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... to hear John William Davis!
"I have just recently heard John Davis' Dreams Of The Lost Tribe, and I am already a huge fan. John's wry, dark lyrics resonate in the tradition of the best southern literature, as practiced by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. His melodies are as rich and instantly familiar as those of southern songwriters like Stephan Foster or Randy Newman. And all this is to say nothing of his lush, eclectic arrangements which pick up where Van Dyke Parks left off with the Beach Boys. Dreams Of The Lost Tribe is a musical tour de force which heralds the arrival of a major new voice in the world of music. I highly recommend it."
- Willis Alan Ramsey
... a musical ride down through the heart of Dixie. Dreams of the Lost Tribe is like taking a long, slow canoe trip down a bayou. - Mike Easterling, Albuquerque Journal
" With echoes of early Tom Waits and Randy Newman, it's a pastiche of Southern musical
styles. . . . a rich, sophisticated work that manages to evoke both William Faulkner and Robert Johnson. . . . Dreams of the Lost Tribe is a stunning piece of work by any standard, and a debut of masterful, almost scary proportions." - David Hill and Marty Jones, Westword
In his own words...
I grew up on a tributary of the St. Marys River in South Georgia, a few miles east of the Okeefenokee Swamp. My aunt once told me that we were part of the lost tribe of Israel, so I grew up believing that said lost tribe had devolved into a pack of Baptists and bootleggers. In addition to playing lead guitar in a wide range of bands, including an almost all-black soul band (yours truly was the token white boy) called Two Shades of Soul, I've packed vegetables for the A&P, worked in my Daddy's liquor store/gas station, worked in a paper mill, on a horse farm, as a craps and blackjack dealer, as a reader for the Folger Shakespeare Library, as a university English professor, and, finally, as an overpaid member of the IT sector before the big bubble burst. Once I made my way to the safe haven of unemployment, I decided to make a CD.
You will discover that there is a healthy dose of blues in my music. I learned guitar at around age 12 from one of God's best experiments in improving the species, Enman Cobb, a South Georgia bluesman. The three most important lessons Enman taught me were my first chord (E9), that there isn't a right or wrong way to play the instrument, and this bit of advice: "Careful, Johnny, you white folks has a ten'acee to work the guitar. But you s'pose to play the guitar. Don't you be working it." I owe him much. [My music] contains several E9 chords, some probably "wrong" ways of doing things that I happen to like, and, I sincerely hope, a lot of playfulness.
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LocationRainshadow Recording Studio (View)
Fort Worden State Park, Bldg 315 West
Port Townsend, WA 98368
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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Contact
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