Benjy Davis Project is ser to play in the Down in the District festival Thursday night along with Tim Reynolds, a guitar player known for his live collaboration CD with Dave Matthews.
The free festival will run from 7 p.m. until midnight in front of Roxie’s Square Tablespoon.
The Benjy Davis project started playing together only two years ago, and since then, they have toured with North Mississippi Allstars, Sister Hazel, Gin Blossoms and Better than Ezra.
“I can’t wait to hear the most talented guitar player ever,” Brynn Burns, student director of Campus Activities Board, said, referring to Reynolds.
Reynolds is slated to open for the headliner, Benjy Davis Project.
The band’s frontman, Benjy Davis, 21, started writing songs before he was a teenager to combat his stuttering problems. At age 10, he was singing his lyrics into a tape recorder. When he was 13, his mother bought him a guitar.
“My mom made us play an instrument,” Davis said, “and now I’m really grateful.”
When his guitar coach asked him to practice other people’s songs, he refused and practiced his own, he said.
His early originality has evolved into lyrics like, “It’s trailer parks and swamps, canoes and cypress stumps about an hour east of Baton Rouge. We all anticipate the taste of hand grenades and the sound of Bourbon Street late afternoons,” in a song called New Orleans. Davis said that everyone comes back from New Orleans with a story to tell.
“It’s just a city where extremely strange things happen,” Davis added.
“Half of the songs in our upcoming album are the good mood kind, and half are the bad mood kind,” Davis said. “That’s why we’re gonna call it Bipolar.”
Drummer, conga player and longtime friend of Davis, Mic Capdevielle, 21, started playing with Davis when they were 16 at a caf in Baton Rouge. The band also has a violin player, Anthony Rushing, 23, who left his pre-dentistry scholarships at LSU to join the band.
Along with two others, the group will play after Reynolds and local bluegrass band Nash Street.
“My favorite thing about playing live is seeing people sing along with words that I wrote,” Davis said.
“We had 6,000 people show up last year, but I think we’ll have 10,000 this year,” Burns said.
Dee Dallas, CAB’s film and recreation division head, said he can’t wait to hear Reynolds. Dallas was able to get five vendors to set up at the festival that will section off Maxwell Street. He successfully negotiated with The University Grill, Oby’s, Mugshots, The Veranda and Coca-Cola.
“This is going to be good for MSU, especially if students bring their friends who don’t come here,” Dallas said.
Cori Wilkinson, CAB’s speakers forum division head, has helped create the Down in the District T-shirt. The light blue shirts which show an abstract sketch of the Cotton District apartment buildings will be sold for $10 at the festival and in The Union Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m to 2 p.m.
“This is CAB’s one and only event that takes place off of campus,” Wilkinson said. “This is the last event; we build up to this one all year long.”
Jessica Fulton, entertainment division head, said that she can’t wait to look around and see people enjoying all of the work she has done. Fulton did most of the public relations work for the project, distributing flyers at every business in town.
“We got the advertisements on the television, the radio, and it’ll be in the news sometime this week,” Fulton said. “I hope this will bring the community of Starkville and its surrounding community together for a night.”