At first sight, he’s all country.
At the Paradise Lounge on a Monday night, Andy Davis wears a flannel scarf and shirt, with a trendy brown fedora and dark jeans. His leather boots glint flecks of light in the mostly dark room, and he fiddles silently with the pedals of an effects pad. His voice carries an unmistakable Southern accent – he was raised in Baton Rouge before moving to Nashville – that’s nearly drowned out by the house music.
But at 26 years old, the self-taught musician is only some country, some of the time.
“When they hear Nashville, everyone thinks country,” says the singer-songwriter, on tour to promote his national debut album, Let the Woman. “There’s more to it than that.”
His heroes are “soul people,” he says: Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. And he laughs after he rattles off a list of his favorite Beatles records, because it’s the classic rock ‘n’ roll triform: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Revolver and the White Album.
“I’m inspired 90 percent by older music,” he says, then leaves to do sound check on a spare stage – just two guitars and a Yamaha keyboard – for his show, just two hours away.
On Let the Woman, Davis drives home his versatility as both a musician and businessman. Across its 10 tracks, Davis maneuvers unflinchingly from sentimental ballads to rowdy ragtime, from soul to driving country rock; and his voice walks a fine line between grace and grit.
On “Union and 3rd,” Davis draws comparisons to rocker Ryan Adams, while other tracks hint at the smooth croon of Rufus Wainwright. When he wants, Davis can naturally ascend to an upper-register reminiscent of rock icon Thom Yorke.
For Davis, this genre wanderlust is the joy of making music.
“Just because you’ve got this one style doesn’t mean you should limit your whole [career],” he says, and to an intimate audience of about 40 people, he prepares to deliver a set infused with that seamless blend of boot-stomping pop, soul and alternative country.
Though he plays stripped-down versions of his songs on guitar and keyboard, Davis played every instrument on Let the Woman, except drums. Several tracks, like “Believable Doubt,” were recorded in one take, completely live, he says. On other tracks, Davis sang entire songs in one pass, rather than breaking the vocals into snippets – a common practice.
The organic process was important to him, he says, and the outcome was a record that breathes.
“When you’re making records, you can get swept away with how people have always done things,” he says, “and apply rules to your work that don’t make sense.”
Music aside, Let the Woman is a bit of an industry anomaly: There’s no record label involved, but Davis didn’t release the album alone, either. Instead, he signed on with Barnes and Noble about eight months ago to have his music sold exclusively, at least for a little while, by the retailer.
Feb. 9, the album will be available through iTunes, and until Feb. 15, Virgin American airlines will feature his song “Beautiful Day for Bad News” on their in-flight radio station, Verge.
“[Barnes and Noble] has been really cool about believing in my music,” says Davis, who has been independently distributing his records for about four years.
But the deal with Barnes and Noble isn’t the end, he says. It’s a stepping stone.
“I’m building a wide foundation [for the future],” he says. “It’s a slow-and-steady-grow type of record.”
And with no label, Davis and his producer, industry icon Mitchell Froom, had free reign over the record’s sound.
“It allowed me to make the music I wanted to make, without a lot of people coming in and getting their fingers in it,” he says.
Making the record with Froom, who has produced albums for Phantom Planet, Sheryl Crow and Crowded House, was itself a bold turn for his career, he says. And it upped the expectations.
“He’s a hero of mine,” Davis says, and admits he was nervous to sit down at the same piano as an array of internationally successful musicians had before him.
“I wondered how I compared to them,” he says. But Froom’s approach didn’t leave Davis much time to meditate on the past.
“He told me to go full-speed, with total confidence,” he says.
Let the Woman marks Davis’ growth as a songwriter, he says. Before, he says, it was about the craft of putting lyrics and music together. His earlier songs were often disconnected from personal experiences.
But these days, his music tells a more familiar story, he says, like “Believable Doubt,” a song about family drama and heartache.
“It’s the difference between practice and expression,” he says. “It’s like, there’s me in life, and there’s the work I do [as a musician]. As I grow, they get closer together.”
Before he takes the stage, Davis says that, despite what’s happened in the past several months, he knows his big break hasn’t arrived. He’s still looking to the future, he says.
“But I don’t want to tour until I’m 50,” he admits. “My goal is to write songs that are going to be around a lot longer than me and my career.”
