Alexis Mahler records "Cruel to be Kind"

I talked with Alexis Mahler at the end of 2019 about producing a cover of my song “Cruel to be Kind”. I was aware she had performed it a few times at shows when she moved to Portland, Oregon. I wanted to hear a dual cello version. Time went by, then in early 2021 she dropped this beauty in my inbox. It really jazzed me up and I was eager to share it, but we were in the midst of unpredictable work schedules, raising a one year old, and moving out of our apartment in the Lakeshore Park building. While all this was going on, I sent the track off to Steffen Yazvac for mastering while Alexis built some promotional plans up around the release. I reached out to Nate Peltier (@_garlique on instagram) about building some imagery around the track. He had shared a video of himself playing “Cruel to be Kind” out on his porch back when he lived in Montreal. That and his recent move back to the south shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin made me think it would be a good connection to have him do the artwork for the single. East Coast, West Coast, Great Lakes.

When things finally stabilized after the move, we released the single and this video accompaniment. Johnny Himself, who I became aware of by way of my friend Matthew Fowler, shot and edited it in Portland, Oregon.

The single has been making the rounds on some nice playlists and Alexis has been picking up a number of new listeners and followers as a result.

This recording was arranged and produced by Alexis Mahler at her home studio in Portland, Oregon
Mixed by Clara Baker at Rye Room in Portland, Oregon
Mastered by Steffen Prentiss Yazvac in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Artwork by Nate Peltier (instagram.com/@_garlique)
Written by me: John Isaac Davey

Summer Nightwind (demo) exclusive for Bandcamp subscribers

I released a demo of my song “Summer Nightwind” to subscribers on bandcamp. If you’d like it, become a monthly supporter for $5, $10, or $25/mo to get access to back catalog material and exclusive demos.

Toss Your Javelin

Toss Your Javelin has been germinating for years. The third long playing album by John Davey is a collection of maxims and self-injunctions set to memory evoking melodies.

A black and white photo taped to a wall in Kansas City, the spiny ridge along Chimney Tops in Eastern Tennessee, the train station platform in Lansing in the dreary rain, neck craned to see the parade down Washington Street on the 4th of July, mammoth Ore Boats chugging in and out of Upper Harbor from all over the Great Lakes. This collage is the running start which throws the weighted dart.

”Lower Tiers” is the centerpiece of the album. Its arrangement borrows pages from The Great American Songbook, seeking common ground with 20th century greats Irving Berlin, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman.
The bookends of the album are the newest compositions, “Q” and “Boreal Lullaby”, both fruits of a tree transplanted. “Q” is the disentanglement of overlaying personalities and the proper identification of a newly emerging self. “Boreal Lullaby” is both old and new. It’s the hymn we hummed in church. It’s the subject of a trial, a lamentation, a psalm.
”Hard Times, Strong Men” is the outlier. Pulsating and fuzzy and rhythmic. It’s Jules Vern, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Harrison at a game of craps. Harrison rolls snake eyes. A prophetic warning. A new archetype.

Toss Your Javelin was crowdfunded by 134 generous supporters.

Songs, guitars, and vocals by John Davey
Production, mixing, and arrangement of a variety of instruments performed by Shane Leonard in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Mastered by TW Walsh in Boston, Massachusetts
Engineering by Evan Middlesworth at Pine Hollow Audio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Basses by Jeremy Boettcher
Piano and other keys by Joshua Gallagher

Little Ghost Notes

In the Spring of 2019 I started thinking of ways to try to get my songs in front of more people’s ears and into their heads. One of those ways was to get some other artists to start recording some of my compositions in their own style. I talked to a few people about doing some administrative work in exchange for those recordings.

One of the first people to really jump into the project and make it where the rubber meets the road was my old friend Dustin Sendejas. Dustin and I have known each other since I was a kid and was just starting to play shows. We’ve traveled all over the USA and even some in Canada together, me as a solo act, and Dustin in many different musical iterations from solo songwriter to member and sometimes leader of a big band. He was sort of a mentor to me and showed me new ways of looking at the world and introduced me to some important philosophical concepts that have shaped how I view and interact with the world. It always feels like we’re on an extended hangout when we get to see each other.

As a first label release, I thought it was very fitting that Dustin and I would do something collaboratively. We’ve both been on a long path of delineating where art and commerce merge and this is another building block for each of us in our individual body of work.

Dustin chose my song “Ghost Notes” and we renamed the track “Little Ghost Notes” as a way of cross pollinating his current main project Little Ghost and my song. I’m really happy with the result. I think Dustin did an outstanding job staying true to the composition while infusing his own particular qualities through a couple minor rearrangements. Listen to some other Little Ghost material to catch my drift (the song “The Dark” is a great place to start). Dustin played the acoustic guitar and the electric piano on the track and producer Eric Stanley added electric guitar and backing vocals. There’s a really nice flourish toward the end of the song that’s worth sticking around for. I’ve found myself returning to it frequently since I heard the initial recording.

I’m so pleased to present this to the world and I hope more similar collaborations continue to happen this year and onward!

”Little Ghost Notes” can be purchased and streamed through the player above. You can also stream or download the song on your preferred streaming and downloading platform.
You can listen to my version of the song where I’ve posted it below or, as always, on your preferred streaming or download platform.
Please consider sharing the song on your social media or just play it for your friend in your car while you drive around.

Thanks for the listens.
-John

Video for "Kings, Gods, Fools" from GemsOnVHS

A Zoetrope

A brief retelling of the moving pictures in my memory of “Moving Pictures” , a short story by Andrew Jones:

Is seeing your fate in advance a blessing or a curse? What would you do with the power to see your future if you had it?

A young man was given a secret embedded in a simple toy. Through the slots in a cylinder he could see the last day of his life as it wound down. The preliminaries and the final event of his passing. The man told no one and buried the toy in a watertight box in the bottom of a forest pond. Once a year he would visit the pond and retrieve the toy to watch his last day. He would then sink it again and return to his simple life.
In his old age, the man’s four grown children began noticing strange sequences in his behavior on their trips home. Many crates were delivered to his porch. A locked door shut off a wing of the house. Inscrutable noises emanated from behind the door. Correspondences.
At his deathbed he gave them all knowing winks and smiles and quickly drank a tincture when all but one person were out of the room.
In his wake, he left instructions to take his ashes and a sealed box to a large house on a hill several days’ journey away. All his children went, one reluctant.
Before the arrival to this shrouded mansion on a hill, a storm began to rise. The few had barely arrived at the gate when the wind swirled gustily and the rain pattered hard on the cobblestones leading up to the house. They hurried to the door and were welcomed into the grand old home and ushered into the study of a young man who looked old. Or was he an old man who looked young? There was something about his eyes.
The Old Man laughed and twinkled and regaled the young travelers with stories of their father. He easily opened the locked box and produced a stack of bendable slides. He swore siblings to secrecy before unceremoniously tossing the bundle of pictures overhead. They watched them fly into the air above them and noticed for the first time, to their surprise, a crystalline dome in the tower above them which captured the picture slides in something like an updraft and held them there, hovering and swirling. The light from the thunderstorm now blowing full bore around the safety of the warm study flashed through the crystal dome and fractured, conjoined, multiplied, and bent the light, showing sequences of pictures. Some images fully familiar, some partially obscure, some altogether untranslatable flashed and danced around the walls of the room. All were enraptured and silent until the storm and the display dissipated.
The Old Man produced small packages in paper and whispered parting words to each of the four before demanding they retire before their long journeys home.

—

So you planned and saved and stored
Was your body slave or lord?

You were utilizing tools
Are we Kings or Gods? Or Fools?

John Davey: Live at The X!

Last night I visited the WUPX studio at Northern Michigan University and played some songs live on the air for about an hour.
The music director Alex Watenen was nice enough to invite me in for the performance and make all the necessary arrangements. We had a good time talking travel, art, music, and pickled eggs (look it up). He showed me the music library packed to the hilt with music that’s being transferred from physical to digital format and he introduced me to some interesting new stuff.

I played pretty good. I had fun. Radio is cool. Let’s do more.

-John

Living Bravely On the Edge of a Big Change

Like an unwashed, uncut geode John Davey and the boys crack open this rough, gritty rock to find a sparkly colorful interior. Like every geode, this baby knows it's special on the inside. John Davey - acoustic guitar, vocals Jon “Jonny Negaunee” Letts - electric bass Raymond Little - electric guitar, effects Dennis “Bud” Clowers - drums Tracked and Engineered by Raymond Little and Bud Clowers @ the Letts family camp up past Harlow Lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Mixed by Steffen Yazvac @ Steffen Yazvac Audio in Minneapolis, MN Mastered by Matt Whatley @ Combover Mastering in Fort Worth, TX

I was Mad Donna's in East Nashville about to experience Liz Cooper's band play for the first time. This kid who worked in the kitchen who I knew from an open mic at Dino's told me to come out back with him. He wanted to show me his hangout spot. We went into this alley and in between two fenced in backyards there was a little nook with a tree stump in it. This kid (let's call him "Will") Will stood on the stump and produced a glass piece which he loaded up and lit. "I like to stand on this stump. People don't think to look over this way when they drive by." I tried it. I liked it. I love standing on things. Don't ask me why. 
We went back inside in a much more aware-of-details state of mind just in time to catch Liz Cooper & the Stampede roar through their set. I was very moved by it. They're a really good band and Liz's distinctive guitar playing is about to catch on in a big way really soon. 
After the set, I set out walking around this neighborhood in East Nashville, as I was wont to do. I walked about a mile, just ruminating on the set I had seen, my ears ringing, feeling inspired. I ended up sitting on a bench, eating a big slice of pizza, and recording this little voice memo in my phone which I still listen to from time to time. I texted this girl Mary from Michigan who I had been crushing on pretty hard (she's my wife now) and told her about my night.

Over the next few days this song "Brave" emerged. I was listening to a lot of Buck Owens & His Bucakaroos and feeling the bracing strength of a life lived according to one's convictions. I was right on the edge of making this big decision to move to Michigan. It was another major life change in such a short amount of time. I felt I was living in fast forward almost. So many things happening all at once. When it rains, it pours. 
I would practice this song while my roommate was at work, the empty apartment to myself and the cat. I would sing it real loud. My drunk neighbor met me outside one day and asked if that was one of my songs he had heard me playing the night before. I said "yeah" and he told me he had a cousin who worked at Capitol Records and he'd pass the song along to him. Classic. 

Fast forward about two and a half years. I'm in Michigan, I'm engaged, I have this band The Ancient Urge and this is one of the first songs we're arranging together. I really like the way it's coming together. It felt a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n roll. In the short-lived career of that band, "Brave" became an internal and crowd favorite. It was short, punchy, rolling, and the band always knocked it out of the park. We loved playing it and recording it out at camp. 

Let this tune be an injunction to find that thing you are pleased with about yourself and amplify it for the edification of yourself and the ones you love. 

-John

Sekoitus, Farm Block, Art on the Rocks (7/28/16-7/31/16)

John Davey & the Ancient Urge had a packed weekend and we're all resting up. I wish I would've got more snaps, especially from Sekoitus, but I've included some taken by Jesse DeCaire and Taylor Freeman. All the rest were taken by me. 

Sekoitus Fest was so fun and we wished we could've stuck around for all of the festivities. 

Farm Block was a treat. Great weather, old friends, new acquaintances, good food, fun set, some exploring of Keewenaw spots, delicious food, powerfully good bands, lots of laughs, and I had the pleasure of riding up with my treasure of a fiance with the windows down. Highlights music-wise: M. Sord, Big Dudee Roo, After Ours, The Go Rounds, Kansas Bible Company. JD&theAncientUrge also did a quick recording for The River Street Anthology. We missed Mostly Midwest. 

Art on the Rocks. We drove back on Saturday night after all the fun on FarmBlock Saturday was over. We were up and at 'em early on Sunday to load gear down to Lower Harbor. Despite some heavy noise restrictions and being about a thousand yards from the nearest electrical outlet, the show went on and it ended up being a good exercise in adaptability for the band. I don't know if we'll ever play as subdued a set or two as we did at Art on the Rocks, but I loved it. Shout out to our buddy Greg Sandell who, out of the damned goodness of his heart, lent us gear, helped us load it into the festival, set stuff up, ran cords, coordinated and was supportive in every way. He is the man. His mug is that last photo in the set. 

Love ya. 

-John