Home » Member Page

Billie Davies PR

PR for jazz drummer, composer and bandleader Billie Davies

About Me

I am Billie Goegebeur and I am also Billie Davies, a jazz drummer and a composer best known for her free, instinctively avant-garde compositions and drumming since the mid nineties, and her improvisational drumming techniques she has performed in Europe and in the US. As Billie Goegebeur I have been leading all aspects of Billie Davies' career, and for the last 13 years with great help from my life partner Mike Davies, a recording engineer.

About Billie Davies... At a crossroads in her musical career, in 1984, while living and performing in the South of France (Montpellier, Toulouse, Biarritz, La Rochelle), Billie ended up receiving a grant from Max Roach to study at Berklee College of Music, this was after he heard one of her tapes she laid down with a bass player she met 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 Max Roach's 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”.

All of her music is improvisational ... reminding us sometimes of, as Jerome Wilson put it on All About Jazz regarding her “Perspectives” album in 2018, “... the spiritual jazz tradition, as exemplified by John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. Billie Davies' work reminds you of many different things but in the end, it is its own original beast, as powerful as anything more well-known musicians have created...”.

“As with several aspects of the playing I was reminded of a wide ranging mix of styles of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. There is total commitment to musical improvisation and, as is also the case with so much of her work, the resulting sound has such unity of purpose that it feels as if all the players must be working from charts rather than spontaneously creating the pieces.” On her album “Perspectives” in 2018 by Chris Baber for Jazz Views

Her 2012 release of “all about Love” solidified her position as a professional jazz musician. This recording of standards and original music, charted #1 in CMJ Jazz College Radio Charts for ‘top jazz add’ in new albums and went on to stay in the top 20 for 4 weeks. Also well received in Canada, the album ended up in the Top 10 on three different !Earshot Jazz charts. In October, 2013 Billie released “12 VOLT” which garnered national and international attention. CJ Bond, JAZZ MUSIC, wrote, “12 VOLT” features exclusively original compositions of Billie Davies, and adds the crucial tyne of 'composer/arranger' to her sterling artistic fork, augmenting fearless innovation. Jan Hocek of His Voice in Prague wrote:”Without hesitation - HIGH VOLTAGE avant-garde JAZZ - one of the most remarkable trio albums of the year!” In 2013 Billie Davies received the “Jazz Artist of the Year” Award by the 23rd Annual Los Angeles Music Awards. In March of 2014 she moved to New Orleans. She received more attention due to a player feature in Downbeat Magazine May 2016 edition, “BILLIE DAVIES '20 Years Stronger'” after releasing “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon” in 2015. ”On Hollywood Boulevard”, her CD released in 2016 became a January 2017 Editor's Pick on DownBeat.com. December 2017 Billie Davies was nominated for “Best Contemporary Jazz Artist” in New Orleans by Best Of The Beat and in 2019 they nominated her for “Best Drummer”. In 2020 she collaborated with Damani Butler and Maude Caillat for a conceptual music work of art, right when Covid started, which ended up being called “Whadeva (Live at Danderous Art Studios)” In 2021 she worked on studies and concepts for her “Music for the 24th Century” project with Branden Lewis and Damani Butler, she ended up calling the results of that “Pandemos”. In 2024 she released the album “On Hollywood Boulevard (Live at The Mint in New Orleans)” and the single ”Thinking Of Marie Laveau”. Both were recorded around the same period with of 2016-2017 in New Orleans.

Contact Me

Playlist

Theme Song

My Jazz Story

As I have followed the evolution of Jazz through the ages and sub-styles I find it to be the most limitless form of music right besides avant-garde. I was first exposed to jazz around the age of 2 or 3 through my mother who was always listening to either Jazz or Classical, the same time my grandfather walked up the stage of a concert with me on his shoulders and forced the drummer to let me sit in his lap and play the drums. The best performance I ever attended was Miles Davis in Brussels, Belgium in the early 80's. The way Miles played and behaved and brought the music has influenced me ever since. first jazz record Some albums that greatly influenced my musical career from the early eighties on were: "Arbour Zena" by Keith Jarrett, with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Charlie Haden and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mladen Gutesha, some people might not call this music jazz, but I do, just as much as Ornette Coleman's "The Shape of Jazz to Come". Interesting to notice that both albums have Charlie Haden on bass. An advice I give to new listeners is to "hear" what you listen to without any preconceptions as if you never heard music before... And I will play as if I have never played music before... :) Once I go behind my instrument, my drums, my keyboard, there is nothing else that exists but the sounds I hear and play. "I want to end up with music that is not written down but is felt and expressed at that moment of playing, of recording, of performing. This deliberate moment of choices, chances and inspirations may become a specific type of music, but it never ends up being predetermined or planned music, the notes played are never written down. I just want to end up with something where I hear unexpected, emotional, passionate, challenging music never heard before." Billie Davies.