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Billie Davies PR
PR for jazz drummer, composer and bandleader Billie Davies
About Me
I am Billie Goegebeur and I am also {{Billie Davies}}, https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/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, now husband, Mike Davies, a recording engineer.
About Billie Davies...
”Billie's music is intense, free and creative, supported by musicians of the highest caliber (the drums in particular!).
This music, however, demands attention and concentration. It's not to be consumed at any time of day. In my
opinion, it's important to make the effort to go towards it. Just like when you decide to read a book. You can't do
anything else when you read a book. You can't cook or answer e-mails while listening.”
Bravo for what you're doing.” - Jacques Pauper, Couleurs Jazz Radio, Paris. (Apr 18, 2025)
“Her music is certainly haunting and captivating, performed as it is in the best tradition of genuine improvised jazz.”
- Willy Schuyten, formerly of De Werf, Bruges. (Apr 2, 2025)
“Like the best forward-thinking music, 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 this year.” - Jerome
Wilson, All About Jazz (Dec 17, 2018)
Mentioned as one of the Iconic Female Jazz Drummers on Jazz Fuel in '23 all of drummer and composer Billie
Davies' music is Free Improvisation. Billie Davies (née Goegebeur, December 10, 1955 in Bruges, Belgium), an
American female jazz drummer and composer, is best known for her free improvisation, avant-garde and avant-
garde jazz music since the mid-1990s, and her improvisational drumming techniques she has performed in Europe
and in the United States.
“I want to play as if I never played my instrument before, as if every time is the first time and 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.
“Billie Davies is an accomplished free-jazz drummer. There is a vitality and fluidity in the way that she plays the
drum kit and this is what I mean by the idea that her stories explain her drumming; she speaks through the drums to
the other players, asking questions of them and replying with the fusion of styles that she has built up over her
travels” —Chris Baber, Jazz Views (Jun 30, 2016)
By 1977 Billie was working in the Private Night Club sector as a DJ in Cologne, Germany. That set the stage for a
successful DJ career in Belgium a few years later, she remembers “Les Cinq Anneaux” in Knokke where she packed
the house every weekend.
Aged 25 Davies started the transition to becoming a professional musician.
She played and performed all over Europe, in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece
for the next 7 years.
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 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 the words of Max Roach: “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”.
A move to the United States at 32 gave her an opportunity to play all over the west coast. In 1987 in Oregon, she
met and played a few times with Leroy Vinegar, and then later in early 1988 she moved to California, San Francisco
where she was mostly active in North Beach and in the Lower-Haight district, where she met and ended up playing
a few times with John Handy and played frequently with local jazz notables at their unforgiving jams, in her words:
the best learning school she ever had.
In the mid-nineties, in the San Francisco Bay Area, she recorded “Cobra Basemento”, that included “The Man From
Tollund” that was posted on at the time Download.com, which became MP3.com, and a few days later it had close
to a 1000 downloads, and “Dreams”, she called these recordings the infamous boombox recordings. They were
never commercially released but preserved for the future.
In 2009, she moved to Hollywood, California and released “all about Love.” with Tom Bone Ralls and Oliver
Steinberg and “12 VOLT” with Daniel Coffeng and Adam Levy.
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's “12 VOLT” release 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 Dec 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 where she released “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon”, with
Evan Oberla, Alex Blaine, Branden Lewis and Ed Strohsahl, “On Hollywood Boulevard” with Evan Oberla, Oliver
Watkinson and Iris P and “PERSPECTIVES” with Evan Oberla, Oliver Watkinson, Ari Kohn, Iris P and Allie Porter.
She received more attention due to a player feature in Downbeat Magazine May 2016 edition, “BILLIE DAVIES '20
Years Stronger'” that was written after her release of “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon” in October of 2015.
”On Hollywood Boulevard”, her CD released in 12/10/2016 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 2017 Best Of
The Beat Awards.
September 2018 she released “PERSPECTIVES II”, now rereleased as “Perspectives”, by BILLIE DAVIES with Evan
Oberla on piano, keys and trombone and Oliver Watkinson on upright bass and featuring Ari Kohn, woodwinds, Iris
P, vocals and Allie Porter, vocals.
December 2019 Billie Davies was nominated “Best Drummer” in New Orleans by 2019 Best Of The Beat Awards.
Late 2019 she started contributing with Damani Butler, an electronic artist and Maude Caillat a woodwind player,
and they ended up recording a free improvisation album called “Whadeva Live” at Dangerous Art Studios in New
Orleans on Feb 13, 2020.
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 3 days of creating free improvisation music “Pandemos” a
study suite of 10 works.
In July of 2022 she made a permanent move to West Palm Beach, Florida.
In 2023 Billie Davies was named an Iconic Female Drummer amongst women in jazz in a Jazz Fuel article that
appeared early 2023 written by Isabel Marquez: She was mentioned amongst a small group of female jazz
drummers in time amongst whom are other contemporary female drummers from the US, Terri Lyne Carrington,
Cindy Blackman Santana and Allison Miller.
In 2024 she released the album “On Hollywood Boulevard (Live at The Mint in New Orleans)” with Iris P on vocals
and the single ”Thinking Of Marie Laveau”. Both were recorded around the same period of 2016-2017 in New
Orleans with Billie Davies on her e- drums, Evan Oberla on piano, keys and trombone and Oliver Watkinson on el.
bass.
On April 20, 2025 she released “Retrospectives (In The Key Of Jazz)”, a retrospective of free improvisation and
avant-garde jazz music that appears in chronological order between 2012 and 2018 with one and a half hours of
studio and live recorded music.
“A good way to gauge Davies’ drumming in isolation is through the solo drum performance “prelude. Hand In Hand
In The Hand Of The Moon.” She demonstrates a mastery of drums that goes well beyond technique; she is able to
tell a story with it.” - S. Victor Aaron, Something Else! on her album “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon”
released in 2015.
