Bo Bice w/The Davisson Brothers, George Shingleton
Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:00 PM
Bo Bice /Official Web Site
Born Harold Elwin Bice, Jr. in Huntsville, Ala., he was raised by his mother after his father left the family when Bice was two years old. Music, he says, was "what I knew I was going to do from the day I was born"--or at least from the age of four, when he plunked down a dollar at a garage sale for records by Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band. "My mom and I used to sit around and sing," Bo recalls. "She was in a gospel choir, and I did some stuff in church, too. But I always had something going on with music. I would always call my day job my second job. Music was my first."
Bice, whose mother remarried, spent his youth moving between Georgia, Alabama and Florida before the family relocated to England when he was 12; Ozzy Osbourne and his family were neighbors for a time. While attending London Central High School, Bo was known as the football (American kind, of course) player who carried his guitar everywhere he went. He also learned to play piano, saxophone and harmonica and ultimately decided to drop out of school in his final year and return to Alabama--where he did earn his GED and attend a couple semesters of college before dedicating himself full-time to music.
Bo worked the Southern club circuit with bands such as Blue Suede Nickel, Purge and SugarMoney, playing clubs and opening for national acts such as Warrant and Blackfoot. With a wife and young son, he was also managing a guitar shop for $20,000 a year when he auditioned for "American Idol" on a lark, walking in as "the last person in the world who thought I was going to make it as far as I did." But he wowed the famed trio of judges with his rock 'n' roll grit--including an audition version of the Allmans' "Whipping Post"--and did the same with the reality show's huge national audience, which clearly had an appetite for a contestant with genuine rock spirit.
Bo also won a fan in Carlos Santana, who tapped him to sing the track "Brown Skin Girl" on his 2005 album All That I Am. "I heard him sing, and I knew he could do it," Santana says. "You gotta start somewhere. He just happened to come through the biggest door we've got in music at the moment."
Nowadays Bo appreciates what being part of the "Idol" phenomenon did for him. "The gain for me was phenomenal," he says. "I got loads of exposure. People didn't know who I was before 'Idol.' They do now. Without that I wouldn't be sitting her in a pretty studio in a nice house, living a life people dream about, with fans that are just insane about my music."
SEE THE LIGHT will likely make them even crazier. Working in Nashville, Bo contemplated 16 songs before honing the album down to 10--many of which have lengthy histories that include being considered for THE REAL THING and, in some cases, even included on the DualDisc version of that album ("Whiskey, Women & Time," "Sinner In A Sin"). And Bo reckons the lead-off track, "Witness," has been around for a decade, sung in roadhouses and in church.
But there's plenty of fresh material, too. Bo, who also performed the theme song for the Ben Stiller comedy film Blades of Glory, teamed up with Nashville songwriter Gary Nichols for the defiant "Ain't Gonna Die" and with longtime friend Chris Tompkins on "I'm Gone." Thomas Lee, Bo's SugarMoney band keyboardist, collaborated on a pair of SEE THE LIGHT tracks--"This Train" and the title track. Besides his own players, Bo tapped luminaries such as Black Crowes' drummer Steve Gorman, session veteran Dan Dugmore (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt) and Lynyrd Skynyrd backing vocalist Carol Chase.
"We just had a great time. We really had fun doing this," says Bo, who co-produced SEE THE LIGHT with Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke. "There wasn't a day we called work."
And with the work on the album done, Bo is ready to get back to doing what he likes best--playing. The songs on SEE THE LIGHT are meant to be played live, he says, and in the most straightforward manner possible.
"I don't need a laser show," Bo says. "I don't need a bunch of pyro to blow up in front of you to impress you. That's not the show. The show is the music and being entertained for an hour and a half. It's the same concept on this album--it's not over-produced, just an album full of raw, Southern rock, getting back to basics and stripping it down to where it's so organic everybody can grab a little piece out of it."
Don't miss this rare West Virginia performance of Bo Bice, only at Mountain Lakes Amphitheater in Flatwoods.
Davisson Brothers Web Site
The Davisson Brothers Band has a unique style infusing a remarkable blend of country, southern rock, and bluegrass to create a distinctive sound captured in their first single, "Big City Hillbilly." This sound, combined with the band's talent and energy, has gained a loyal fan base all over the Eastern United States. Brothers Chris and Donnie Davisson and cousin Sammy Davisson, along with childhood friend Aaron Regester, are continuing musical pursuits started by the Davisson family long ago. Aaron's reliable drums and Sammy's solid bass groove provide the perfect foundation for Donnie's impassioned, soulful vocals with Sammy's flawless harmonies all driven by Chris's mind-bending blend of bluegrass, country, and blues guitar creating a sound unlike anything you've ever heard. "Music has always been a part of our lives," says Chris, "and now we're living our dad's and uncle's dream—playing music around the country and hearing ourselves on the radio."
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