POSTPONED: Ward Davis

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Melissa Stillwell

Ward Davis

$21 ($16 adv.).

media release: Kicking off with a blaze of harmonized electric guitars sounding like when the Allman’s Elizabeth Reed checked into the Eagles’ Hotel California, Ward Davis’s new album Black Cats and Crows doesn’t waste a second on formalities. Out November 20 on Thirty Tigers, Black Cats and Crows is triumph on all fronts. A muscly country-rock record filled with murderous story songs, heartbreaking vulnerability, and that unmistakable voice—Davis’s weathered croon, barrel-aged then left out in the sun—are all brought to life through Davis’s and producer Jim “Moose” Brown’s care for their craft and disdain for sterility. Yesterday, Rolling Stone premiered “Black Cats and Crows,” the album’s title track and first single calling it, “an ominous piano ballad in which Davis questions why the deck is stacked against him."

Without listening to a note of Black Cats and Crows, the company kept in the liner notes alone—co-writers Cody Jinks, Kendell Marvel, and Shawn Camp—will tip off any discerning music fan on how respected Davis is as a songwriter. Of course, his own songwriting history precedes him too, having written tunes for the likes of Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Trace Adkins. “This is my coping mechanism. I know music is a coping mechanism for a lot of people,” Davis says. “It’s important that it’s crafted well, but it’s also important that it’s honest so that people can relate to it and get something out of it.” But it’s not just songwriters that have taken notice. Among the world class musicians who took part in the recording of Black Cats and Crows, a name not too often thrown around in the world of country music appears; Anthrax’s Scott Ian, who guested on the ominous murder ballad, “Sounds of Chains.”

In addition to the guitar-driven tunes, several songs on Black Cats and Crows also remedy the often-overlooked role of piano in outlaw music. A fine pianist who shrugs off any praise of his own playing, Davis looks up to the slip-note stylings of master Floyd Cramer. “He would do these little flickers with the keys that aren’t complicated but really create a sound,” Davis says. “I mimic him a lot.” Kicking off with piano and fiddle, “Threads” lays a weary heart bare, while the beautifully written “Good to Say Goodbye” traces the push and pull that ensues when it’s time to go. “Good and Drunk” is a lesson in songwriting, heartbreaking and real. “That was a hard one to write,” Davis says. “It was a bad day. I came home from a tour with Sunny Sweeney, and my ex-wife had packed up everything and put the boxes in the garage. I was sitting there alone, hungover, wanting a whiskey drink, and I realized I didn’t know where the whiskey was. But I had my legal pad out. So, I started writing this song.” 

Davis mines his own worries and pain for a song without ever forgetting the other person who will eventually listen to it. “I want people to know these songs mean something to me,” he says. “I hope they mean something to them. Maybe they’ll hear something that’ll make them feel better.”