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"Brother Man"

New free digital download available! HERE

"Brother Man" is the first single from the new CD by Bull City Syndicate. A musical tribute to Nathan, it was written by Nathan's close friend and producer, John Custer, who produced both the new Bull City Syndicate album and "Nathan Davis Live!"

The song features a high powered opening by the Bull City Horns, a primary vocal track done by Steve Baker, and drums by Larry Woodard, Nathan's drummer.

Bull City Syndicate (formerly Soul Kitchen) was just one of the performers at the Nathan Davis Music Festival.Artist Spotlight at dKaye.com. Please go take a look. It's a terrific review, complete with lots of clips, video and interviews. Our sincere thanks to Donna for doing such a beautiful job with this and helping us promote the music.

Digital downloads of Nathan's music are available now on the web site. To access them, go to the Merchandise page and link there.

Both "The Holly Show" and "Alibi" (long out of print) are available as downloads, so if you don't have a copy, you can get one now.

"The Devil Can't Fly" Jeremy's Gilchrist's new song, a tribute to Nathan, is available at his web site for listening and as a download. John Henry Trinko and Doug Kwartler helped Jeremy finish this song, and the result is terrific. Be sure to go listen.

Nathan Davis
"I Guess I'm Just a Dreamer..."

"Take all the anger, addiction, despair, revelation, love and redemption that can possibly be packed into the human heart over a lifetime, pour it into gospel piano and raw guitar, lead it with a vocal that can growl, rasp, plead, and roar, and this is the result."
--- Jennifer Layton, from Indie-Music.com

Born as the only child of devout Christian fundamentalists, Nathan Davis was educated in Christian schools, and trained as a classical pianist. He began to write poetry, at first secretly, as a young teenager, about the same time that he began to teach himself to play the guitar.

He wrote his first songs, including the much-acclaimed “Bittersweet,” before he was 17 years old, and began to put together a band and play gigs before he got out of high school.

On his 18th birthday, he left the small town in North Carolina where he was born, and went to St. Louis, MO, where he became a member of the band, End of End, and gained a great deal of real world experience. Returning home, he promptly left again, this time for Atlanta and the Olympics, where he was one of the few kids who actually had a real, paying job there. He soon discovered, though, that he could make more money playing for tips on the street corners.

After the Olympics were over, Nathan began his wandering years. Many days were spent not knowing where he would spend the night. He found himself at one time or another in New Orleans, Memphis, and all `up and down the southeast, ending up in far flung Alaska for a year or so. A coffee shop owner in Alaska convinced him that he needed to leave the state and go back to his roots, back where he could find a larger audience. She said that he was the most talented person she had ever met.

After coming home to Southern Pines, NC, in 2000, he began experimenting with various band members, from a short-lived funk-rock band called “The Lost Cause,” to an acoustic jam band trio known as “Alibi.” Alibi released a very limited run CD, self-titled , which is out of print at present.

All the while, he was writing songs, lots of them, chronicling a life lived on the highways of America, searching for meaning, sorting out his often conflicting beliefs. Way more than just songs about love gained and lost, Nathan wrestled with the demons of alcohol and drug abuse, and sang about it. He sang about doubt and pain and frustration. He wrote about the unfairness of life.

He has a remarkable style, writing poignant lyrics full of pain, hope, heartbreak, love, despair and strength, always telling his story with passion and honesty. He carries his songs with convincing ease and a powerful depth.

As one journalist said about him, “He did not write music. He didn’t sing it. He transformed himself into it.” His songs are gut-wrenching. He took every emotion he ever felt, turned that emotion into poetry, set the poetry to music and then set it on fire.

In the beginning, he got gigs in local bars and restaurants and found that people wanted him to play songs they were familiar with, cover songs. In order to play, he had to do some of those. However, he picked the covers that he played carefully – songs that reflected how he felt, the struggles that mirrored his life, songs he could feel. And he played them his own way.

Interspersed throughout in those early gigs were his original songs and soon people began to listen to what he was singing about. It wasn’t long until the crowds were beginning to request his songs, not the covers. Not long after that, they were singing along with him.

Recorded live in 2000 at the Jefferson Inn in Southern Pines by Chad Stites , Nathan’s first CD, The Holly Show , completely sold out and is now considered a collector’s item, with people all over the country still searching for the stray copy.

In 2001, Nathan began a collaboration with a talented teenage producer named Grant Walker, a nine-month long project involving many hours of work that became Out of My Skin , a studio album showcasing not only Nathan’s writing and performing abilities, but also his ability to arrange and produce music as well as play multiple instruments well. It went on to become the best selling local artist album at Davis’ hometown Sam Goody music store.

By the fall of 2003, he was performing in Raleigh, NC and the surrounding area, and connected with the very well-known, Grammy-nominated producer, John Custer . The two men instantly formed not only a business relationship, but a friendship, and began working on a studio album, the soon-to-be-released Revolution Lane .

In November of 2003, Chad Stites again recorded Nathan performing at the Six String Café in Cary, NC. That recording, produced by John Custer in early 2005, became Nathan Davis Live! It features the keyboard of John Henry Trinko and bassist Jeff Crawford.

In between all of this, Raleigh-based video producer Roger Flake had been taking hours and hours of video in preparation for a DVD.

By this time, Nathan was back on the road, traveling throughout much of the southeast, and gaining fans wherever he went. In the summer of 2006, he toured South Carolina and Florida for several weeks, to very receptive audiences wherever he went.

In late August, 2006, very suddenly, and tragically, the world lost Nathan Davis.

What we did not lose was the music. It is still here, embodying all the passion and energy he could muster. It is still here, telling the story of his all-too-brief life way better than we can with mere words. The best artists are the ones who truly feel what they create. Nobody felt more than Nathan Davis. Nobody ever told his story better than Nate himself.

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