page_title: Billie Davies
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Billie Davies / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Billie Davies, female Avant Garde Jazz drummer.
context_page_description: Billie Davies is an American female jazz drummer and composer best known for her avant garde and avant-garde jazz compositions since the mid-1990s, and her improvisational drumming techniques she has performed in Europe and in the United States.
context_section_description: Aged 25 Billie Davies started the transition to become a professional musician. Some of her influences stem from classical, gypsy, manouche, blues, jazz, free jazz and soul/funk. As a player she feels that Al Foster, Billy Higgins, Billy Cobham, Jack De Johnette, Ed Thigpen, and Peter Erskine have been her biggest influences, she learned from them extensively. Becoming completely immersed into the jazz, free jazz and avant garde world, which is second nature for her stylistically, three years later, she was a professional drummer. She performed throughout the Netherlands, Belgium, France "A Revelation for her was meeting with legendary guitarist Ricardo Baliardo, but known by his stage name Manitas de Plata, as well as playing with bluesman Claude Mazet – both guitarists also respected the traditional rhythmic rules. Even with the Roma, she lived several years in their way of life, which her bohemian temper satisfied so that at twenty-five she refused the offer of the legendary drummer Max Roach to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, after he heard her play in Montpellier on the street.", Italy, Northern Africa, Spain, Portugal and Greece for the next 7 years. She knew her love of drumming had become her life.
  At a crossroads in her musical career, while living and playing and performing with Claude Mazet in the South of France (Montpellier, Toulouse, Biarritz, La Rochelle), Billie ended up receiving a talent grant from Max Roach to come study at Berklee College of Music, this was after he heard one of her tapes she laid down with a bass player in Montpellier, France. Billie was however having too much fun in the south of France, living the life of a gypsy jazz musician and therefore decided not to take the offer. In his words: “Hearing from your tape, you could learn more fundamental drumming techniques, but I also hear the natural drummer, so my advice is for you not to worry too much about your technical skill, you will develop your own, I can definitely hear that, but just in case that you might want to study in a good program, please accept my invitation in the form of a talent grant to come study at the Berklee College of Music, all you need to worry about is finding a place to live and some money to survive."
  "Davies is not countering the modern jazz movement so much but rather stripping it down to its essence. When listening to Davies play, it's easier to think of her not as a drummer but a tonal painter who swipes brushstrokes with her drumsticks."
  A move to the United States at 32 gave her an opportunity to play all over the west coast. 
  In 1987 in Oregon, she played in Astoria, Seaside, Manzanita and Portland, where she met and played a few times with Leroy Vinnegar, and then later in early 1988 she moved to California, where she was mostly active in North Beach, San Francisco and in the Lower Haight district, Lower Haight, San Francisco, where she met and ended up playing a few times with John Handy and played frequently with infamous local jazz notables at their infamous and unforgiving jams, in her words: the best learning school she ever had. 
  She recorded two albums in the mid-nineties, "Cobra Basemento" and "Dreams" with Saul Kaye on guitar, Michael Godwin on bass and Lee Elfenbein on upright bass (on Dreams), "the infamous boombox recordings" in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
  In December 1997 she moved to Napa, California where for a little while she held a jazz jam at a local jazz bar on Sunday evenings with Drew Waters on bass and other musicians, such as Pierre Swärd from Sweden,  and performed a lot of invitationals in the Bay Area with local pro jazz and blues bands. 
  In 2002 she became a US Citizen in San Francisco.
  In 2009, she made Los Angeles, California her home base and in 2011, in Hollywood, she began writing for her new album all about Love. and started the process of choosing musicians to develop her sound for the album. 
  In June 2012 she independently released all about Love. with Tom Bone Ralls on trombone and Oliver Steinberg on bass. In August 2012, she began writing all origina
caption: BillieDavies
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