DAVINA & THE VAGABONDS / CARNEY'S / SATURDAY, 8:30PM & 10:10PM / SUNDAY, 4:00PM & 5:40PM
The Story
Davina Sowers, leader of the Twin Cities-based Vagabonds, is a two-fisted, piano-pumping, boogie woogie red hot mama who sings with the raw, sexy, gravelly-voiced passion of Etta James, Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin. As the Minneapolis Post noted: “She purrs and growls, whispers and wails. Sweet and seductive one moment, she’s in your face the next, and then she makes you laugh. Her voice is a complex, expressive, flexible instrument made of sugar and grit.” Or as Downbeat proclaimed: “Davina is a one-of-a-kind performer whose singing has a sassiness bearing some comparisons to that of heart-thumping blues queens Ma Rainey and Ida Cox.”
Fronting a raucous crew of early jazz aficionados and R&B hounds, Davina and the Vagabonds have been slaying audiences with their high energy live show which draws on such potent influences as Fats Domino and Fats Waller, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, Louis Armstrong and Ma Rainey, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits, while oozing Memphis soul swagger and vintage New Orleans R&B charm.
The Sound
Expect to hear a lot of jazzy, blues-drenched material from their 10th release, 2024’s Shoot for the Moon, which includes several self-penned songs of love and loss like the Memphis soul original “Mighty Scar” and the intimate and confessional “Life Lessons,” alongside covers of tunes by John Prine (“Please Don’t Bury Me”), Los Lobos (“Kiko and the Lavender Moon”), Louis Jordan (“Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby”) as well as a sly New Orleans stroll version of The Foundations’ 1968 hit, “Build Me Up Buttercup.” The Vagabonds’ lively repertoire also includes such gems as Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind,” Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame,” Mississippi John Hurt’s “Shake That Thing” and the Tin Pan Alley nuggets “Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” the latter featuring a chorus of musical saw. And it’s all delivered with Davina’s signature touch of sass. As she said of their energetic show, “We’re like a hurricane…but a pleasant hurricane.”
