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The internet home of songwriter John Davey
a man, a truck, a horse
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.
After some discussions with a few trusted friends, I decided to self-release the album. The undertaking of this album from the beginning has been in that spirit, I think.
I reached out to a few creative, productive people I know to assist me in creating some promotional material for the album. A few ol’ reliables like Anthony Simpkins of GemsOnVHS (may God grant him wealth) and some fresh talent from where I live too. Namely, Sarah Reynolds (Couturra) and Zachary Schneider Studio.
I saw Zachary at someone’s birthday party and I remembered seeing some of his photography. It made me wonder if he did video work. I got in touch later and Zack responded with enthusiasm and a bunch of good questions and got to work right away on collecting some footage I described to him. I think what he captured and sequenced works perfectly for the feel of this song and the images are captivating. It’s a cool thing about where we live (Upper Michigan) that that imagery is around you all the time. I hear it come through the songs on this album.
Please go full screen and enjoy the look and sound and feel of the song and the visuals and hear “Kings, Gods, Fools” on your favorite streaming platform on April 28th.
Thanks for listening.
-John
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
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?
BIG OLD PHOTO DUMP FROM THE PAST MONTH.
THERE ARE SOME EASTER EGGS IN HERE.
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
I watched this music lesson by Chilly Gonzales on composition for beginners on QRadio a few years ago. Among other wonderful little flashes of insight, the simple idea really struck me of pedaling on a note or one chord, then jotting down whatever melody comes to you that wheels its way around the note being played. That's what got the ball rolling on this song "Leaving Cup". Thanks Chilly, you crazy bastard.
This was one, lyrically, that took me quite a while to finally get down. I remember singing the very beginnings of it to my friends Anthony and Erin during a recording session in Atlanta during the summer of 2014. The mystery of the line about "her" changing forms and flitting around the room kept pulling me back to the half-written song until it was finished. Of course, this wasn't the first time I played with the concept of shape shifting (here's one example and here's another), but it did reveal to me in the second half of the song what all those shape shifting songs had always been about for me. I read a book called On Truth: the Tyranny of Illusion. It was life changing. I played with a lot of the themes from there in the second half of the song. I strongly recommend the book which you can download for free.
When I moved to Marquette, Michigan, I started this band with a couple of guys I met during the first few months I lived here. We played, wrote, and learned a bunch of songs together. "Leaving Cup" was one of the first songs I wanted us to arrange all together as a band. We ended up going out into the woods for a whole weekend and recording a bunch of demos, drinking a bunch of beers, playing Frisbee, taking saunas, cooking food, and hiking around a bit. It was a great experience. I wanted to use those live recordings up at camp as the framework for the album we were going to record in a big way later on, but some of the songs turned out so well, that I'm releasing them now. This is one of them. I think this song in particular really showed a lot of the strengths we had as a band in terms of arranging, being locked in together, the writing, and just the general feel and sound as a group. We had a really cool thing going on. Here's a little video our friend Josh put together from that weekend that I'm sort of fond of. You can hear "Leaving Cup" playing during part of it.
Finally, the fact that my old friends Steffen Yazvac and Matt Whatley came onto this project to mix and master this song is a great joy for me. We all used to live in the same town. I've done many projects with both of them, but this is the first time we've done something all together and it feels so good. I find that as I get older, the most fruitful working relationships are ones which I've had for years that have had time to deepen and mature.
Love you all.
-John
