Garrett Born
Davina Sowers’ voice is part Etta James, part Amy Winehouse and part Betty Boop.
Of all the musicians who have come and gone within Minneapolis-based Davina & the Vagabonds, vocalist and piano player Davina Sowers has remained the sole constant — and the only true vagabond.
“I’ve been on my own since I was 15,” says Sowers, now 37, explaining that she grew up an artsy outcast in a dysfunctional family from industrialized Altoona, Pa., and worked her way across the country to Santa Cruz, Calif., then back again to Key West, where she became a busker. Sowers wound up in the Twin Cities after falling in love with a bass player from there. “You have no idea what type of book I could write.”
She formed the little-bit-jazz, little-bit-blues and all-sass Davina & the Vagabonds in 2004 to showcase her “old soul.” They play the Majestic Theatre Feb. 14.
The group’s music exudes a New Orleans charm, a Memphis swagger and a dark theatricality anchored by Sowers’ bouncy piano and undeniably indefinable voice — part Etta James, part Amy Winehouse and part Betty Boop — complemented with trumpet, trombone and upright bass.
“I came into this band wanting to be like Aerosmith. I thought we were going to be like brothers, through thick and thin,” Sowers says, estimating that there have been 15 Vagabonds to date. “Instead, we’ve been like Spinal Tap, in the way we go through drummers.”
Conversation with Sowers jumps from her collection of 78 rpm records played on an old gramophone to her broad, often surprising tastes in music, which range from Bauhaus to Led Zeppelin and Queensrÿche.
Nicollet and Tenth, recorded last year in downtown Minneapolis at the Dakota Jazz Club and set for release on March 25, is a reflection of how Davina & the Vagabonds built their reputation by celebrating 100 years of American music history with authentic originals and savvy covers.
The album will be their second live record and sixth overall, but Sowers has stopped pressing the first two studio records and the other live disc, even yanking them from digital platforms. “I hate them,” she says without hesitation. “I don’t feel like I was secure in my songwriting. You can smell my greenness.”
There’s nothing “green” about Sunshine, the album with a bright yellow cover that Davina & the Vagabonds released in 2014 to critical success. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard blues chart, which led to an appearance on the famed BBC show Later... with Jools Holland.
Nicollet and Tenth includes performances of some of those early songs, and the Vagabonds may even play a few of them at the Majestic on Valentine’s Day.
“We’re not very Valentine-y,” admits Sowers, although she revealed plans to elope with current Vagabond trumpet player Zack Lozier. “I don’t want people to just think it’s date night. I’m hoping single people will come, too.”