About
"My job is to keep customers spending money in your venue and I'm
very good at it." - Jim Davidson
There is one thing I have learned over the 50+ years of performing music professionally: entertainment is different than musicianship and people want to be entertained. Communicating directly with an audience is one of the keys to successful entertainment and one of my first activities from the stage is assessing the potential reception of an audience based on their activities in the venue. Competent musicianship greatly enhances the entertainment value and reading body language enables that musicianship to be communicated in a manner that keeps an audience in the venue.
Prior to my performances in public venues, I distribute my Venue Menu which contains my Venmo graphic and 80 songs that also lists their composers. The Venue Menu is also a means of communicating directly with an audience because it provides them with a precise guide to the genres of music I perform as well as potential request selections. Over 90% of my requests come from the Venue Menu.
Another method of communicating directly with my audiences is inviting anyone willing -- including young folks -- to sing with me on stage. This is one of my most popular show segments and always elicits rousing audience support.
My musical journey started in Houston, Texas when I was 10 and learned to play my father's Epiphone guitar by listening to folk songs and learning the chords from an old Mel Bay's Guitar Chords book which had examples of songs as well as the chords. I was soon playing along with the Kingston Trio's 'Tom Dooley' and Burl Ives' 'Blue Tail Fly.' I also learned Elizabeth Cotten's 'Freight Train' from a Seeger family album, and it's a song I love to play to this day.
At 14, I started a rock band with three other friends. We called ourselves Spontaneous Generation and we played private parties. In high school, a different core of friends and I had a weekend band called Big Red. Big Red was asked to open for a local group called the Moving Sidewalks that featured a schoolmate of ours named Billy Gibbons. The gig was at the Port Arthur Knights of Columbus Hall and this was February of 1970.
The Moving Sidewalks were a popular Houston, Texas regional band at this point. When we were setup in the hall, a radio DJ announcing the bands added that this would be the first night the Moving Sidewalks would play under their new name: ZZ Top. True story.
I studied classical guitar in college, but was soon seduced by the hypnotic fingerstyles of the old bluesmen such as Lightnin' Hopkins whom I would go see every chance I got at Liberty Hall and other smaller Houston venues. I was also heavily influenced by the guitar styles of Doc Watson, Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and Leo Kottke. In the 70s, I played professionally in various bars and restaurants around Houston and got to know many different musicians before they became famous such as Blaze Foley, Shake Russell, Trout Fishing in America and numerous others.
Since I have moved to the Gunnison Valley in 2021, I have been playing local venues as a solo artist and with my bluegrass band, the Black Canyon Ramblers​. The Ramblers have opened for The Wailers, L'il Smokies, Fretliners and Floodgate Operators, and have headlined in various venues in the Gunnison Valley. To find out more about the Black Canyon Ramblers, please visit our website: blackcanyonramblers.com
My repetoire is based around old-school, fingerstyle acoustic guitar (fingerpicking) and vocal renditions of my original music and the music of artists such as Willie Nelson, George Strait, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Jimmie Rodgers, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten and many, many others.
The venues the Ramblers and I play are not solely public, we also play private events such as weddings, parties and corporate outings.​​
For booking, call or text me at: 512-297-6820
Or, email me at: jim@fingerpickin-good.com
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All the best to you and yours -- Jim Davidson​​