Stuart Davis (musician) - Spiritual Direction

Spiritual Direction

Between Nomen Est Numen and his fifth album, Kid Mystic, two important events happened to Davis. First, he was introduced to Zen Buddhism by his drummer Dave King, and became a practitioner of zazen, or sitting meditation. The second was his discovery of the book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, by Ken Wilber. Their influence would soon send Davis on an entirely new trajectory.

As the title implies, on Kid Mystic Davis begins to explore some ethereal territory. The pace and structure of the songs are much different, and the lyrics are more image-conscious and laced with metaphor. Death and dying play a major role, implicitly or explicitly, on a majority of the tracks, and instead of playing as simply a collection of songs, it is more a unitive work.

The tagline of his subsequent studio album, Bright Apocalypse, is “13 Songs About God,” and uses some of the same structural and thematic material. The thirteen songs construct a sort of dialogue with the divine; much of the album is sung in second person, and in several of the songs the divine speaks back in whispers.

His eponymous seventh album, popularly known as the Silver Album or Silver/Naked, for its cover art featuring a nude Davis adorned in silver paint, is built around a trilogy of songs that close the album called "Dive", "Swim", and "Drown". They were inspired by the book Grace and Grit, another work by Ken Wilber, and “tell the story of a soul going back home.” The album also contains the song "Ladder", which is featured as the bumper music on Wilber’s audio program Kosmic Consciousness.

Beginning in 2003 Davis began working with Alex Gibson, who produced that year’s Bell. Gibson was able to procure the services of world renowned drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. (Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon), and Davis’s affiliation with Gibson would continue to give him access to some of the most accomplished session musicians in the industry.

Bell was followed by ¿What, a radical sonic departure in the Davis discography, which features performance poetry by Saul Williams on "April Showers, April Tears", beat-boxing on "Easter", house-influenced synth bass lines on "Dirty Purity", dissonant sampled loops on "Voodoo Dolls", and the spare, haiku-like "Glass". ¿What is filled with haunting effects and vocals throughout, and features songs mostly composed of sampled loops and sequenced rhythms.

His next album, Something Simple, leads off with the single "Already Free", which was featured as the end theme of the Showtime series I Can’t Believe I’m Still Single, and was also used in the movie Drillbit Taylor. It peaked at 154 on the Billboard singles chart in 2008. Davis worked with a new roster of musicians for this project, including Wendy Melvoin on guitar, Ed Kowalczyk on backing vocals, and Sean Hurley (John Mayer, Pitbull) on bass. Hurley previously contributed on ¿What.