Stuart Davis (musician)

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Stuart Davis performing (with Chad Phillips on bass guitar) at the 2005 Boulder Creek Festival in Boulder, Colorado
Stuart Davis performing (with Chad Phillips on bass guitar) at the 2005 Boulder Creek Festival in Boulder, Colorado

Stuart Davis (born on January 11, 1971 in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.) is a contemporary American musician and songwriter from Minnesota, currently residing in Boulder, CO. His music contains elements of folk, punk, rock, pop, haiku, and progressive rock. He describes his musical style as 'Post-Apocalyptic Folk Punk Rock' or 'Dharma Pop'. He has been performing throughout the United States and Europe for over fifteen years. To date, Davis has sold over 40,000 albums worldwide. Davis is also a member of the art branch of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute.

In 2007, Davis was signed to Chicago-based media company Majeski Media for $1,000,000. The transaction gave Majeski comprehensive rights over all of Davis' work[1].

Contents

[edit] Lyrics, music and performances

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Davis' early work is acoustic, folky, and typically indie. The early lyrics critique the materialism and irrationality of contemporary culture with irony, sarcasm, and biting humor. With the release of Kid Mystic, Davis' work turns more inward and spiritual, but sustains the entertaining wit of his earlier work. Many of his recent lyrics reflect the struggle to relate to a divinity that is truly transcendent, and yet equally immanent. Later albums use a more extensive and electric instrumentation, and fall under the power pop genre. His recent work is comparable to Elvis Costello, Matthew Sweet, Material Issue, REM, and Live. He is heavily influenced by XTC. Davis has covered songs by Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads.

Although Davis' lyrics are informed by contemporary philosophical and spiritual issues, they also display a preoccupation with alternate sexual practices. In fact, one could say that Davis' work mediates between sensuality and spirituality. Davis practices meditation in a Buddhist tradition (and he has recently taken Genpo Roshi as his teacher), but he believes that religious traditions ultimately fail to transmit the transcendent events from which they spring. He has identified Ken Wilber, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ramana Maharshi and Aurobindo as influences, and his work displays a deep understanding of Zen and Sufism.

Davis' songs are populated by alcoholics, atheists, bulimics, drug addicts, egoists, false prophets, fetishists, sadists, masochists, narcoleptics, pedophiles, pornographers, prostitutes, rapists, sexual predators, suicides, swingers, and terrorists. (Stuart's lyrics are considered explicit and/or obscene by some libraries and retailers.) But his lyrics also describe angels, artists, gods, gurus, messiahs, mystics, prophets, psychics, and saints. There is a clear and constant religious component to Davis' work. In fact, the mystical and transcendent themes render some of his songs able to be construed as Christian. This tension points to the profoundly integrative aspect of Davis' thought—on his view, the theme of sexual deviance does not contradict the spiritual themes. His perspective is wide enough to coherently include much more of the human experience than most. Thus it is possible to see Davis as a mystical poet like Rumi, Kabir, Basho, Ikkyu, Rilke, or Emily Dickinson.

Davis' performances include light improvisational comedy which, like his music, often mixes spiritual with sexual themes. This repartee is evident on the live albums he has released. Davis is a prolific performer, giving about 100 performances per year. Since getting married (to Ken Wilber's ex-wife, Marcia) and having children (two girls, Ara Belle and Aja Pink), however, his performance tours have been less numerous.

[edit] Notable compositions

[edit] Idiot Express

  • This 1993 album contains "It's All Just Because", a popular request that lists connections between diverse phenomena in contemporary culture. It contains the lines: Race causes hate/burgers cause fries/A million dead Iraqis/causes national pride.

[edit] Nomen Est Numen

  • "Fall Awake" is a hard-strummed, quick acoustic number filled with tightly rhyming couplets and tart lyrics. The narrator has a natural propensity to fall into mystical states of nondual awareness.

[edit] Self-Untitled

[edit] Kid Mystic

  • The narrator of the song "Kid Mystic" describes the bizarre characteristics of his supernatural family. The repeated refrain: "Not to me/but I was there" accurately encapsulates the situation of those who have not realized mystical states themselves, but who find such states to be real and metaphysically revealing.
  • "Uncle Seth's False Gospel" describes, from the perspective of his nephew, an Adi Da-like false guru who is given supernatural powers and an egoistic mission from God
  • The song "Rerum Natura" is written completely in Classical Latin.

[edit] Bright Apocalypse

The 1999 concept album Bright Apocalypse: 13 Songs About God depicts the spiritual development of someone who loses his traditional faith and embraces a more subtle, nondual divinity.

[edit] Stuart Davis

The 2001 album Stuart Davis features nude photos of Davis in various meditative and yogic postures covered in silver body paint.

  • "Rock Stars and Models" is one of Davis' most accomplished "Top 40"-style pop songs. He performed it on the Chicago "Fox in the Morning" TV show.
  • The song "Dresden" features guitar chords that sound like air-raid sirens. Its narrator is a contemporary resident of Dresden who seduces Jewish tourists, presumably as revenge for the World War II firebombing of the city.
  • "Ladder" is one of Davis' most explicitly philosophical songs, encapsulating Davis' ideas about human cultural-spiritual evolution. Refers to Ramana Maharshi and Mother Teresa as evidence that evolution is non-random.

[edit] The Late Stuart Davis

Released in 2002, The Late Stuart Davis is a live album that contained mostly new songs. Davis is displeased with the sound quality of the performance and intends to re-record the songs in the future. This is significant, because this performance included some of Davis' most musically complex and lyrically profound songs. The title of the album, reportedly contributed by philosopher Ken Wilber, refers to the death of the separate self that accompanies Enlightenment in Eastern philosophy.

  • "Chow Down" appears to be written from the perspective of someone who wishes to "eat" buildings and "lick" paintings in order to free them from their suffering (revealing the narrator's psychotic projection and inability to differentiate subjective and objective experience).
  • "Anesthesia Necrophilia" refers to two processes in modern society: the things that keeps us from feeling and experiencing existence fully ("anesthesia"), and worship of or fascination with that which is past or dead ("necrophilia"). The lyrical bridge contains one of Davis' most explicit descriptions of his metaphysics.
  • "Inventions", which includes a guitar riff taken from a Bach piece, is narrated from the perspective of a bumbling, child-like demiurge who is engrossed in creating a correspondingly flawed and suffering-filled world — one that eerily resembles our own.

[edit] Bell

The 2003 concept album Bell described the life of an American girl who is also an incarnation of god. The bodhisattva eventually confronts her shadow and attains Enlightenment. The release of this album coincided with the birth of Davis' first child, Ara Belle Davis.

[edit] Davis Does Elvis

In June 2004, Davis released an album on his website that consisted entirely of Elvis Costello covers, entitled Davis Does Elvis.

[edit] Between the Music

In 2006, Davis released two DVDs entitled Between the Music: Volume 1 and Volume 2. They contain a music video of the song "Good Weird"; footage of concerts in Boulder, Colorado, Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin, Omaha, Nebraska, Seattle, Los Angeles and the Netherlands; interviews with (and by) Davis, his wife Marci, his colleagues, fans, etc. The DVD documents both Davis' extensive spiritual practice as well as his somewhat disturbing preoccupation with nudity, feather boas, glowsticks, and shaved genitalia, occasionally simultaneously. Psychedelic visual artist Alex Grey and his artwork appear and are discussed. The video also shows Davis painting calligraphy in IS, the language that he created. The calligraphy is available for purchase at his website. It was executive produced by Ken Wilber.

[edit] ¿What

Davis' 2006 album, ¿What, features a guest performance by rapper Saul Williams, who composed an original poem during recording which appears on the album as "April Showers, April Tears". Davis describes the style of the album as "...not folk, it's not rock, it's not singer-songwriter, but it isn't a reaction against any of those important elements in my music."[2]

The song "AC/DC" appears to have been inspired by Ken Wilber's conception of the difference between what Wilber calls 'translation' and 'transformation' in spiritual development[3]

The album also contains a song called "Parker Posey," written from the perspective of a smarmy producer who wishes to turn the talented (though often overlooked) actress into a mainstream spectacle by playing a multi-dysfunctional character to win an Oscar.

[edit] Love Has No Opposite

In 2006, Davis released an audio book on two CDs called Love Has No Opposite. In it, he discusses mysticism, religion, Zen, Integral theory, his life as a touring musician, open marriage, his family, cinema, Oprah Winfrey, and other topics.

[edit] Something Simple

The 2008 release Something Simple is Davis' first album released under a new WEA/Ryko Distribution deal and features the single "Already Free" from the final act of the film Drillbit Taylor (2008). Singer Ed Kowalczyk of the band Live guests on the track "Miracle". According to Colorado Daily newspaper,

Locals familiar with Davis' songs and quick wit will notice a change in his musical repertoire on "Something Simple." Stepping outside his comfort zone, the musician decided to create a record that was a little less quirky and more mainstream. Davis says he felt it was time to write songs that really resonated with the general public.[4]

[edit] The Stuart Davis Show

Through Ken Wilber's Integral Institute, Davis produced twelve episodes of The Stuart Davis Show, a short-form comedic talk show in which Davis and a pair of "clones" argue and flirt with each other and report on current affairs related to "Sex, God, and Rock & Roll." Episode 12 was co-written by Steven Brill. The initial episodes included special guest interviews, including Genpo Merzel Roshi and Davis' (at the time) unborn daughter, Aja Pink Davis. The episodes, produced between October 2006 to May 2007, are available on YouTube. The premiere episode is also available on the DVD/CD set "Integral Naked Premier", Vol. 4, Issue 10, October 2006.

[edit] Business and success

With the formation of Dharma Pop in 1999 (previously known as Post-Apocalyptic Records), Stuart created a new business model for artists. According to Davis' website, "Dharma Pop's purpose is to create music that amplifies awareness, and the formal elements of these songs (melodies, hooks, rhythms) are a Trojan Horse, sneaking mysticism into mainstream culture." Dharma Pop consists of volunteers, who manage Davis' products, websites and performances; "Punk Monks" who promote his shows; and investors. Thus Davis has succeeded in financing a professional multimedia company without interference by major labels.

Davis has embraced internet technology enthusiastically, releasing lyrics, guitar tabs and .mp3 samples of all of his songs on his website. Initially every song in his catalog was available on his website for download, but recently he has made the (popular) decision to move his recordings to iTunes. He also has had several bootlegs and a studio demo available, for a fee, on his website for download.

Although Davis has received critical acclaim from those who have heard his music (Ed Kowalczyk, the lead singer of Live, called him "The greatest lyricist I've ever heard", and philosopher Ken Wilber called him "a rare genius"), he has yet to receive recognition from the pop music establishment. In fact, Davis ridicules his relationship with the mainstream by calling himself "the Pop Pariah".

Davis has toured the Netherlands, and has several songs about Amsterdam (he has expressed his intention to move to Europe eventually). He was once denied entry to Canada (and banned from the country for a year) due to a failure to obtain the correct work permit. In September 2006 Davis played for the first time in the UK.

Already Free, the first single from Davis' album Something Simple (2008) is featured in the final act of the film Drillbit Taylor (2008), directed by Steven Brill, starring Owen Wilson [5], and is also used as the theme music to Eric Schaeffer's Showtime television series "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single" (2008).

[edit] Miscellaneous

Davis has created an original language, called "IS", which uses a script that Davis also created. Characters from this script can be seen on the cover of Davis' album, Bell. Although Davis has declared his daughter to be the first native speaker (she was born in September of 2003), he says that he intends to record an entire album in the language at some point.

Stuart Davis is also a (semi-?)fictional character in Ken Wilber's postmodern novel, Boomeritis. Wilber and Davis are very closely associated, both personally and intellectually. Davis is the most accomplished poet of Wilber's integral philosophy.

[edit] Quotations

"Love has no opposite"

—Actually a quotation from J. Krishnamurti (Chapter 10, Freedom From the Known, 1980). Davis (who, responding to this article, says on his blog that he has never read Krishnamurti, "at least in any waking-reality sense") calls it "his philosophy".

"If Ramana Maharshi came from clay
there's more to evolution than a little DNA"

—"Ladder", Stuart Davis

"As we were
before we were
Is
as we are
after we are
Is"

—"Dharma Drama", Bell

"There's a light bulb in everyone
bright enough to swallow the sun
Earth and sky are all One taste
there is just the Original face"

—"Original Face", Bell

"Mysticism is creation seeking its source"

—'Twisted Mystic' website

[edit] Works

[edit] Book and essay

  • "Infinity Hymn", an essay on spirituality and song-writing published in Radical Spirit, 2002
  • Love Has No Opposite, an audio book on 2 CDs, 2006

[edit] Films

  • Between the Music: Volume One and Volume Two, 2006

[edit] Music

  • Idiot Express, 1993
  • Big Energy Dream, 1994
  • Self Untitled, 1995
  • Nomen Est Numen, 1996
  • Kid Mystic, 1997
  • 16 Nudes, 1998 (Live album)
  • Bright Apocalypse: 13 Songs About God, 1999
  • Self-Titled, 2001
  • The Late Stuart Davis, 2002 (live album)
  • Bell, 2003
  • Davis Does Elvis, 2004 (available by download only)
  • ¿What, 2006
  • Something Simple, 2008

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://majeskimedia.com/stuart.pdf
  2. ^ ¿What, 2006 | Stuart Davis
  3. ^ Ken Wilber: A Spirituality that Transforms
  4. ^ "Renaissance man" By WENDY KALE Colorado Daily Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:46 PM MDT
  5. ^ http://stuartdavis.com/node/1144

[edit] External links

[edit] Songs

[edit] Video