An Evening with David Vest!

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Saturday, March 14th, 2015
7:30 PM to 10:30 PM

Although he now calls Canada home, Maple Blues Award winner David Vest is an authentic, Southern-bred boogie-woogie piano player and blues shouter. Born in Alabama in 1943, David grew up in Birmingham, not far from Tuxedo Junction. He played his first paying gig in 1957, and by the time he opened for Roy Orbison on New Year's Day 1962, he was a seasoned veteran of Gulf Coast roadhouses and honkytonks. At the age of 17, David went on tour with Jerry Woodard and the Esquires, some of whom later became key members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the Muscle Shoals Horns. While still with Woodard, he jammed with Ace Cannon, Bill Black's Combo and the Jimmy Dorsey Band in clubs along the Florida Panhandle, where fellow Alabaman James Harman would soon make his mark. About the time David turned 21 he found himself onstage backing Big Joe Turner, who said that David Vest's playing made him feel like he was back home in Kansas City. David also worked the southern gospel circuit, wrote the first songs ever recorded by Tammy Wynette (as detailed in Jimmy McDonough's bio of the country legend), dated a sister of the Louvin Brothers, toured with Faron Young (who threatened to kill him), backed Red Foley in a show where all the stars got robbed, worked in a theatre with Fannie Flagg and became the first American artist to record an album in Romania, after his appearance at the Sibiu Jazz Festival. Later David would receive the "direct laying on of hands" from piano legends like Big Walter The Thunderbird and Floyd Dixon. He would tour extensively with Jimmy T99 Nelson and Miss Lavelle White. Katie Webster told him, "I knows it when I hears it." From 2002 through 2006, David shared lead vocals and frontman duties in the Paul deLay Band, culminating in his performance on an award-winning live CD, which reached the Top Ten on Billboard's national blues chart. During his years in Portland, David won five Muddy Awards from the Cascade Blues Association, including Best Keyboard Player. In 2012 he recorded and released East Meets Vest, backed by members of Downchild and Fathead. Holger Petersen of CBC Saturday Night Blues called it, "one of the best Canadian blues albums of 2012.” David won the 2012 Maple Blues Award for Keyboard/Piano Player Of The Year and East Meets Vest was nominated for the Maple Blues’ Recording Of The Year in 2013. David's piano work can also be heard on Bill Johnson's JUNO-nominated Still Blue, and on David Gogo's JUNO-nominated Come On Down. David continues to tour extensively, from small blues joints to big blues festivals across North America, where he regales crowds with his authentic blues sound and stories about the fascinating life of a traveling bluesman.

note - bio written in early 2014 prior to David's more recent 2nd Maple Blues Award given this January 2015. 

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