Brittany Davis: Music Is the Medicine
photo: Lance Mercer
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“I always say that music is my first language. From a very young age, it felt like music was speaking to me. I know that sounds cheesy and hokey, but in a world full of can’ts, music was my one can,” Brittany Davis reflects, as the blind-from-birth artist describes her initial engagement with the medium.
“I started experiencing ambiguous grief really early because I began to realize there were going to be some limitations,” she adds. “But I didn’t want to live like that, I didn’t want to live in that, so I chose to live in the beat instead. I was like, ‘As long as I keep the rhythm going, I can keep going.’”
This ongoing relationship with the boundless properties of music finds new form via her latest studio album, Black Thunder. On Davis’ full-length debut, 2024’s Image Issues, she sculpted sounds by means of a keyboard, drum machine and her own impassioned vocals while layering in a deep, soulful funk and hip-hop mélange.
Davis opted for a more spontaneous expression with Black Thunder. Over the course of two days, she improvised in the studio alongside bassist Evan Flory-Barnes and drummer D’Vonne Lewis. Producer Josh Evans then formulated an entire album solely from the sessions, yielding a bold and absorbing stream of sonic consciousness.
Black Thunder is a thrilling listening experience that encompasses jazz while also occupying its own space outside the idiom. The songs are tied together through eight pieces of interstitial music titled “Ancestors.” Davis’ lyrical themes touch on racial inequity and displacement along with subjects more celestial in nature.
Looking back on the process of recording Black Thunder, she observes, “First of all, I did not know that this was going to be an album. I’d done this before—where I went into the studio with different musicians, made up some stuff and had some good times. I’ve been really blessed to be able to do that. So while I thought it felt good and I enjoyed jazzing out— even though I’m not formally trained that way—I can’t say that I dug the consequences of what I had laid on the table. I figured they might pick two or three songs out of it that could sit on the shelf for a little while, but when they took everything, now that I didn’t expect.”
She learned of her label’s intent a few days after recording with Flory-Barnes and Lewis.
“Stone actually called me,” she notes. “He was like, ‘Brit, I need to talk about something.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ Then he told me: ‘This is it. This is an entire album.’ I was floored. I was like, ‘I don’t know, man. We need to go back in and touch it up.’ He was like, ‘Nope, none of that. It’s all there.’”
Stone is Stone Gossard, the Pearl Jam guitarist who is also the founder and head of Loosegroove Records. Davis, who was born in Kansas City and later moved to Seattle to live with her grandmother after her mother was incarcerated, first crossed paths with Gossard at a fundraiser for SMASH, an area organization that provides access to free and low-cost healthcare services for musicians.
“When we met, it was like we were two peas in a pod. We were like ice cream and cake,” she recalls. “We had all kinds of nonsensicalness going on. At first, I thought, ‘There’s no way I can meet this guy. He’s a rocker. I’m an R&B, soul kid.’ But in that instant, Stone was like, ‘Ooh, we’ve got to do something.’”
Gossard not only signed her to his label, but he also enlisted her to be part of his band Painted Shield, where she joined the Pearl Jam co-founder, Mason Jennings and Matt Chamberlain for their second studio effort, 2022’s Painted Shield 2.
Davis identifies the impact of the group on her own work, as she explains, “Painted Shield taught me that I can be free musically. I never felt like I had a genre. I make beats every day. I love to produce, but I never felt like they meant much to anybody. I was like, ‘What kind of artists would even rap over these beats?’ But Painted Shield taught me that you can add different elements into something and create a new connection with whatever it is you’re doing. You don’t have to try to be just rock, just jazz or just hip-hop. You can do it all in your own way. As long as it’s cohesive and it has value to you and the people that you’re bringing it to, you can do it all.”
She adds, “I’ve actually had managers turn me away because they said, ‘You’re going in too many different directions, kid.’ I get it. Sonically, I am in a lot of directions, but that keeps me fresh because I like routines, so if I get stuck in something, I’m stuck there. It’s really good to keep me on my toes, so I’m not stuck in one music genre. Painted Shield helped me remember that.”
As Davis contemplates what’s next, the inventive artist indicates that her approach will remain active and inclusive. “I want to get into some gospel,” she says. “I want to get into some blues. I want to get into some choral work and some orchestral work. I also want to see live music come back in my journey.
“The other thing I learned from Black Thunder is that this is not about me. It’s about the people who are interacting with the music and each other through the music— whatever resonates with them in that moment. The same openness in improv that I pulled out in the studio is the way I feel about people reacting to it. Music is not just about me and what I can do. It’s about other people and what they can do. Everybody can get stuck, and music is the medicine for that because it draws you out of that little bubble. It allows you to interact with something outside of yourself. I’m not a canvas at all. This is humanity.”
