto Deluxe, The Bellamy Brothers) Michaeal "Bones" Allen, Manneth Webster and Kyle Burnham have all performed regularly with BMT on drums.
It's been said that a BMT performance is like stepping into a "pentecostal revival" -- with Ricky and Micol's gritty, sweet, soulful harmonies, earthy sounds of gutbucket guitar and slide, gospel piano & roadhouse pounding of tambourines. But the foundation to all of their work is to channel what is innately deep within them and to let it come forth naturally without definitions or restrictions.
BMT currently tours the southern & midwestern USA and wherever the music takes them - playing festivals, concerts, and clubs. They've opened shows for The Subdudes, Sonny Landreth, and Otha Turner's Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, to name a few. As well, they shared PRI's Mountain Stage lineup with Charlie Musselwhite, Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Guster. BMT has been nominated several years in a row as “Best Acoustic Blues Act” and Micol as “Female Vocalist of the Year” by the Music City Blues Society. Their song, “Home”, has been included on a compilation CD to benefit the Habitat for Humanity of Clarksdale, MS.
More About Ricky ...
Ricky (guitars, vocals) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and raised in south Knox County. Family get-togethers turned into pickin' parties with country, gospel, R&B, and rock 'n' roll. By the age of seven, he was playing guitar or drums right along with the grown ups. His guitar-playing father's Chuck Berry recordings led him to discover Muddy Waters, which was an epiphany to him and was the beginning of his journey into blues and slide guitar. A member of his high school marching, concert & jazz bands and a member of several working bands in his teens singing and playing guitar, saxophone or drums on Friday & Saturday nights in east Tennessee honky tonks and singing in the Baptist church every Sunday morning - not missing a Sunday service by his mother's insistence - by high school graduation he had turned down a jazz scholarship to the University of Tennessee and chose instead to attend Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and major in the Recording Industry Management program. At nineteen he formed his own band (the first of a few before BMT) getting a further education in honky tonks and juke joints, experimenting with psychedelic rock (Jimi Hendrix/The Allman Bros), blues (John Lee Hooker/Elmore James), soul (Otis Redding/Percy Sledge) and his own originals. Ricky is a formidable songwriter, soaring guitarist, and fervent vocalist capable of both morphing between styles and transforming the musical styles themselves.
More About Micol ...
Micol (piano, tambourine, vocals) was born in Memphis, Tennessee into a music-loving family and raised in various towns throughout the south including, Indianola, Mississippi, Fort Smith, Arkansas and Clinton, Tennessee. Around the age of four, she began picking out tunes on the church piano. Her father, a preacher, didn't allow his children to listen to secular music. Ironically, though, Micol absorbed the Jimmy Reed blues songs her father would sing at night as lullabies. After moving from state to state and church to church, her family settled in Clinton, Tennessee in the Knoxville area when she was thirteen. Through her teenage years, she was the church pianist, sang in various choirs, and eventually earned a degree in music education from the University Of Tennessee. Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, and Bobbie Gentry proved to be an enormous influence on her. She possesses the phenomenal natural gift to write songs and deliver whatever she's singing with absolute conviction and gut-wrenching soul, depth, and emotion - much like her music heroes.