Newtown Cultural Arts Commission will welcome the acclaimed blues musician, composer and actor Guy Davis as the guest artist for the May 21 edition of The Flagpole Radio Café. Showtime is 7 pm.

Tickets are $18 for adults and $15 for students and senior citizens, and are available through www.FlagpoleProductions.org.

“Since we began the show we’ve wanted to have an authentic blues artist,” said Flagpole Café Producer Martin Blanco. “We’re so fortunate to have someone as gifted and celebrated as Guy Davis appear on the program. I had the pleasure of meeting his parents when I was in graduate school where they were giving a lecture. They were extremely engaging and obviously very talented actors and writers. I look forward to meeting their son now and can’t wait to hear how he invigorates Newtown with his passionate and arresting interpretation of the blues. He’ll have great music and great stories for us.”

Whether Guy Davis is appearing on Late Night With Conan O’Brien or nationally syndicated radio programs such as Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” on a main stage at a major festival or teaching an intimate gathering of students at a music camp, Mr Davis feels the instinctive desire to give each listener his all.

Throughout his career, Davis has dedicated himself to reviving the traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to as many ears as possible through the material of the great blues masters, African American stories, and his own original songs, stories and performance pieces.

Davis’s creative roots run deep. Though raised in the New York City area, he grew up hearing accounts of life in the rural south from his parents (Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis) and especially his grandparents, and they made their way into his own stories and songs. Davis taught himself the guitar (never having the patience to take formal lessons) and learned by listening to and watching other musicians. One night on a train from Boston to New York he reportedly picked up finger picking from a nine-fingered guitar player.

Davis can tell stories of his great-grandparents and his grandparents, their days as track linemen, and of their interactions with the infamous KKK.  He can also tell you that as a child raised in middle-class New York suburbs, the only cotton he has picked is his underwear up off the floor.

Davis has had overlapping interests in music and acting. Early acting roles included a lead role in the film Beat Street opposite Rae Dawn Chong and on television as Dr Josh Hall on One Life to Live. He made his Broadway debut in 1991 in the Zora Neale Hurston-Langston Hughes collaboration Mulebone, which featured the music of Taj Mahal.

In 1993 he performed Off-Broadway as the legendary blues player Robert Johnson in Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil, receiving rave reviews and honors. Four years later he collaborated with his parents for Two Hah Hahs and A Homeboy, which combined material written by Davis and his parents, with music, African American Folklore and history, as well as performance pieces by Hurston and Hughes.

He has additionally released sixth solo albums, and contributed songs on a host of tribute and compilation albums.

Flagpole Radio Café is an engaging variety show created by Jim Allyn, Martin Blanco and Barbara Gaines in conjunction with Newtown Cultural Arts Commission. It features music by Jim Allyn and the Radio Café Orchestra, a dynamic ensemble created for the show, and radio style comedy sketches by The Flagpole Shakespeare Repertory Theatre.

The café is hosted by musician and radio personality Chris Teskey, and each show features a musical guest artist; previous guests have included Tom Chapin, Peter Yarrow, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Roger Ball, and even Yale’s internationally acclaimed male choir The Whiffenpoofs.

For further information, send email to info@FlagpoleProductions.org or call 203-364-0898.