As a teenager, Davis would find himself wandering into the nearby city of Brevard, often seeing the pickin’-n-singin’ styles of Grammy-winning hometown act The Steep Canyon Rangers or witnessing firsthand the intricate melodic prowess of legendary drummer Jeff Sipe at local open mic nights.
And it wasn’t long before Davis had a band of his own, Foxfire (2011-2014), an indie-folk ensemble that bounced around Southern Appalachia before disbanding, with its members each finding their own musical path — including Aaron Aiken, who produced “The Ballad of Aesop Finn” and now frontman of psychedelic-rock outfit Pink Beds.
Davis himself went on hiatus for several years, getting married and raising a young family, all while starting his own construction business to put food on the table for his wife and two kids. And though he was building homes and taking on remodeling projects around Southern Appalachia, his internal antenna never stopped picking up on words and phrases for song ideas.
“Eight years of carpentry was draining, where it was a lot like working in a kitchen. On the jobsite, there’s a lot of old man emotions getting thrown around that none of us would ever talk about,” Davis says. “Hearing all those stories? It just fed me all kinds of song material. It was like therapy for me to filter out someone’s traumatic experience they told me, and to learn something about myself within that process.”
Eventually, Davis wandered back into the realm of recording and live performance, finding himself as guest musician and contributing songwriter for rising North Carolina indie-folk group Pretty Little Goat, which resulted in his tune “Toe the Line” landing on the band’s renowned album, “Big Storm.”