Davina and The Vagabonds

New Spin on an Old Sound Davina and the Vagabonds are playing your area soon! Davina Sowers and the Vagabonds have created a stir on the national music scene with their high-energy live shows, level A musicianship, sharp-dressed professionalism, and Sowers’ commanding stage presence. With influences ranging from Fats Domino and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits, the band is converting audiences one show at a time, from Vancouver to Miami and across Europe. In 2011 Davina released her first full length, all original album Black Cloud . It was named one of the 10 best releases of the year by the Minneapolis Star & Tribune and awarded 4 ½ stars from Downbeat Magazine. Their next release in 2014, Sunshine, hit number 13 in the Billboard Blues Chart and led them to be a musicial feature on the hit BBC show, Later with Jools Holland. DATV’s shows are filled with New Orleans charm, Memphis soul swagger, dark theatrical moments that evoke Kurt Weill, and tender gospel passages. Davina’s voice and stage presence defy category in a different way. Davina has been compared to Etta James, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Betty Boop, but comparisons don’t suffice: Sowers is a true original. Bringing you 100 years of American music and Davina’s originals, which lend themselves to the American Songbook, the band brings edgy nostalgia to older generations and fresh new music to younger ears. This rollicking quintet is held together by Sowers’ keyboard playing, with acoustic bass, drums, and a spicy trumpet and trombone horn section. The group’s focused, clean sound and emphasis on acoustic instruments is novel to both blues and jazz worlds, and sets the show closer to New Orleans than to Chicago. This has set the Vagabonds apart at festivals in Thunder Bay, Ontario; Sighisoara, Romania; Sierre, Switzerland; Kemi, Finland; the 2012 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and 2013 Monterey Jazz Festival ( in 2014 was asked back to play their main stage in 2014, Vache de Blues in France, and North Sea Jazz Festival. Catch this one-of-a-kind live show while they are in town! “Listening to Davina & the Vagabonds is like stepping into a wondrous musical time machine. They have the panache and superlative musicianship to recreate the retro sound and ageless appeal of golden age Americana in high-definition reality on stage for your immense pleasure and enjoyment.” -Thunder Bay Blues Festival/Canada “….one of the most distinctive and expressive vocalists to come around in a while, with tight backing from the Vagabonds” –Phoenix Blues Society “…easily among the breakout stars at this year’s [Monterey Jazz] festival.” – Monterey Herald “The up-and-coming blues mama and leader of hard-touring Davina & the Vagabonds lights up the night every time she lends her ample pipes and open heart.” - Star Tribune MPLS MN / Jim Walsh “Davina is a modern day, female version, of Louis Armstrong.” - ELMORE MAGAZINE Jim Hynes “Davina Sowers’ classically trained right fingers shimmy down the piano keys and meet up with an insistent boogie-woogie bass. Then she reveals her other musical talent: a sassy, salty, sweet voice that’s childlike at the top, husky at the bottom.” - NPR / Marc Silver “Song of The Day” Choice song LipstickandChrome “(Davina and The Vagabonds) They dare to be different.Davina zips to near impossible heights in a divine declaration of romance” -DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE Frank John Hadley “From the churning emotion of Billie Holiday to Amy Winehouse by way of Etta James!” – NEWCASTLE EVENING CHRONICLE(UK) Alan Nichol “I cannot believe that Davina’s vocals will remain ‘un-heard’ for much longer, she has a unique talent that has Blues & Jazz crossover opportunities.” - BLUES MATTERS MAGAZINE /Adrian Blacklee “ Think of a meld of Bessie Smith, Etta James, Alberta Adams and Amy Winehouse, and you come close to understanding what Davina Sowers is all about…Davina is a real talent who deserves greater exposure – and I have no option but to highly recommend this band.” - BLUES IN BRITAIN (Rating 10) “ A combination of blues, Jazz, Dixieland,and Ragtime. Davina and The Vagabonds were the delight of the festival. The public did not feel neglected at all, with a concert packed with humor and memorable solos.” - Mood For Blues, Romania “Two things distinguish this fine band, the first being leader Davina Sowers’ big, nostalgic soul voice, something between Etta James and Madeleine Peyroux. The other is the band’s crisp, clean sound, just piano, upright bass, trombone, trumpet and drums. No clutter.” - The Billings Gazette/ Billings MT “…First was Twin Cities singer-pianist Davina Sowers, who sounds like the daughter of Leon Redbone and Betty Boop trained on piano by Randy Newman. Backed by an upright bassist and trombonist, Sowers delighted with some sassy originals and sly covers of Billie Holiday, Fats Domino and “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.” Her slurring, Southern voice (she moved here from Key West, Fla., in 2005) sounded affected and alluring at the same time.” -JON BREAM, Star Tribune/Mpls MN (Opening for Pinetop Perkins) “At first glance, the very idea of a blues band without a guitar player strikes the mind as a daring if not totally outrageous concept. But, Davina & the Vagabonds, a Minneapolis-based quintet driven by New Orleans horns and the campy purr of vocalist/pianist Davina Sowers, carry it off with such aplomb that you won’t miss the usual six-string histrionics one bit.Listening to Davina & the Vagabonds is like stepping into a wondrous musical time machine. They have the panache and superlative musicianship to recreate the retro sound and ageless appeal of golden age Americana in high-definition reality on stage for your immense pleasure and enjoyment.” -KEN WRIGHT, Thunderbay Blues Festival/Canada “….one of the most distinctive and expressive vocalists to come around in a while, with tight backing from the Vagabonds “ - BluesBytes /Phoenix Blues Society (AZ) “Hardest -working Blues woman in Minnesota, but……two things remain consistent at all her shows, though: her throaty but cushiony voice, which has a sort of hard-mattress comfort to it that’s part Bonnie Raitt, Etta James and a little Amy Winehouse, and her band’s rollicking New Orleans flavor, driven home by dueling horn players and a bayou-thick standup bass” -CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER, Star Tribune MPLS MN “At first listen to Davina and the Vagabonds, you imagine the tones escaping from a 300-pound blues musician. It seems unlikely that much power is coming from the slight frame of one Ms. Davina. It sounds like an unnatural force, pulled from some secret spot in the belly no other singer has yet discovered. It’s a low bellow, most closely aligned with Amy Winehouse’s walloping alto. But Davina takes “retro” back further than Winehouse and her Phil Spector reminiscing. She beckons an age when bad girls wore red lipstick and pin curls. Her music may be adorned with exceptional groaning trumpets, rat-a-tatting drum rolls, and staccato piano lines, but nothing deserves the complementing position to her voice. She’s in a league of her own.” -Erin Roof – City Pages “..this girl is something special and her band is top notch..she just simply sits down at the piano and totally takes over the room.” -Fizz Kizer -The Honkytonk Cafe / Wisconsin Fresh Spin on an Old Sound / www.davinaandthevagabonds.com Twitter - @davinavagabonds Instagram - @davinavagabonds