David’s Story

THE ROCKY ROAD AND THE SHINING PATH: DAVID DAVIS’ BLUEGRASS JOURNEY

When David Davis talks about his life in bluegrass, there’s a quiet passion in his soft-spoken Alabama voice that pulls you right in and makes you listen. And there’s the dream in there too, the dream that has fueled his more than twenty years as a member, partner and then leader of the Warrior River Boys, one of today’s pre-eminent traditional bands. When he talks about his early days in the music, he talks about goals and determination and promises to keep. And when he talks about where he and the band are today, and their recently released Rebel CD, he speaks of satisfaction and pride, and excitement for what they’ve accomplished. There were some tough times in between and the dream never left him, and it’s still there, keeping him going. And it all began with a father’s sacrifice and a father’s gift.

Davis was born in 1961 in Cullman, Alabama, where he and his wife Cindy continue to make their home. He is the son of Lucille and Leddell Davis, and the nephew of Cleo Davis, the pioneering sideman of Bill Monroe’s first band. David’s father was a good guitar player and singer in his own right, and when Cleo left Monroe and moved to Florida, the two formed a band with another brother Bobby, with intentions to return to Nashville. But their plans were shelved when World War II and the draft stepped in, and both Cleo and Leddell went into the service. Sent overseas, David’s father suffered the loss of his right hand when a shell exploded nearby. Davis recalls, “He told me, ‘the first thing I thought of when I realized the shape I was in, was that I’d never play that guitar.’ So that tells me it was important to him.”

When David was 8 years old he discovered an old guitar behind some clothes in the back of a closet. “Well, I dragged that guitar out of that closet and I said to my daddy, ‘learn me to play.’ And I know he got to thinking, now how can I do that? So he got one of those big three-pointed picks, he would cut off an edge of that pick and he would tape that pick to the end of his arm, it was tapered here, you know? And he could play the guitar and he could make runs. And he showed me how to play, and it was there. And I doubt seriously if he ever picked up the guitar since then, he couldn’t have, you know? But he showed me that.”
With that kind of inspiration, David started learning songs from his parents, and how to sing parts. “Daddy has a good voice, he could sing lead, baritone and tenor. And I remember him and mother would sing ‘No Letter in the Mail Today,’ and I’d just try to sing loud as I could, ‘cause I thought that was tenor! And ‘In the Pines,’ stuff like that. My dad was really into the Blue Sky Boys and the Monroe Brothers, that’s the music they grew up on.”

Music was all around the Davis family when David was young: at church – his father was a singing leader – where the harmony parts were there for the taking, and the hymns were absorbed like the air he breathed; at family get-togethers, where his father and Cleo would sing duets; in local homes, where people would gather for music on Saturday nights. “They’d always call and want mother and daddy to bring me to their house. It was just a gang of people you know, if there was eight musicians, five of them would be playing guitars.” David’s grandfather on his mother’s side was a preacher, and lived next door. “He loved the old time fiddle. And when he was a kid he played at dances, and he told me he paid for his school books playing for dances. He played a real sweet drop thumb, and a pretty two-finger thing on the banjo, and he played good old-time fiddle. And he never quit playin’ – till he got to where he couldn’t – and I’d second him on guitar.” Davis remembers trips with his grandfather to Sand Mountain to hear the fa-so-la singing.

One of the first records Davis had was Bill and James’s Monroe’s Father and Son, and also “a live thing with Bill on it. So I was into Bill, because of Cleo… It brought Bill into the house early on. But you know, I wasn’t really tore up over it. I liked it, but when I played the guitar, I played ‘Steel Guitar Rag,’ ‘Wildwood Flower,’ stuff like that.” Soon it was time to upgrade the guitar from the closet, and when David had saved up enough money to pay for a new one, his father surprised him by buying him one. “I reckon he wanted to see if I was serious enough to get the money up,” he recalled.

As Davis turned into his mid teenage years, the classic bands of Southern rock were at their peak of popularity, and the pull was powerful. “When I was sixteen, I wanted to learn to play that kind of stuff. So I bought me a 335 Gibson and an amp, and I took some lessons. I was into Skynard, the Allman Brothers. And I liked blues, so I got a guitar like B. B. King.” But the infatuation lasted only a few years. And along the way he was getting persistent encouragement from a couple of Cullman acquaintances he’d met at the picking parties of earlier years, to join them in a band they wanted to form.

“It was Crate and Barney Shelton, two brothers – they played bluegrass gospel music. Crate played banjo, and Barney played mandolin, and they wanted a guitar. And they’d call up and say ‘I want you to come and practice with us.’ And I’d make excuses, I didn’t pick, I didn’t do that – I was just being a teenager. From the time I was sixteen to eighteen, I kept making excuses, and they kept calling. Finally I told him, ok, I’ll come down and pick with you. And you know, in just a short time I was on fire to play, because Crate was a wonderful teacher.”

Davis was eighteen, and had traded his acoustic and electric guitars for a Martin D-28. He worked with the Sheltons for a year and a half, practicing regularly and honing his band skills, and improving his part singing with his father’s help. They played mostly churches, and a few radio shows. “I was being introduced to things that was puttin’ me on the spot, where you’re in front of people and you have something rehearsed to do, and you see if you can do it. And I was hearin’ things in that music that was tearin’ me up, and I thought, if I could sing and play that so that people could feel what I’m feelin’, how privileged I’d feel, what a thrill that would be. So I wanted to find some young people that were like-minded.”

It was about this time, in 1981, that Davis first met Mitch Scott, who was living in Arab, twenty-five miles away. Mitch was playing in a band that had no mandolin player, so Davis acquired one from a junk dealer friend of his grandfather’s, “just a little cheap A-model, I remember it had two pennies under the bridge, to make it higher. So I learned G, C and D with two fingers.” He and Mitch formed a band, together with Mitch’s cousin John Finch, and banjo player Brad Brannon, calling themselves the Brindlee Mountain Boys. They practiced and began getting their first jobs, playing songs from the Osborne Brothers, the Country Gentlemen, and classics being re-introduced by the Bluegrass Album Band. “We were playin’ around locally, we would play these little auctions around home, put our sound system up, play for 30 minutes while the crowd was gettin’ in, and pass the hat. And I remember tellin’ my daddy, this is good! We’re makin’ some money! He should have laughed at me, but he never did.”
The local band continued for a year and a half, all the while fueling Davis’ determination to make bluegrass his life. “I loved what me and Mitch were doin’, but I had a mission, and I wanted to get there as fast as I could.” Opportunity knocked when the band played a joint show in Cullman with Gary Thurmond and the Warrior River Boys. “I saw this band up on stage, it was a flat bed in a parking lot, they were dressed up in suits, they had hats, two fiddles, and I said man that’s really pro!” So at the show, David told Thurmond if he ever needed a singer, he’d be interested. “He said ok, and after a few months, he had some changes and he called me. I told Mitch, I’m outta here. To me, the Warrior River Boys were professional. I knew I couldn’t hang with them instrumentally, but I felt I could vocally. I told Mitch, I gotta do it, maybe it can help me and you later, but I gotta do it now.”

Davis played with Thurmond and the band for a year and a half, through 1983, playing festivals and shows throughout the South. “He used me for the singing, and knew I was getting better on the mandolin. He was good to me. He didn’t really need my mandolin. He had a good banjo player and good twin fiddlers, Al Lester and Wayne Jerrolds.” It was during this time that Thurmond, a former Bluegrass Boy, decided he wanted to record a tribute album of Bill Monroe songs. Davis was up for it, not knowing that ahead of him lay a decisive confrontation with Big Mon himself that he would never forget, and would never wish on anybody.

“The project really got me back into Monroe again. I was working on the songs,” remembers Davis. He would practice when his parents were out of the house. “I’d crank up the stereo wide open, on ‘High Lonesome Sound,’ and I’d sing with that at the top of my lungs. I was experimenting with falsetto, makin’ it loud, tryin’ to push my voice higher. And I was ready when that record come, I could do my part.”

The session was in a Nashville studio, and as often happens, in addition to the band being present, old music buddies and friends in the business stopped by to play or visit. Red Taylor and Gordon Terry came to add some fiddle. Charlie Louvin and Wilma Lee Cooper were there, just standing around. And then, in a twist that washed the scene with mythological overtones, Bill Monroe himself was there.

“I was totally into Monroe then. I grew up looking up to him, and you know you have this weird feeling you want to impress your hero. But I knew my limitations at that point, and those people being in there made it worse for me. Now was the first time I had my chance to impress my hero and I knew I wasn’t prepared. He was there for the recording and there was Blue Grass Boys there, and they could cut it, you know. And what was the first song they did? Roanoke! And you can imagine, they just ripped it! And my part was… well sparse would be a good word, I knew it was, and everybody else aced it, so there was no doing another take, and nobody was making a big deal about the mandolin. But Bill gets up out of his chair in the cutting room and comes in and looks at me and says ‘Do you think I could show you a few notes that you’re not puttin’ in that?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ So I hand him my mandolin, and he takes it and rips the break off, just like he did it on the record, and you know what that consists of. And then he handed the mandolin back to me and said ‘Do you think you could do that?’ I didn’t know if he was trying to completely break me down – he didn’t say it in a smart voice – but I said, ‘I’ll try.’ And what he did, he stood there, and he stood there, and he made me do it in front of him and everybody else. He stood there, he didn’t say any more, and I was either gonna have to walk off or try it. So how much better do you think I would have done it than two minutes before? Wasn’t any better at all. ‘That’s fine,’ he said and turned around and went back and sat down. That was tough, I knew I’d missed my shot, but I said in my mind, one day I will impress you, you may never tell me that, but one day I’ll know it.” While others socialized during a break in the recording, the despondent young mandolin player sought refuge in an empty hallway. The kind and sympathetic encouragement of Red Taylor helped Davis through the rest of the session, and he emerged from the experience more determined than ever to continue playing bluegrass.
Not long after, Thurmond gave up playing because of health problems, and he generously offered Davis the chance to continue with the Warrior River Boys name, and keep the band’s momentum going. Gary Waldrup had just joined on banjo, and Mitch Scott came in as a partner with David. Al Lester continued on fiddle and Jarrod “Jerry” Rains played bass. In 1985, they started playing full time, traveling throughout the south, and expanding into the mid-west. The band recorded its first LP, “The Voice in the Night,” featuring originals by David and Scott. A year later, veteran Blue Grass Boy and all-star fiddler Charlie Cline joined the band, enjoying the numerous dates and attention the band was getting, and proving himself a game traveler. “Looking back on that, from a professional standpoint Charlie was really humbling himself, you know? He’s used to a bus, and he crawls in a van with us? A bunch of young people, that didn’t have any aches and pains? But we never knew it. In four and a half years, Charlie never griped, never. When we’d leave on a trip he’d say, you book anything this week? He wanted more!” In the beginning of 1986, with Charlie on board, the Warrior River Boys recorded their second LP, “Passin’ Thru.”

The band’s reputation was spreading, working its way up north and out west, and getting the attention of promoters and record labels. Ken Irwin and Hazel Dickens visited the band in Alabama in March of 1988, and left Davis with a contract offer from Rounder Records, resulting two years later in “New Beginnings,” their first major label release, which sparked a high-point of activity. They booked a good number of dates at northern festivals, where they developed a loyal following. Fans from those days remember the contributions of bass player and songwriter Stan Wilemon, banjo player Anthony Bailey, and fiddler Tommy Chapman. Together with Mitch and David, it was a line-up that lasted more than four years, and one of the band’s best, heard on their second Rounder release, “Sounds Like Home.” The Warrior River Boys were gaining recognition as one of the country’s premier traditional bands, and solidifying their signature sound. Their superb vocal ensembles were delivering trios and gospel quartets with an old-time, classic feel that few bands of the time could muster. And just a few years after his come-uppance, and his vow, Davis was reaching a depth of understanding of Monroe-style mandolin playing that would place him among the best of the kind.

Since 1982, Davis has played a mandolin made in 1972 by Marion Kirk of Huntsville, Alabama. Gary Thurmond brought it to his attention, and he paid $750. for it. In David’s hands it has a dry woodiness to it, a throaty low end and clear high end, but not overly brilliant. It’s powerful and sweet, with that same mixture of sting and seduction that the best of the old Gibsons have, and it is sometimes mistaken for a Loar. “I think I’d never have to have another one as long as something doesn’t happen to it,” says Davis.

His long-time commitment to the instrument and his dedicated focus on a traditional path has resulted in Davis’ being one of the most personal and immediately identifiable of the Monroe-derived players around. Without being at all imitative, he’s got Monroe’s mysterious approach to the instrument, the instinctive right note in the right place, the passing modal double-stop, the ahead-of the beat slide to the high note, and the twitchy downstrokes. When Davis is on stage, tearing into something like “Dusty Miller” or his own “ Passin’ Thru,” he gets a far-off, out of body look in his eye, a look that reminds me most of one I once saw on the face of a man searching for water with a divining rod, a man who, like Davis, was looking for the source. Davis’ playing will get simultaneously quiet and intense; he’ll render the tune in an essential, spare and stark kind of way, and then he’ll end the break with a characteristic flourish and up-stroke that pulls the levels back up as the band takes over.

Mandolin player and quintessential Monrovian Mike Compton met Davis in the 1980s, during Compton’s first stint with the Nashville Bluegrass Band. “Right away we began spending time talking about the music and the mandolin universe, about Monroe and the challenges of working the road and being away from home,” recalls Compton. With the practiced ear of one who has spent a lifetime paying attention to such things, Compton observes, “[David] is focused I think on the flavor of the late ‘70s and ‘80s Monroe era. I remember listening to him and thinking that he really had a grasp of that tone and feel. There have been times when I read his solos as he went along, trying to guess the next move, and was not surprised by his choice of notes and phrases because he knows the language of that time and executes it very well…”

In the ‘90s, the Warrior River Boys played the full breadth of the nation, chalking up hundreds of thousands of miles in a road-weary van, and earning a reputation as one of the hardest working bands in bluegrass. Among their biggest fans was Ray Davis, the legendary Washington DC radio personality and champion of traditional bluegrass, who featured the band during his on-air fund raisers, and recorded them for several fine releases, both on their own – “My Dixie Home” – and in a variety of theme anthologies, on his Wango label. Combining the talents of some of the best hand-picked traditional bluegrass musicians, and fast approaching underground classic status, the Wango anthologies offer nuggets of otherwise undocumented Warrior River Boys, and vivid representations of Davis’ searing mandolin solos. More importantly to Davis, they represent a faith in him and his music that would provide much needed encouragement and sustenance, as he entered an increasingly challenging period as a band leader. “I don’t think Ray Davis has any idea what those recordings mean to me,” he says.

Long time partner and good friend Mitch Scott left the band in 1994 to pursue another career. More than a year later, Davis found an appropriate replacement in Tom Ewing, whose long stint as the last of Bill Monroe’s guitar playing vocalists had ended when the ailing Monroe gave up performing, six months before his death in September of 1996. Asked about his joining forces with Davis, Ewing replies, “When it became sadly apparent that Bill Monroe wasn’t going to be able to perform anymore, I had to decide what to do. I wanted to keep playing and I wanted to stay in Nashville. Thankfully, the opportunity to work with David came at about that time, allowing me to do both. Musically, the transition was very natural, since David and I share a great affection for traditional bluegrass, especially Bill’s kind. I believe the experience of working with the Warrior River Boys helped me get through [Monroe’s] passing, because it felt like we were carrying it on the way he would’ve wanted it carried on.” Ewing played with the band over a two and half year period.
Others that contributed their talents during that time were Virginia guitar player and songwriter Tommy Freeman, and the late lamented Bill Sage, fiddle veteran of Del McCoury’s band, and New Hampshire’s White Mountain Bluegrass. The band has been a proving ground for young musicians enjoying their first national exposure, including banjo players Lloyd Douglas from Michigan, who went on to play with Jim and Jesse, and Randy Lindley from Texas, most recently heard playing mandolin with Karl Shiflett. Present member Marty Hays, from Salem, Illinois, signed on as bass player in 1995, and with various personnel changes over the years, has moved to the front as featured singer with Davis, and a valued friend. “Marty’s been through the mud-holes with me,” says Davis appreciatively.
Having chosen the life of a band leader, Davis took on the typical trials and frustrations that go with the job. The changing line-up of musicians during this time reflects the toll taken by the band’s many miles traveled, and its grueling schedule. Too often a member would depart just as a certain momentum had been gained, and the special musical rapport that gives the greatest satisfaction would have to be developed all over again. From the beginning, up through the early ‘90s, the band had enjoyed the luxury of two major periods with few personnel changes, and in Davis’ words, it was “running smooth as a band can run.” But the solidarity began crumbling, and in ‘94, Davis reached a low point when a succession of departures pretty much wiped the slate clean, and he considered giving up altogether. With characteristic earnestness, Davis took it all to heart, and felt he’d failed his responsibility to his fans. “I had no lead singer for a year and a half. I’d head off for a job and pick up musicians on the way who had never played with us before. I knew what our audiences was expecting, what our fans wanted to hear… As a band leader, if you can’t deliver what they’ve come to expect, that’ll just eat you up. I had some great musicians at that time, Lloyd, Randy, they had so much talent and they were with me all the way, but sometimes we didn’t have the team, you know?”
Today, David Davis and the Warrior River Boys are in top form, and the teamwork is there in a solid line-up consisting of Marty Hays, bass and lead vocals, Robert Montgomery, banjo and vocals, Brad Folk on guitar, and Owen Saunders, veteran of James King and Doyle Lawson’s bands, on fiddle. They’ve been together more than two years now and the time together has paid off with powerful and close harmony singing, and effortlessly integrated instrumental work. Last year the band went into the studio and recorded their album “Two Dimes and a Nickle”. It was quickly picked up by Rebel Records, and soon there after reached #4 on the bluegrass charts. Listening to David’s vocals, you can hear the new energy, the joy in the music, the material, and the band that surrounds him, and there it is again, that passion. It fuels a new level of drama and intensity to Davis’ vocals, and Mike Compton gets it right when he observes that “David has endeavored to reach the source of his passions and offers a very personal, honest portrait of himself in his work. He is not stagnant, but continues to move forward and is the best he has been yet. I find his love of what he does uplifting and his steadfastness admirable.”

And how does David Davis feel about where he stands today? If he has been frank about his darker days as a band leader, he positively beams with pleasure when he talks about his current affairs. “This is the best time I’ve had in ten years. I’ve grown, I got something out of those years. This band works so good together. My desire was to get good people in the band, with love in their hearts for the music and the people they’re playing with, and I’ve got that!” The dream that began those many years ago is becoming indistinguishable from reality, and as he approaches nearly a quarter century of dedication to bluegrass music, David Davis is able to say, “Right now, more than any time in my musical life, I feel I can do exactly what I want to do and I’ve got the support of four people to help me. I wouldn’t quit what I’m doing for anybody!”
Robert Fraker,
Bluegrass Unlimited