Patrick Davis: “It was a good year.”

Patrick Davis

(The following interview feature originally appeared in the online edition of this week’s Columbia Free Times)

2009 may have been filled with stories of the downturn in the music business, but homegrown Camden musician Patrick Davis enjoyed his best year yet as a Nashville songwriter with several big names cutting his songs and turning them into chart hits. The biggest, “Where I’m From,” was recorded by the deep-voiced North Carolinian Jason Michael Carroll, who took it into the top ten during the summer.
“That was the biggest one I’ve done so far,” Davis says, “Songs are funny things–the ones you think are going to be on the radio aren’t, and the ones you do think will do well don’t.”
That particular song had a long road to the top ten, Davis reveals.
“I wrote it three years ago and played it at my own shows for a while–I knew if the right person heard it that it would do okay.”
The one constant in his budding songwriting career, Davis says, is that he’s kept busy.
“You have to take every opportunity you can,” Davis says. “I had ten or twelve cuts last year (songs recorded and actually officially released by someone) and I’m constantly working.”
Those who remember Davis when he was playing cover gigs around the Columbia area may not realize that he was already working his way into the Nashville industry, even then.
“You have to be willing to do pretty much anything for a couple of years,” Davis says. “I drove back and forth to South Carolina to play cover gigs for money so I could keep working on my songwriting–you have to be willing to take no for an answer and keep trying.”
2009 may have been a good year for Davis, but he’s not taking it for granted that his luck will continue.
“In general you go through ups and downs with years that are great and years that are down,“ Davis says. It’s those “up” years that help support a songwriter, however.
“When you get to add a hit song or a cut on a hit album to your resume, it helps you to write with more artists,” Davis says. “When Darius Rucker’s album went platinum it made me look better because I had songs on it–I’ve picked up five or six new artists I’ve written with since then.”
Rucker’s success has definitely been a bright spot for Davis, and he’s hopeful that the new country star will include another of his songs on his next album.
“We were on the road together a few weeks ago just hanging out, we’re getting together down in Charleston while I’m in the state this week so we can write some,” Davis says. “It’s so competitive out there with so few artists having the kind of success he has had, he’ll probably write fifty-plus songs with over thirty different writers and only pick nine or ten of those for the album–most of the successful songwriters in Nashville who have been there 25-30 years all want to work with him now, so even being friends it’s still hard to get the time to write with him.”
Not every songwriting session yields results, Davis admits.
“Charles Kelly of Lady Antebellum wrote ten songs with me last year and none of those made it to the new album,” Davis says.
One album he did get a couple new songs on was the latest release from one of his songwriting heroes, Guy Clark.
“I was really happy that worked out, that I got to write a couple of songs with him, and especially that they made it onto the album,” Davis says.
Though he’s concentrating on his songwriting job, Davis still finds time to play some shows like this week’s New Year’s Eve show in Columbia. He’s also working on an album of his own which attendees of the NYE show will get a sneak preview of.
“I’m about three-fourths done, but this show will have a teaser for the album available with five songs on an EP,” Davis says. “I’m shooting for March to have the whole thing done–it’ll have country elements to it due to my songwriting style, but somebody who’s a traditional country music listener will think it’s too rock ‘n’ roll.”
Getting to play his songs in front of an audience is an integral part of his songwriting career, Davis says.
“When you get to go out and play the songs you get to see the audience reaction,” Davis says. “When you’re pitching songs in Nashville, you sit in a room with the artist and the A&R guys. It’s different when you play it live, you hear and see the reaction.”

Patrick Davis Tasting Songwriting Success

(This interview was conducted for Columbia Free Times’ online edition but not posted; The show’s in a few hours so I figured it ought to get read by somebody.)

Athens, Georgia musician Corey Smith takes the stage Friday night in front of a crowd stacked with hometown UGA fans among the Gamecock faithful, his opening act will be celebrating a homecoming of his own. Camden native Patrick Davis has been a resident of Nashville for six years now, and his persistence and hard work as a songwriter is beginning to pay off. Pat Green has become a fan and frequent customer, with songs such as “Dixie Lullaby” not only appearing on his albums but getting significant radio and chart action. Other artists are also coming to Davis now for songs or co-writing sessions. Davis is the first to admit that there has been a fair share of luck among the years of hard work, however.
“With anything, you do enough of it and you get lucky,” Davis says of his songwriting success. “I’m in Texas this week at a songwriting retreat with Jewel and five other songwriters, writing for her next album.” That particular gig is a result of personal connections Davis has nurtured while in Nashville, he says.
”My wife manages Jewel and works with Irving Azoff,” Davis explains. “It’s really crazy how everything has worked out so far—the relationships I started out with right there in Columbia started it all. I knew Mark Bryan’s wife’s cousin and got to know the guys in Hootie and they helped me out when I was starting to play my own original music; now Darius’ country album is coming out and I wrote one of the songs on it. If Mark hadn’t sat me down and told me I ought to write some songs and not just play cover songs, I never would have gotten to this point.” Davis is realistic about where his career is, and that he still has a long way to go, but he sounds comfortable with the process.
“It’s not about making a lot of money, just enough to do what I love to do. It’s a snowball effect—I’m still the new kid; I’ve been in Nashville for six and a half years but I’m still learning the ropes.”
The next Patrick Davis song you’re likely to hear on the radio will be sung by rising star Jason Michael Carroll, who cut “Where I’m From” for his next album.
“That’s going to be a single, it should be out sometime in October,” Davis says, “It is one of those songs that will always hold a special place in my heart—It was Roger’s favorite song.”
Roger is Davis’ younger brother, who was killed in a single-car accident this summer when his vehicle ran off the road—the younger Davis brother was not wearing his seat belt, a mistake that probably cost him his life. It’s a song about Camden, of course, but it has the kind of lyric that makes it nearly universal in appeal.
”Wherever you grew up, whether that’s Columbia, South Carolina, or Buffalo, New York, that story seems to resonate with people,” Davis says. “The week after Roger died, I went to the Grand Old Opry for a night that had Jewel, Darius Rucker, and Jason Michael Carroll all playing; Jason played it that night, which meant a lot to me.”
The artist who has meant the most to Davis’ career so far has to be Pat Green, the Texas country singer whose grassroots success mirrors Davis in some ways. Their connection was even forged on the club level right here in Columbia.
“I was playing 200 shows a year after my own indie album came out, and we played a show with Pat at Headliners,” Davis says. “A little while after that, he called me out of the blue to co-write some songs with him, that was the first co-writing I’d ever done.” The results were good enough to convince Davis he ought to be writing more and performing less, and he has continued to have a co-writing role on subsequent Green albums.
“We’ll see if he keeps using me,” Davis says of the two artists’ professional relationship, “Almost every artist co-writes with others, and we hit it off pretty well so far. He plays three or four songs I co-wrote with him, which is really cool.” The relationship with Green has been a positive one for Davis’ family finances, something he humorously acknowledges.
“We have a decent little house in Nashville, I call it the House that Pat Green Built.”
For his opening set this Friday, Davis will be joined by both family and friends on stage. His band is slated to include Jonathan Gray of Jump, Little Children, Les Hall from Sourwood Honey, Crossfade, and others, as well as his father Rusty Davis. The hometown spirit is starting to get to Davis, even over the phone from Texas, as he expresses a specific wish for this particular show.
“I just hope enough South Carolina fans show up so I can give Corey Smith some grief for being a UGA fan,” Davis says, revealing that no matter how far his career takes him, Gamecock country will always be where he is from.

Patrick Davis Comes Home

Patrick Davis

The Jammin’ In July Festival was held in Camden, South Carolina today, and since I covered the event for the Free Times in neighboring Columbia (Interviewing Webb Wilder, the headliner), I made the trek over with the family to take in the show. Despite the heat, the bugs, and the usual drunk chicks in front of us, it was a pretty good night.

Webb’s set was tasty and cooking in all the right places, but the special moment of the day actually happened a few sets earlier during local guitarist Rusty Davis’ set. You see, his son Patrick was in town and showed up to play a couple songs with Dad.
Patrick’s a pretty fine musician in his own right, and having spent the last six or seven years in Nashville, he’s becoming a pretty fine songwriter, too. Pat Green, in particular, has recorded some of Patrick’s songs, including “Dixie Lullaby,” one of the songs Patrick pulled out to play for the hometown crowd.
Before playing another song, Patrick reminisced with the audience about having not played this particular festival since the first two over a decade ago, when he was still in high school. Then he told them all about how when he was on the road after moving to Nashville, he would tell people he was from Nashville–unless, he said, his younger brother was at the show, which he was pretty regularly, at least in the southeast. Roger would keep him honest, and remark that he wasn’t from Nashville, but little old Camden, South Carolina.
Two weeks prior to this evening’s concert, Roger, Patrick’s younger brother, was involved in a fatal single-car accident, a tragedy that Patrick talks at length about on his Myspace blog. He thanked the community for the show of support they had given the Davis family in the past two weeks, and then he played, “Where I’m From,” a song written about Camden which could apply to a thousand small towns, that will be one of the first two singles from Jason Michael Carroll’s upcoming album. There’s a version of it on Patrick’s Myspace right now, if you haven’t heard it.
After the song, the crowd not only applauded, but gave the town’s favorite son a standing ovation, heartfelt and sincere as only a small town crowd full of people you know can do it. Davis writes the kind of songs that will probably get cut by a lot more singers in the future, but something tells me that no matter where his musical roads take him, they’ll always lead right back home to Camden.