Nashville Soulshine In Southern Alabama
Blue Mother Tupelo comes to Pirate's Cove and Callaghan's
By Michael Dumas
As if you needed a reason to get out and hear some live music, Sept. 22 and 23 is shaping up to be a fantastic weekend as Mobile and Josephine welcome the regional powerhouse Blue Mother Tupelo back to its shores. Micol and Ricky Davis, possibly the most exciting husband-and-wife band touring today, bill their music as "SwampadelicSouthernSoulRock" and always bring their A-game.
Parts bluegrass, rock and bayou soul, Blue Mother Tupelo cuts a free and endearing swath through Southern roots music, reciprocating focus between Ricky's acoustic six-string and dobro and Micol's keyboard and writhing tambourine. And the best part of the enthused instrumentation is that laid over it like psychedelic moss are the duo's harmonic vocals, which resonate as though the two had somehow been amiably married forever.
Blue Mother Tupelo is a favorite at Callaghan's, having last played Mobile's Irish Social Club on Sunday, Aug. 12. The house was packed, with spontaneous dancing and revelry breaking out in what few vacant spots there were. Local phenom, Lisa Mills stopped by and looked to be having a blast from her front-row vantage point.
It's all going to happen again on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.. The cover at Callaghan's won't be more than $5 which, when you kick in another $10 for their album, "Delta Low Mountain High", is more than a bargain.
This visit will also include a stop in Josephine at historic Pirate's Cove the night before at 7 p.m. "Island time" never meant as much as it does at the Cove, providing a perfect opportunity to waft offshore on your boat, or sit in the sand, as you listen to Micol and Ricky make the music that has sustained fans during hundreds of tour dates a year.
Now that the weather has started to show us some mercy, take a couple of nights off and enjoy Southern living with Blue Mother Tupelo. For more information about upcoming shows, pictures and music, visit www.bluemothertupelo.com
Current Weekly Arts & Entertainment (Sep 22, 2007)
Blue Mother Tupelo
By Leah Willis
What shakes more than cherries in a moonshine jar, and isn't much bigger? That would be the petite Ms. Micol (pronounced "Michael") Davis. You've not seen rhythm until you've seen the percussive jingle of Micol's tambourine snake through her body, head to toe, as her husband Ricky licks out expressive slide guitar. Micol's raspy voice pleads: Put your head on my shoulder baby/ Show me that you love me/ Make everything alright. She's all delta soul and siren femininity.
And Ricky responds: Hold me in your arms baby/ Squeeze me real tight/ Show me that you love me/ Make everything alright. He's backroom blues and Appalachian mountain staying power.
... Blue Mother Tupelo creates just the right balance of impassioned vocals and controlled rhythms. It's the confluence of a turbulent, cool mountain stream and a warm, sunny river—that eddy where the water's just right. Dive in.
Metro Pulse (Jun 25, 2007)
By Steve Wildsmith
As much as Blue Mother Tupelo performs in Blount County, you’d be hard-pressed to peg the band members as residents of Nashville.
From “The Shed” at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson a few months ago to the “Big BBQ Bash” a couple of weeks ago to Brackins Blues Club (where the band plays regularly) on Saturday night to the Back Hills Cafe on July 28 — the husband-wife duo of Ricky and Micol Davis have carved a niche for themselves as favorites of Blount County music lovers.
“We’re always meeting new people and making friends, and I just told Ricky the other day that I’m really thankful to play in Maryville,” Micol Davis told The Daily Times this week. “I’m thankful for people coming out to see us and that we can play so many different events there. Especially Brackins — we always have a good time there, and we’re thankful we don’t have to strictly do blues when we play there.”
“We like the fact that music lovers show up there to just listen and have a good time,” Ricky Davis added. “That’s our people — music lovers who appreciate all kinds of music.”
That’s a good thing for the Davises, considering the wealth of influences they bring to the table. A typical BMT show is the audio equivalent of going to a pizza place and asking the kid behind the counter to surprise you. You never know what you’ll be served, but you do know this — it’s pizza, so it’s going to be good. Blue Mother Tupelo works just like that — country, bluegrass, blues, swamp-rock ... it’s a grab-bag of rich, rootsy sounds, and it’s all good!
Ricky’s guitar work, whether he’s playing acoustic, electric or slide, channels the blues from the Mississippi Delta as much as it does the fleet-fingered picking styles of the Appalachian hills. With a sweet tenor, he’s a perfect compliment to his wife’s brazen, Bonnie Raitt-meets-Sheryl Crow vocals. At “The Shed” recently, the crowd was an enthusiastic mix of gyrating bikers, politely clapping seniors and kids jumping off the stage and dancing in unison at Micol’s feet.
“We’ve got so many influences it’s almost unbelievable: Definitely the late ‘60s psychedelic bluesy rock stuff; old blues stuff like Muddy Waters; Van Morrison,” Ricky Davis told us in an interview a couple of years ago. “The realness of the Mississippi sound, that Stax Records soulful sound, is really kind of right in the middle of where we come from, as well as old country stuff, like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. Any kind of music that’s got grit and soul appeals to us, whether it’s Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix to all points in between.”
Ricky and Micol Davis first met when the two — both Knoxville natives (Ricky [born in Knoxville and raised in south Knox County] graduated from Doyle and Micol [moved with her family to east Tennessee from the Mississippi Delta, Arkansas & Memphis] went to Clinton) — ran into each other in Knoxville’s Old City, where Ricky was playing with another group. The couple moved to Nashville about five years ago to further their music career, a move that’s paying off despite the corporate climate of Music City.
“In the Nashville music business, you always get strong opinions from different people in the industry — people telling you that you ought to be doing this, that or the other,” Ricky Davis said. “We take it with a grain of salt, because primarily we listen to ourselves. We’ve been in Nashville for eight years now, and we’ve made friends with other songwriters in Nashville, and one of the reasons we’re such a tight-knit family is that we’ve been run through the ringer by the corporate mentality.
“I would love to see some changes made in that sort of thing, because there’s not very much stuff coming out of there that sounds like classic country. Things aren’t country, even though they want to call it that. There are a lot of songwriters in Nashville writing all kinds of music; that town is full of people who are virtually unknown, but they’re excellent. Every one should probably be household names.”
While major-label success and riches would be nice, that isn’t the goal for the Davises, however. More than anything, they want to continue making music and friends and spreading the love they feel for what they do. After six years, they’re close to wrapping up work on a new studio album (the follow-up to 2001’s “Delta Low, Mountain High”). Tentatively, it’s going to be called “Heaven and Earth,” and they hope to get it out by September.
“It really does seem slow-going at times, but it seems like that’s just sort of been the pattern for us,” Micol Davis said. “We’re always growing and learning, always meeting new people and making friends. Our audience is growing, and Ricky and I are getting stronger in a lot of ways too. We don’t worry too much and think too much about what we’re sounding like; more or less, if it sounds good to us, we just do it.
“I think our approach to the new recording right now is that it’s not going to be so diverse as far as stylistic stuff goes. We’re not going to have big horns on a song or stuff like that; it’s going to be scaled down instrumentally, and I think it’s going to be probably easier to categorize as far as more of a rootsy style rather than flirting with a little bit of everything.”
Despite the X-factors still to be worked out, fans can count on one thing — it will sound solid. It will be rootsy. It will be the next best thing to seeing Blue Mother Tupelo perform live.
“We’re always taking our music new places, and lately it’s just a feeling in our gut, knowing that we’ve kind of grown musically,” Ricky Davis said. “We’re really getting inside ourselves and getting our own sound out more and more and more. We just play what we play, and what we play is who we are.”
The Daily Times (Jun 28, 2007)
The Post & Courier
Sometimes no matter how much you listen to something it's hard to describe it.
That's precisely the problem when it comes to Blue Mother Tupelo, check that, it's not a problem in that there's anything wrong with the music they play. It's just that when it comes to describing it, well, it's not as simple as the music itself sounds.
Folk, acoustic, gospel, bluegrass and southern roots all come to mind.
"It's the epitome of Americana when no one knows what else to call it," explained Ricky Davis, who thought psychedelic was just as good a description as the rest. "It used to be called rock and roll music in the '70s."
"We're a southern, soulful American rock and country," added Ricky's wife Michol, who stopped to laugh before continuing, "well, we're not country. … We're earthy, that's kind of what we try to go with."
Be it the Dylan-like poetry, grooves reminiscent of Van Morrison or the soul of Aretha Franklin their influences are rooted in artists, as Michol explained, "you don't forget."
In any case, they would like to think that once you've been introduced to their amalgamation of inspiration that the music actually supercedes categorization.
"It's not Aretha," Michol admitted, "but I always have to put soul in there. It's organic. It's where we come from."
Michol was born in Memphis and raised in Mississippi. The daughter of a strict Southern Baptist preacher, as a child, she wasn't allowed to listen to pop music and instead her family would gather to together to enjoy southern gospel and hymns.
Years before Ricky was born in East Tennessee, at the foothills of the Smokey Mountains, his uncle used to pick with the likes of Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family.
Growing up, unlike his wife, he was exposed to the rock and roll of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, honky tonk heroes Hank Williams and Buck Owens as well as the peace-loving '70s rock of The Eagles and Creedance Clearwater Revival, but it was a Jimi Hendrix video from Woodstock that he watched when he was five years old that has resonated all these years later.
"We just want to touch people," Michol said, "touch someone's heart" and "win one heart at a time," added Ricky.
Ricky and Michol managed to win a pair of hearts when they performed at a house party in early 2005 and unbeknown to them Hollywood producer Danielle Renfrew and director Katrina Holden Bronson, daughter of the late Charles Bronson, happened to be there.
Afterward they complimented the husband and wife duo and went to so far as to ask for their contact information.
"We didn't think we'd hear from them," said Ricky, recalling the chance meeting. "A month later they gave us a call."
As it turns out they wanted to use two tracks for their independent film Daltry Calhoun featuring Johnny Knoxville and Juliette Lewis. Executive produced by Quentin Tarantino, Calhoun prominently featured Blue Mother Tupelo's dreamy southern rendition of the Paul Anka classic Put Your Head on My Shoulder during the movie's climatic scene.
Bronson, who directed the critically acclaimed project, also directed a music video for Shoulder that was part of the extra features package for the DVD release of the film.
"That was a huge honor," Ricky said. "It really makes us feel great"
Their efforts and good will again paid of last year following one of their many festivals appearances. This particular one, however, was reviewed in the widely regarded magazine Paste, and ran under the bold headline: Blue Mother Tupelo is Quite Possibly the Best Husband and Wife Duo You've Never Heard of.
"To have it verbalized like that," said Michol with her voice trailing off, "I don't know, it means a lot. It's really cool that somebody would think that.
"We just want to make music, real music that doesn't necessarily, ah, music that means something to somebody, written words that mean something to them."
In any case, Ricky and Michol sure do seem to get around for a duo that we've supposedly never heard of.
They continue touring while they work on a new CD and amidst a schedule of upcoming festival dates they'll make their way to Charleston on Friday, March 23 where they'll perform at Fiery Ron's Home Team BBQ.
"We're very thankful that this is what we're doing for a living. It's a real blessing," surmised Ricky.
Interview by Keith Ryan Cartwright for The Post Courier
The Post & Courier (Mar 22, 2007)
By Leah Willis
Blue Mother Tupelo represents the best of what the Tennessee music scene has to offer. From Memphis' soulful blues to the rock-country of contemporary Nashville to the homespun harmonies of Appalachia, wife and husband Micol and Ricky Davis draw on a range of influences—including '60s folk rock and "sweet-iced tea and ice cold beer"—to create a cohesive, truly unique, transgenerational sound. Partners in love and music, they are easily among the best songwriter-musicians ever to call the Volunteer State home. Though they're frequently touring around the Southeast, we're glad Blue Mother Tupelo remembers where they came from; they sing in "Home": No matter where I'm going, I know I'm comin' back. They'll be making a stop at Brackins Blues Club in Maryville on Saturday, Feb. 17 around 9 in the evening. $6.
Metro Pulse (Feb 14, 2007)
WUSM 88.5 Hattiesburg, Mississippi DJ Mik Davis' Interview with Ricky Davis of Blue Mother Tupelo
WUSM:
What's the story of your formation and what do you think keeps you together and playing?
Ricky:
We met each other in Knoxville, Tennessee's live music scene. Micol had come to see the band that I had back then, Soulchaser. We became friends and she sang with us at our rehearsals sometimes. I invited her to sing at a couple of our shows.
We started dating and a year later got married. We thought our names - Ricky & Micol Davis - were not very interesting sounding, so we came up with a name that relates to where we're coming from musically and that's where we came up with the name, Blue Mother Tupelo. In 1995 we began performing as BMT at Knoxville open-mike and songwriters' nights with the idea of making our own pure roots-rock sound. Soon after that, we landed a weekly gig and added a bassist and drummer. At that time we were primarily performing in east Tennessee, western North Carolina and Georgia. We did some shows with Delbert McClinton, Grand Funk Railroad and Pat Travers, and we played at the Allman Brothers Band Family Reunion in Macon, Georgia.
What keeps us together is our love for each other, our love for the process of songwriting, our need to express ourselves through music & making new sounds in music, our love for performing live and recording, as well as our love for going on tour with our music. Music is our life. We wouldn't know what to do without it.
WUSM:
It's a long way from Open Mic nights to touring and playing shows. Did you foresee all of this happening to you when you first started playing?
Ricky:
When we were doing open mic nights in the mid-90's, we knew that we wanted to take our music higher & higher. And that's what we're striving to do today as well. We didn't foresee every twist and turn that happens within the music business, but we did have a general burning desire to go farther with our music.
WUSM:
How much of how you write and play is based on your chemistry together?
Ricky:
Probably most of the music we make within BMT is in some form based on our chemistry together.
WUSM:
Your music combines Delta blues with sort of an Appalachian flavor, what are your influences?
Ricky:
The things that influence our music is life. Everything that we experience influences our music in some way.
We both certainly come from the music of Mississippi's delta & hill country that have deeply touched us through our lives. Appalachian, or mountain music, has also been a great source of inspiration to us. We're just making our music and are not claiming to be within any one genre or the other but this music is certainly at the heart of what we do.
Micol is the daughter of a Baptist preacher. Her family moved to different churches and to different towns. She was born in Memphis and lived in Indianola, Mississippi, Fort Smith, Arkansas and Clinton, Tennessee as a girl. She had a strict southern Baptist preacher dad and he didn't allow his children to listen to Pop music at all when she was growing up. So, she heard primarily southern gospel music & hymns, but ironically, her dad would sing Jimmy Reed blues songs as lullabies to his children. He was a huge fan of the blues, although he tried to keep it out of their household. Micol began playing piano at around 4 years old. 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. As she got older, her dad loosened up on allowing the family to hear other music and soon thereafter, Micol discovered Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, and Bobbie Gentry who have all proven to be an enormous influence on her.
I was born and raised in Knox County in east Tennessee. My dad, uncles & cousins had a band together through my childhood. They played all the time. Long before I was born, one of my uncles used to travel to Bristol, Tennessee to pick, sing & drink with Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. When I was a kid, I would hear my family's band playing & singing early Rock & Roll music like Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry; some soul music like The Silhouettes & Ivory Joe Hunter; honky tonk country music like Hank Williams, Ray Price & Buck Owens; '70's country like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson; '70's rock like The Eagles & Creedence Clearwater Revival; and even stuff by Jimmie Rodgers & The Carter Family, so I took in all of this when I was growing up.
I started playing guitar at 5 years old and really started knuckling down on guitar & drums at 7 years old and started playing clarinet and saxophone at 12. Eventually, I eased on in there with my family's band and was playing drums, guitar or saxophone when we'd have family get-togethers or when we played in nightclubs & honky tonks. This was before I was old enough to be in those places and my mom would oftentimes throw a fit about it but I was there with dad. Mom made sure that I didn't miss anytime hearing the gospel when the doors opened at Fellowship Baptist Church and I'm grateful to her for this. I also grew up singing and absorbing all those southern gospel songs and old hymns that I still love to this day. My cousins were all into southern rock & 1960's psychedelic rock and I really dug that stuff a bunch too. I studied the music of Jimi Hendrix and The Allman Brothers Band especially. The sounds of Mississippi music made it into my soul when I was around 13 years old and it just took a hold of me. It took me by storm when I first heard Muddy Waters! I've always felt a deep, direct kinship with the music of Mississippi.
And thankfully, God has allowed Micol and me to meet some of our heroes along the way, Mavis Staples, Otha Turner, T-Model Ford, RL Burnside just to name a few.
WUSM:
What music of today do you really enjoy, pick something unlikely it's ok..I promise.
Ricky:
We enjoy all kinds of stuff. Some of the music artists that are making sounds today that Micol and I have found ourselves listening to over and over include (off the top of my head and in no particular order): John Mayer, Malcolm Holcombe, Wolfmother, Tift Merritt, Mary J. Blige, Ralph Stanley, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jackson Browne, Cary Hudson, Prince, Shooter Jennings, Ali Farka Toure, Dolly Parton, Diana Krall, Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, Dierks Bentley, Medeski Martin & Wood, Thad Cockrell, Sheryl Crow, Ziggy Marley, T-Bone Burnett, Mindy Smith, Jimbo Mathus, Wilco, Sugarman 3, The Dixie Hummingbirds, John Legend, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, Tony Bennett, Susan Tedeschi, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Molly Thomas, Los Lobos, Corine Bailey Rae, Robert Cray Band, Willie Nelson, Irma Thomas, Juliette & The Licks, Guy Clark, Farrell Sanders, Hank Williams III, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Gov't Mule, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Rosanne Cash, North Mississippi Allstars, The Gourds, Rickie Lee Jones, India.Arie, Del McCoury Band, James Hunter, Galactic, JJ Cale, Michelle Malone, Elvis Costello, The Wood Brothers, Bob Dylan, Marty Stuart, Van Hunt, Gretchen Wilson, Doyle Bramhall II, The Redwalls, Ray LaMontagne, Keith Urban, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Billy Joe Shaver, T-Model Ford, Ben Harper, Julie Lee, Van Morrison . . .
WUSM:
When did you know that this was what you wanted to do? Was their a performance or a record that just planted the idea in your head?
Ricky:
I've always felt like making music is my calling in life. I can never think of a time when making music isn't what I've felt like I was put here to do. I've had several events in my life that solidified that gut feeling. Seeing Jimi Hendrix perform on, "Woodstock (the movie)", which came on network TV when I was around 5 years old still sticks in my mind. Hearing Muddy Waters recordings for the first time was an enormous event. You know, things like that were huge for me.
Micol says that she's always dreamed of making music too. She remembers having that being the sole thing that she's wanted to do in life. She said that those early Bonnie Raitt records that she first heard as a teenager really sparked the fire for her from the beginning.
WUSM:
Tell me about the new CD that's due in Spring 2007. What can we expect from that, and more importantly what can the audience expect from you live at the Bottling Co.
Ricky:
With our new CD, folks can expect new original songs and a couple of our favorite songs that others have written that we've been doing lately. We're recording the CD at our home studio . . . literally, it's in our home - our kitchen, bedroom, living room - all throughout, so this new CD is certainly gonna have some home vibes going on.
As for our show at The Bottling Company, folks can expect a down home good time! We like to boogie!
WUSM:
What do you think the future holds for you? Do you ever think that even if it just keeps on going like this you'll just be happy playing and singing.
Ricky:
Only God knows the future and it's all in His hands. We know what we want and that is to continuously take our music higher & higher. We want to go to new places, break new ground, meet new people.
As for things continuing to go the way they are right now, we're grateful to be doing this for a living. We love music. It's our life and as long as there are folks who'd like to hear our music, we intend on singing & playing our songs forever.
WUSM:
Thank you guys.
Ricky:
Thank you Mik and WUSM!
WUSM Interview With Ricky Davis (Jan 31, 2007)
The husband-and-wife team of Ricky and Micol Davis met while students at the University of Tennessee. He plays guitar, she plays piano and they both sing. The love match was based in part on a common appreciation for rootsy musicians like John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison. Check out their version of Paul Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder' on the soundtrack of last year's "Daltry Calhoun" with Johnny Knoxville and Juliette Lewis.
Macon Telegraph (Jul 14, 2006)
Review by Wess
"You guys were a breath of fresh air. Ya'll came (with) the force of a wrecking ball."
The Daisycutters (Jul 11, 2006)