Born for the Blues

Guitar prodigy Jontavious Willies pushes forward an old-school sound

by Frank Etheridge

“I learned myself,” Jontavious Willis explains of how he learned to play the blues.

Sitting at a table in a break room inside Jordan Hall on Columbus State University’s main campus, Willis wears camo shorts and a black t-shirt from the legendary Washington, D.C. venue the 9:30 club, a gift he received while in the nation’s capital at the prestigious Lincoln Theatre as part of a tour opening for blues masters Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’. A senior set to graduate in May, the 21-year-old is a sociology major.

“It’s a classical music school, so they would have taught me that everything I was doing was wrong, so I’d have to re-learn everything later,” Willis says of his choice to not earn a degree from CSU’s renowned Schwob School of Music. “I didn’t want to go to school to learn something I already knew how to do anyway.”

With a humble demeanor and soft-spoken voice making such statements, Willis recalls his first musical memories: singing in church at age three before moving on to piano at eight years old and finally picking up guitar at 14, eventually learning both banjo and harmonica to round out his instrumentation.

“The church I grew up going to is real old-timey,” Willis explains.  “I’m so rooted in church that the blues just came natural to me. Gospel and blues kind of go hand-in-hand—they’re basically the same thing, you just got to change the words around.”  

Saying that he likes “old country blues, stuff from the ‘20s to the ‘60s,” Willis plays acoustic blues on his arsenal of guitars, sometimes with a slide. He cites legends such as Muddy Waters, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson and Peg-Leg Howard as some of his influences, “though I listen to everybody.”

A big break arrived after Willis’ YouTube video for a cover of “Lucy Mae Blues,” a 1953 R&B smash by Frankie Lee Sims, caught the attention of Taj Mahal. Impressed, the 70s-something music-world veteran last year invited Willis to come open for him at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. “At that point, I was used to playing for 70 or 80 people,” Willis says, “and there were about 4,000 people there. I wasn’t too much scared of all those people, but more having this two-time Grammy winner that I loved and respected standing right over me, watching what I was doing. I played one song and the people went crazy.

“After that, Taj gave me a quote in Living Blues magazine [‘That’s my wonderboy, the wonderkind,’ he said of Willis in the publication] and that was it,” Willis continues, snapping his fingers in quick succession, “I got booked for show after show after show.”

Such demand has taken Willis to blues festivals across the country, from Portland, Oregon to Erie, Pennsylvania, in addition to nightclubs such as Northside Tavern in Atlanta. On this just-concluded tour with Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’, Willis played an opening slot, solo acoustic, for 30 to 40 minutes in such storied venues as the aforementioned Lincoln Theatre, as well as Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium. He doesn’t, however, gig in Columbus. “I ask for a professional price and they offer to pay me $50 or $100 and I just don’t have time for that,” he says. “I come back here to retreat—to sleep and go to class.”

Adding that in September he only spent four nights in his apartment, Willis says that he’s not money hungry. But he does want control over his music, his career. In July 2016 he recorded his debut album Blues Metamorphosis, an independent effort released in May of this year. He now only has roughly 80 copies left out of initial print run of 2,000.

“They’re always calling,” Willis says of music-industry sharks now circling around this budding blues star. “But they know my deal. They’ll offer $10,000 for a two-year contract, which isn’t much money. And that’s a long time—who knows what can happen in two years? As long as I can control my music, I will.”

Upon graduation in May, Willis says he plans “to hit the road hard,” with plans for an upcoming tour and album that he can’t yet disclose. He performs both solo as well as in a four-piece (with piano, drums and harmonica). His shows are a mix of original tunes and covers.

“I play covers by artists nobody’s ever heard of,” he says, “so I make sure to say their name so people can go check it out for themselves if they like it. They’re all dead and gone so I like to bring them back into the light.”

That such a young talent would be so inspired by the music and musicians of a bye-gone era shouldn’t surprise people, Willis says. 

“A lot of people that are surprised by that just don’t know history, don’t know the blues,” he explains. “A lot of people my age, they don’t go outside of their norm. I’ve never been a person to do what everybody else was doing.”

Jontavious Willis will perform solo at Pure Life Studios in LaGrange on Sunday, Nov. 19.