We’ve been listening to Dan Davidson on and off for a few years now but after seeing him slay The Wayside Stage at this year’s C2C festival in London we knew we had to speak to him and find out more about his career and the stories behind the music he makes. Davidson played a fun, mostly uptempo set of Country bangers in London and immediately connected with the crowd there via his warm, funny personality too.
Davidson recorded and toured Canada extensively with the indie rock band Tupelo Honey and continues to follow a pattern of remaining independent as a musician: releasing multiple singles and EPs as a solo country artist. He’s also a producer and a collaborative songwriter with other artists and has won multiple awards for his writing, performing and producing in his native homeland of Canada. He’s now turning his eyes to a more global fan base and we were thrilled to grab 20 minutes of his time recently to talk about it.
Thank you for you time today, Dan. I saw you at the Wayside Stage in London at the C2C festival and it looked like you were having a lot of fun!
I did have a lot of fun! That’s part of the reason why I do what I do. There’s nothing better than having a good time with a crowd and entertaining yourself a little bit. It’s always better when your band mates are guys you would hang with anyway too.
What memories of the trip to London and the C2C festival did you take back to Canada with you?
There were a lot of great memories. I was nervous going over because it’s a huge festival and it’s not always easy to be in touch with the organisers because they have so much on their plates, so we were kinda going in a little unsure of what the technical situation was going to be on the stages. I wasn’t even sure if anyone was going to know that we were there! (laughing) But we got there and it was great. I felt like it all just worked.
You know what the O2 is like, right? It’s a shopping mall wrapped around a concert venue and when we got to the Icon stage it was basically in a mall and a little out of the way and upstairs so I was convinced there would be no-one there to watch us but I was wrong!
The cool thing about English Country music fans is that they all show up early because they want to check out the new acts and find new artists to like. That was really eye opening and really different to how it is in Canada. I got such a good vibe even travelling to the O2 on the tube – watching everyone coming in in their hats and boots and belt buckles – you don’t expect that in London! We met so many awesome people and everyone was so nice to us. There’s getting paid and stuff but the most life enriching part of being a musician is having that connection with other people and we definitely felt that in London.
Did you and the band find a drink of choice whilst you were over here?
There was a pub right across the street from our hotel so we were in there most nights drinking the cask ales! (laughing) We don’t have casks and the pump system back in Canada. Our beers are all fizzy unlike the ones over there so that was a little something we had to get used to but we went for it! (laughing) Pub culture in England is so different to what it is in Canada – you can go there for breakfast at one extreme and you can take your kids in at the other end! (laughing)
Did you ever play in the UK when you were in your rock band, Tupelo Honey?
No, we never made it over to Europe. We toured extensively in Canada – all over the place. We played with huge artists like Bon Jovi, Shinedown, Billy Talent and Three Days Grace, right? That was all in Canada, a little in California but we largely just went coast to coast in Canada which is a monstrous country to tour!
I thought when the band finished that would be it for me as far as touring internationally but I’ve been in five countries this year already! (laughing) I knew that I wasn’t done with music when the band finished and growing up on the Canadian prairie the Country side of me was always in there from the start, I just unlocked the door. A couple of the guys from the rock band are still with me today and we aren’t doing anything too wildly different really – fiddle in the band, a little more twang and a bit more focus on the song rather than the riff and away we go! (laughing)
Did you always want to be a musician and when did you realise it was an achievable career?
I don’t think I ever realised it was an achievable career until I was years into trying to make it an achievable career! (laughing) I was in terrible bands in high school and doing that whole thing. When I graduated high school I knew that the only thing I loved doing was playing guitar so I applied to a music school in Western Canada and that kinda started it all. We started Tupelo Honey and the more I learned about the industry the more I could see the challenges but we were coming up at a time when the industry was at its absolute weakest! (laughing) We had labels coming from all over America to see us but they all kept getting fired as labels downsized to face the challenges of streaming and their loss of power and control over the industry.
I had to learn to do everything myself and that became the genesis of this independent music career that I’ve had. It made it easier to go solo in Country because I already knew what business stuff I needed to do to be successful.
Dallas Smith has done a similar thing to you in terms of coming out of a rock band and becoming a solo Country artist. Do you guys know each other? Is he a good role model for you?
That was actually a big part of why I did what I did. We used to tour with Dallas’ old band all the time. When Dallas switched over I took a listen to his music and thought it was really great. It was produced by Joey Moi who’s worked with some great Rock and Country artists and I went to see Dallas open for Florida Georgia Line and saw him after the show and he was telling me that I should get into doing Country music because I had the right voice and look, whatever, and it fired me up to try it.
One of the first two songs I wrote was ‘Found’ which then went on to be the highest charting indie song in Canada for a while and now it’s platinum over here too!
Did you have an inkling that ‘Found’ was going to change your life or did it take you by surprise?
It took me completely by surprise! (laughing) Honestly? I wasn’t sure that anyone would care about the things I was putting out. With ‘Found’ it was such an organic genesis of a song. I was just stomping and clapping in my kitchen and it came from there! There wasn’t even a guitar around. My producer had challenged me to write a song that was somewhere between ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ (John Denver) and ‘Honey, I’m Good’ (Andy Grammar).
I went over to my friend Clayton Bellamy’s house, he’s in the band The Road Hammers over here, and we finished it up in an hour. We call it a ‘sky song’ because it just seemed to fall out of the sky into our laps. I was so lucky, that song started it all for me.
As a Canadian artist are you in a similar position to the Brits and the Aussies in terms of looking at Nashville from afar? How important is American or Nashvillian success to you or are your goals more global than that?
The funny thing about America is that to really make it in Nashville I think you have to live there, at least at first. You have to be part of the community and prove yourself that way and I don’t want to move my family to America – I like living in Canada. You can have a great career in Canada and I’m making strides in Australia there now too. They have a big Country community there and now I’m trying to build up my standing over in Europe and the UK as well.
I’ve been talking to Tebey a little bit about how he’s building a base over in Europe and asking him some advice on how to get here and make a career and a fan base with you guys there. Since there isn’t a massive commercial radio culture over in the UK it can change the mentality of how musicians release music – over here and in the USA it can be hyper political and the labels have so much influence over what gets played. There are also radio station gatekeepers that can control whole clumps or territories. It all feels like a bit of a racket really. When a band gets popular in the UK it’s often fan-driven and it comes from a groundswell of fan perpetuated support rather than industry manipulation.
There’s a good chunk of humour in your songs and videos. The video to ‘Warm Beer’ was my favourite video of last year. Is that an important part of your personality that you want to shine through?
Yeah. I think as an artist it’s important to express some personality, you know? Especially in the Country genre where everybody is trying to behave to a sort of expected standard and say all the right Country key-words! I want people to know who I am and having fun and not taking yourself too seriously in what you do sometimes.
For folks over here who are new to you – which 3 songs of yours would you recommend they take a listen to?
I think ‘Barn Burner’ would be a great place to start. That’s one of my favourite songs to play. ‘Role Models’ is another………
Potty mouthed!…….
Yep, that one is a good beer garden song! (laughing) We save that one for the rowdy crowds. It’s hard not to say ‘Found’ because that’s the biggest hit I’ve had. ‘Church’ is a really fun song too.
Two of your EP’s, ‘Songs for Georgia’ and ‘Juliet’ are named after girls. Are you using your music to chase girls or lamenting the loss of them there?
(laughing) No, those are my daughters names! (laughing) Georgia is my oldest and the songs on there were the ones I was working on at home when she was a toddler so she would have heard them around the house and the same goes for Juliet. Now, I’ve run out of daughters! (laughing)
Your last EP, ‘Six Songs to Midnight’ was a big release for you last year. There’s some great songs on that too. How did you settle on those songs for that project and were you pleased with the impact of the EP?
It’s always tough to pick the songs for every record. I get so close to them all during the writing and recording process that I lose focus on which ones are the most potent. That EP was a bit of a pandemic thing in terms of when the songs were written.
The biggest impact of that EP was that it got things started for me over in Australia. I recorded ‘Roll With It’ with The Road Hammers and that song was a Top 10 for me down in Australia. Then I recorded ‘Shouldn’t Drink Around You’ featuring Hayley Jensen who is an Australian artist.
I pushed myself on the EP in some paces, which was cool. ‘Blind Spot’ was more of a softer, acoustic song and ‘Don’t Judge a Beer by the Label’ was another song that was not my typical sound either. I wrote that song on a writers camp in the Dominican Republic, which is something I’d never done before. ‘Role Models’, which is on the EP too, was half written in London with a couple of Brits, Amy Lawton, who is an artist over there and the producer, Matty Benbrook. So there was a lot of experimentation on that EP, it was a cool project from lots of different places and timelines.
When can we expect your next project to release?
It’s funny you should ask because I’m just finishing the last two masters for the new record now. The new record should be out late summer time, early fall I think. It’s looking like 7 tracks right now, maybe 8 although I might trim it down to make it fit together because I want the project to have a really concise and tied up feel to it.
Can we expect to see you back in the UK again during the next phase of that project?
Oh man, I sure hope so. London is my favourite city in the world. I had a great time in Manchester and I’ve been bugging C2C to put me in Edinburgh too. I would love to come back and play some club shows in early 2024. I’m a once a year guy right now but I’d love to increase that.
At the Wayside Stage show at C2C you dropped the microphone at the end of one song which left you a little abashed. Whats the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you on stage?
(laughing) That one was a funny one. I had a microphone with a cable and I’m used to running around all over the place, holding it up in the air, you know? In this moment of rock and roll glory I tried to put my hand up in the air and the cable was too short! (laughing) Luckily it was the last minute of the song.
There’s an artist over here called Brett Kissel and we’ve been friends for a long time. Back in the early days he did medleys and wanted me to come up on stage with him and do the medley one night. It was ‘Honey I’m Good’, ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’, ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ and ‘Raise Your Glass’. I learned the songs, studied them relentlessly and then waited backstage to be asked to come up. They did ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’, then “Honey I’m Good’ and I’m still stood there and then Brett pulls me up for ‘Raise Your Glass’ and I start to think the tempo is wrong and I’m standing there confused and it turned out that I had learned the Pink song, ‘Raise Your Glass’ and not Brett’s own song that was called the same thing! (laughing) I felt like a total idiot and all I could do was hype-guy stuff! (laughing) Luckily for me, at the end of the medley he threw his guitar to his tech but it fell and smashed and he forgot all about me! (laughing)
Go check out Dan Davidson’s videos on Youtube – you will be seriously entertained – and his EPs and singles are all on Spotify and the other streaming platforms.
