If you wish to feel seen, acknowledged and befriended, get yourself to a room where Jontavious Willis is performing the blues. There are no strangers there. At a recent show at the Franklin Theatre opening for Keb' Mo', Willis engaged, cajoled and loved on the crowd as if we were family.
"I'm about making memories," he says in an interview for WMOT's The String, which will premiere Sunday Oct. 20. "When I'm on stage and the audience is quiet, I encourage them to talk back to me and feel like we're all together."