*** Guy Davis

CALL DOWN THE THUNDER

(Red House)

There aren't many CDs that offer practical tips on how to ride a mule. But the second release from singer, guitarist, and harmonica player Guy Davis is full of such downhome delights. Davis plays accessible, melodic country blues in the jangly East Coast Piedmont tradition but ranges all over the map, from straight-forward Mississippi Delta stomps to the buoyant, mesmerizing "Jelly Bone Jelly," where folk legend Pete Seeger guests on banjo.

Davis's gruff vocals have a sly, casual cadence similar to that of Taj Mahal, the entertaining blues synthesist who has brought an extroverted storyteller's spark to dusty pre-war blues material since the 1970s. Davis, who has played Robert Johnson and other bluesmen in well-received New York theater pieces, is part of a growing battalion of young black artists who've won accolades for their tradition-laden recordings, including Keb' Mo', Corey Harris, and Alvin "Youngblood" Hart. Davis's original tunes are natural extensions of the blues canon, and he can take a beautiful turn on older material, as he displays with his 12-string picking on the Texas "musicianer" Mance Lipscomb's gospel number "Run Sinner Run."

-- Bill Kisliuk