The Musical Evolution of Billie Davies article @ All About Jazz

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Gilberto Gil and

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Antonio Carlos Jobim and

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Stan Getz.

We were very successful playing together in the streets and made so much money that we refused any gig in a bar. I recall a performance we did in Toulouse when we were in the middle of a square, in the center of the city surrounded by restaurants, bars, and their terraces. So many people were sitting outside this one terrace, which had an audience of at least two to three hundred people and there were fire eaters and jugglers surrounding us. When Claude collected money he would go around all the terraces with his guitar case, and I would perform a solo anywhere between one to two hours. What an atmosphere we had there. Later on one of the biggest restaurants there wanted us to play just for their terrace customers and paid us with cognacs and dinners. I do remember one time they presented us with the cigar box, laughter. We just had so much fun and lived it up, the life we were living.

All About Jazz: How many years were you living in California?

BD: I lived most of my life in the United States, in California from 1988 to 2014, 26 years. First in the Bay Area and the Napa Valley and the last five years in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

AAJ: What inspired you to write about Hollywood as a song, “On Hollywood Boulevard”?

BD: I saw what was happening living in the middle of it all at the historic Hillview apartment building on Hollywood Boulevard. It was an old building that had been renovated but was originally built for the silent movie actors, Charlie Chaplin at some point even owned it and Rudolph Valentino had a speakeasy in the basement level. When I moved in that building in 2009 there were some psychics, models, gossipers and a few musicians that I met living there. Later it became more and more young musicians and I had some fun with them. All the tourists traps, the Hollywood legends and heroes’ reverence, the young artist communities from painters to musicians to photographers, videographers and writers aspiring to become accomplished. Successful—hit material and/or rich—the drugs everywhere from the meth I could smell in the hallways or if you dared to open your windows, to the best cocaine always available if you knew who to ask. The bars where the Hollywood locals went and told their stories of 20 years ago when they played for Paramount or were side actors in some famous movie. But I also found myself meeting many that, as myself, wanted to play different, to a different tune, uncompromising improvisations. Those that knew their craft and were great technicians, knew their instruments very well and felt the freedom I felt in the middle of all that commercial and money-driven chaos.

And then there was the overall beautiful nature and climate, from the beaches to the slender palm trees and jacaranda trees, the blue skies. When I left Hollywood for New Orleans I started missing it a lot, and also got an outsider perspective of what a brainwash Hollywood was or had been to the country with Wall Street and venture capital owning most of it. Where money shows you the way and determines everything and has to be there. All that combined inspired me to write about it, to play about it in sometimes an almost sarcastic way as in “The Girl In The Window” or “Hollywood Boulevard” and sometimes allowing ways as in “Jacaranda” or “Yellow Sunshine” and then sometimes just about me and what the palm trees and dreams of blue oceans had always represented to me since I was young, as in “Palm Trees.”

AAJ: How did you get introduced to playing the drums, and what other instruments do you play?

BD: It could have been my grandfather that sat me in the lap of a drummer at a party and told him to let me play the drums when I was between three and four years of age. I always had a natural instinct and fascination with rhythms but ended up mostly singing. When I was little, six maybe, I sang in church choirs and later in classical choirs with whole orchestras around me until my voice changed at around 21. Suddenly I had a deep realization when I heard a new song being released by ”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Phil Collins, “In The Air Tonight,” the realization that I was meant to be a drummer. And there the drums appeared. I was afraid of them at first, of the sound they made and approached them carefully, but eventually I became one with them. I have always had a keyboard or a piano as a second instrument from the beginning. Right now I have a Roland RD64 electric piano and two drum sets, a Sonor acoustic and a Yamaha e-drums DTX 700 series.

AAJ: What drummers, and or other musicians have you been inspired by over the years?

BD: It started with Phil Collins who, before Genesis, had a band called Brand X, a free jazz band, and then there was

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Billy Cobham. I called him a lean mean drumming machine technical monster and I was so inspired by his amazing and instinctive mastering of technique. Of course, I have to mention

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Max Roach, who offered me a scholarship, a talent grant, to the Berklee School of Music in the early 1980s. I still, in remembrance of him, play a twist on a certain rhythm lick he used to play. However, I had too much fun in the South of France at the time and never took him up on his offer. I have to mention

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Trilok Gurtu. I saw him live a few times with

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>John McLaughlin in the late ’80s, early ’90s, once at a club in San Francisco and once at the Berkeley Amphitheater, where I was at to see and hear and experience

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Miles Davis.

Which brings me to the fact that Miles has been my greatest inspiration in my life as a professional musician and musical artist. As a man that had no fear to bring his vision, that had no fear to be him while not getting stuck in or by genres, a no boundaries freedom kind of thing. I speak so much about with the musicians I end up doing things with. Thanks to Miles Davis and Max Roach having been there. I am here today relentlessly and persistently bringing my vision of music. I have a whole list of musicians and drummers too long to name that have inspired me through their music or playing but at the top of my mind right now there’s

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Terje Rypdal,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Keith Jarrett,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Al Foster,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Jack DeJohnette,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Cecil Taylor,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Ornette Coleman,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Charlie Haden,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Charles Mingus,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Leroy Vinnegar,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>John Coltrane,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Jan Garbarek and so many many more. I should also mention that another one of my big influences in music was Dollar Brand, now known as

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Abdullah Ibrahim. The way he played became an opening door for how I play the piano today: as if chords and end notes do not exist; intuitive, instinctive, playing that piano or keyboard just knowing where you need to place your fingers to play your mind, to play what you want to hear with all the accidentals in between that are no accidents but rather destiny that make your hands move here and there.

AAJ: What is your process for choosing band members?

BD: My process is very intuitive, instinctive, as I want to end up with music that is not written down but is felt and expressed at that moment of playing or recording or performing. This deliberate moment of choices, chances and inspiration that may become a specific type of music but never ends up being predetermined or planned music. The notes played but never written down, all there is a direction, a thought sometimes a few lines of music, sometimes a bunch of paintings and sometimes lyrics I wrote. That becomes the requirement for me choosing the musicians. I just want to end up with something where I hear unexpected, emotional, passionate, challenging music I have never heard before. My music has to be improvisational, a conversation between musicians and their musical instruments, a joint emotional expression inspired by a certain common feelings. A thought or perspective that is being communicated to an audience, a listener, a community, with freedom of expression being the most important factor.

I do not do the big names lists or big financially-backed projects, so I post ads looking for certain types of musicians. I spread the word through the community I live in and I wait and see who comes my way and dares to try out. If there is a fit where I keep wanting them to come back and they keep wanting to come and play with me, that becomes the band, the ensemble, the group of musicians that loves what I present as a creative process of making improvised music. Musicians that love the avant-garde and beyond jazz, that love the total freedom of expression I offer and have according to my beliefs. Musicians that have the technical skill to express that kind of creative freedom with me, sometimes directing with my drum play, sometimes by telling them stories, expressing my thoughts and writing down words or a few lines of music, sometimes by just letting it all happen.

I will always remember Cecil Taylor’s words in a documentary interview with him on French television in the late sixties or seventies: “Once you write down the notes you play, the music changes,” or Ornette Coleman who asked Charlie Haden, “Can you read this music but not play the notes?” When I feel that all this is happening and that we are actually communicating musically and by doing so we are telling an audience the story, and or their perspectives of that story, well then I have myself a band, an ensemble, a group I can work with.

AAJ: How long has the band been together?

BD: We played a lot together for about three to four years.

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Evan Oberla and

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Oliver Watkinson became my go-to musicians for everything I wanted to do in New Orleans. We were really together from late 2015 to late 2018. I met Evan in early 2015 for the recording of “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon” and by late 2015 Oliver Watkinson joined. Then I formed Billie Davies and The Bad Boyzzz with two additional horn players,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Branden James Lewis on trumpet, who was also part of the “Hand In The Hand In The Hand Of The Moon” recordings and ”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Ari Kohn on woodwinds, mostly bari-sax and flute with me. Singer

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Iris P joined after that Billie Davies and The Bad Boyzzz period for “On Hollywood Boulevard” and Evan and Oliver and I stayed playing together, recording and performing as a trio, quartet, quintet until after the recording of “Perspectives” in 2018. We still performed out as a trio sometimes until Covid really hit New Orleans and literally just about every club we played at closed down. We grew apart and suddenly in 2022 I moved to Florida. Evan stayed in New Orleans, Oliver is somewhere in California. There is a time and a space for everything.

AAJ: Did you write lyrics for all of the tracks for On Hollywood Boulevard?

BD: Except for one, which was improvised lyrics/words by Iris P on improvised music on the last track “On Hollywood Boulevard.” I wrote all the lyrics for On Hollywood Boulevard.

AAJ: Listening to On Hollywood Boulevard, there is a song that has a dope hip hop beat and DJ scratching. Did you ever DJ at some point during your musical evolution journey?

BD: Some of the effects were done by me on the e- drums and of course the beat was mine and Evan Overla did some effects on his synthesizer, amongst which were the scratches. Yes, I definitely deejayed at some point just before I turned pro as a drummer, in the later ’70s to early-mid ’80s especially, but I started at around 16 years old. So many bars I deejayed at and sometimes managed and deejayed. A private nightclub Les Cinq Anneaux sticks out in Belgium. It was in the country a couple of miles off the coast of Knokke. It would transform into a musical island, where the cocaine and hash would flow freely over the counter and people would give grams to me as tips if I played a certain song. I would take you away from your reality and leave you hanging from the rafters, laughter. I became successful as to becoming in demand and it was a way for me to make money with music then. Music has always been major in my life, even then, and I could set and transform the moods and ambiances, take you away from your daily grind and make you forget, if for a moment, your troubles and just be happy in your sadness or melancholy or happiness or romance or frustration. I became a healer with music, actually to many I became high in demand and I was able to set my own price. I had a lot of fun then becoming a local DJ star [laughter]. When I left for Belgium for the United States there was a going away party in Bruges, at The Bauhaus in the Langestraat where I had people dancing in the streets to the music I played, stopping the local buses at 6:30 am [laughter].

AAJ: Are you working on a new project at this time?

BD: Yes I am, “Music For The 24th Century” or “Music For The Future.” A no boundaries kind of thing. As the concept is becoming more and more defined I am now busy with the search for the right musicians in Florida for this new music that needs to be free improvisational, instinctive, intuitive as is the first study of the concept I ended up calling “Pandemos” and needs to also be grounded in classical blues, jazz, electronics and avant-garde. One big conversation where each artist responds to another artist’s call, where each and every action taken is in response to another, all being influenced by each other, all being one and one with Mother Nature. A spontaneous expression through sound, light and art. Expressing in a way, the evolution of nature and humans to a universal thinking through new technologies and how a global knowledge, awareness is becoming, is being shared. A new musical language if you will, that includes everything that has been before, that explores new territories, but is free from any constraints, has no boundaries. Who knows what will come out of that search. I am also busy with talks of releasing a new project that has all the, what I consider, master pieces created with the ensembles, trios, quartets, quintets, bands over the last ten to fifteen years that were recorded during rehearsals, have never been released, but should have been.

Davies has moved around a lot in Europe. She traveled back and forth, south to north then, after six months, south to Greece. She basically said goodbye to Europe and immigrated to the United States in 1986 and later became a US citizen. She started at the West Coast in Cannon Beach and Portland, Oregon and played a bit all over but moved south very fast to California. From San Francisco and the Napa Valley to Hollywood, LA, and then in 2014 to New Orleans, where she stayed for eight years. Davies now resides in the south of Florida, in West Palm Beach.

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