John T Davis - Last Western Cowboy

Review John T Davis - Last Western Cowboy

John T Davis is singing? That's the Davis who produces documentary films successfully – that’s him? Yes, that's exactly what it is. If you go to his website, you will find there on the homepage "JOHN T DAVIS: Filmmaker and Musician" across the asphalt bed of a black and white photo of the historic Route 66. So, he actually sings. The fact that he has not been noticed as a singer so far is simply because he has just released his debut album Last Western Cowboy and shortly afterwards the second album Indigo Snow, both of which revolve around one of the core themes of American music, Western country music , with the first album approaching the topic of Western music more from the point of view of its hero, the Cowboys, while the follow-up album Indigo addresses itself primarily to the Western landscape and the theme of love. Originally, the songs of both albums are from the same sessions recorded in the Mouth Studios in Belfast, Ireland. John T Davis is Irish and his late outing as a singer and of course the successful recording sessions have probably encouraged him to go straight with two albums to the public.

And can he sing? Does he meet the idiom of western music or does it all sound more like Irish folk music? Indeed, he can sing and no, Last Western Cowboy does not sound like Irish folklore. Rather, the album is easily located in the far west, to which the formidable fellow musicians play a decisive role, alongside the guitar playing and singing John T Davis there are John Fitzpatrick, fiddle and low whistle (Irish wood flute), Dick Farelly, rhythm and lead guitar, Richard Nelson , steel guitar and dobro, Mud Wallace, baritone and Telecaster guitar, Ian McAllister, mandolin, Vincent Gilbert, banjo, Johnny McCullouch, keyboards and Accordion, Mike Mormecha, drums, backing singers Maura Donachy, Crawford Bell and Brendan Quinn, and Mechan Davis, duet lead vocals. Already in the preparatory phase of the album, John T Davis has worked closely with Mudd Wallace, who is also the producer of the album and who has brought significant creative ideas to the two-album Western Country Music project.

The nine songs assembled on Last Western Cowboy are by the singer himself. Contrary to Karl May, who has imagined all his literature dedicated to the "Wild West" - he himself was never in the Wild West or even on the American continent - John T. Davis is well aware of what he's singing about, since the US and especially the formerly wild part of it have become something of his second home in the course of his life thanks to his film projects. Correspondingly credible, his songs come just over as if he really is one of the last Western cowboys, at least as far as the vocal portrayal of this fictitious hero of a whole nation is concerned. And there is one more thing to learn from this album: It's never too late to start something new in life, be it the 68 years of John T Davis, who set out to become a famous filmmaker, and more or less unintentionally late but more convincingly mutated into a true Western country singer.

John T Davis - Last Western Cowboy

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