Pickin’ Post from Mike Shirkey with Steve Davison and Ken Bonfield
Pickin’ Post radio show host Mike Shirkey presents Steve Davison with Ken Bonfield in concert, Friday, October 21 at 7:30pm in the Walker Community Room of the Fayetteville Public Library.
On this musical evening, Davison and Bonfield will play solos and duets while on stage together. Expect music far ranging, from Celtic to Classical, including Blues, Folk, Country, and some good ol’ Travis thumbstyle fingerpicking. The music will be played on some amazing instruments – Bonfield’s Alan Carruth 11-string harp guitar, high-string, and baritone guitar and Davison’s Tony Yamamoto 12-string and his Sheldon Schwartz Oracle.
Steve Davison is a finger style guitarist who composes on both the 6 and 12 string guitar. An aging hipster, his musical career started at age 12 playing the drums in a multitude of rock and roll bands. At the tender age of 19 he saw a performance on solo acoustic guitar in Denton, Texas by a performer named Thom Ward (who he would really like to locate!) that changed his life. He put down the sticks and picked up the guitar and started a life long journey of discovery. His compositions are built around simple melodic structures and focus on the intimate qualities of the wooden guitar and the tonal possibilities of alternate tunings that give the guitar such an extraordinary range. His influences range from the jazz piano stylings of Claudia Burson (who taught him what was musical and what wasn’t) to the work of fingerstyle guitarists such as Leo Kotke, Ed Gerhard, Ken Bonfield, Peter Janson and Stephen Bennett.
Steve is a 2 time finalist and 2005 winner of the solo competition at the Arkansas Acoustic Music Festival and a finalist in the 2009 Merle Travis Fingerstyle Competition and the winner of the 2016 Merle Travis Fingerstyle Competition in the contemporary part of the competition. Mr. Davison was a featured performer on Arkansas Educational Network Television’s “AETN Presents” broadcast and his music was also used as a soundtrack for another AETN production, “The Historic Bridges of Arkansas”.
Fingerstyle Guitarist Ken Bonfield has performed throughout the United States for more than 20 years. Based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Bonfield is a regular at guitar festivals, concert series, and acoustic venues across North America, and has released seven albums. His latest, Legacy, is a solo effort that focuses on harp and baritone guitars, with several new arrangements of original tunes Bonfield recorded on earlier albums. Although he came out of the 1960’s folk tradition, Bonfield was closely associated with new-age music in the mid 90’s. Today his sophisticated Americana compositions feature a solid dose of Celtic, jazz, and traditional folk influences that might best be described as American Baroque.
Tickets for this after hours event are $15 and available for purchase at the event. Doors open at 6:30pm and music is set to begin at 7:30pm.
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