Hi, I’m Rachael
Multi-instrumentalist Rachael Davis is as renown for her expressive--and explosive--voice as she is for uniting the often disparate worlds of folk, blues, country, and pop.
Davis grew up not only in a family of musicians, but in an extended village of remarkable musicians and songwriters who nurtured and mentored her from the time she was born. Beginning by jingling ankle bells in perfect time on her months old feet in the middle of old timey jams and song circles, to contributing newly minted songs to Music Sundays, Rachael has always found her own unique part in the music. Her clear tone and uncanny memory for just about every song she’s ever heard came early, and has served her well throughout her career. As a child Davis took to harmony, piano, and ukulele, and at 8, joined the family band Lake Effect, performing regularly at folk festivals throughout her home state of Michigan and around the U.S. By age 12, and continuing each year since, Rachael has brought the Wheatland Music Festival to its knees closing the Sunday morning gospel set with her stunning solo acapella version of Amazing Grace.
“I was learning everything I could get my hands on and when I was 17, my father gave me his Bart Reiter banjo and taught me to play clawhammer style,” recalled Davis. “I like to joke that cursed me for life.”
At 20, already a professional and deeply moved by traditional mountain music, blues, and ballads, Davis composed and recorded her debut album “Minor League Deities,” then with that, and a heart full of promise Rachael Davis headed to Boston the day after the 911 attack. There she began performing in city subways and the streets of Cambridge. Within months she had made her mark on the Boston music scene winning the prestigious Boston Music Award for Best New Singer/Songwriter.
Davis often found sanctuary in the city’s basement level record stores as well as Boston’s premier acoustic music clubs where she made fans and friends of local stage veterans Vance Gilbert, Cheryl Wheeler, Josh Ritter, and indie rock’s parade float princess, Mary Lou Lord.
“In a way, they’re all still with me today,” says Davis, “I was part of a real music community there. My story was just like theirs. We all knew we were on a path to find something and for that moment, we were all in the same place.”
Because Davis has been swayed by so many different types of music, her style is difficult to file and will not languorously rest amid broader musical genres. "My slant on acoustic music can be explained by a mixed cassette tape that my father played during my early childhood while driving in our family’s Chevy Cavalier station wagon we nicknamed Iggy. On one side of the cassette was the soundtrack for the film The Big Chill. On the other was John Hartford’s “Areoplane”." Today Davis describes her music as ‘Motown-Banjo’.
Davis has lent her voice to countless recordings for friends, film soundtracks, and even video games, but it is her intuitive and empathetic understanding of folk music—“the music of folks” as she calls it, and her original and thoughtful songwriting voice that has earned her fans around the U.S.
Recently she has collaborated in the critically acclaimed supergroup: The Sweetwater Warblers. https://sweetwaterwarblers.com/Comprised of Rachael Davis, Lindsay Lou, and May Erlewine, all three premiere Michigan-grown songbirds.
Rachael Davis now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, critically acclaimed bassist, Dominic John Davis, https://dominicjohndavis.com/ with whom she performs as The Davis Duo. Together they cultivate a diverse community steeped in music, art, travel and love, and are raising a son and daughter at the center of it all.
Short Bio
Rachael Davis is felt before she is seen or heard, like a pressure drop or a disturbance in the force. The room suddenly gets...jollier. Peals of uproarious laughter inevitably follow, from her and from those around her. Exclamations of "HOLY CRAP!" descend like little hailstorms of love and mirth. And when she stops telling stories about her beloved family or her crazy life long enough to sing a song, you feel the resonations of her deeply empathetic message deep in your subconscious: this is music for healing, for realizing darkness exists but never letting it run your business. For more than 30 years, starting back with her family band in the north woods of Michigan, for formative years in the Boston music scene, and continuing into the present as a beloved Nashville fixture, Rachael has been weaving orbs of commanding melody, ensnaring enraptured audiences around the nation, whether alone, or with any number of collaborators, including vocal nightingale trio the Sweet Water Warblers, and her husband Dominic John Davis, master of the bass (as opposed to bassmaster). Before you get the impression it's all fun and games....listen closer. There is a serious dedication to craft in her near-operatic vocals, her guitar work, her banjo scholarship, and her commitment to the language and traditions of folk music, while pushing it to new fresh places.
Rachael Davis recordings are rare in this stage of life, having dedicated more time to both the art of performance and the art of raising her frankly delightful children, but a few have escaped: Minor League Deities (2000), Live In Bremen, Germany (2004), Antebellum Queens (2008), Bandbox Jubilee (2014), plus releases with Shout Sister Shout! (2008) and The Sweet Water Warblers (2020). And, great news, more recordings are coming very soon! A new compilation released in November of 2023 called A Few Good Ones is available now and contains two unreleased songs from about a decade ago that were recently unearthed, and brand new sessions are under way for a long-awaited upcoming release .
The world needs more Rachael Davis music, and Rachael Davis needs more of the world, to put down their sorrows and raise a communal voice in celebration of the hilarious beauty of life. You know how something embarrassing or awful happens, and we say, oh we'll laugh about it later? Rachael knows life is short: laugh now.
Writing Credit: Chad Michael Wedeven