Some artists like to switch sounds for each album, shifting between sonic realms and making them feel like home. In the case of singer/songwriter/harpist Mikaela Davis, she goes through a complete metamorphosis. The artistic leap between her 2018 debut and the recently released and stunning And Southern Star album shows the signs of a dedicated artist just getting their feet wet. Recorded over a number of years, the album plays like flipping through a scrapbook of memories and, regardless of whether said memories are fond or not, finding the beauty in nostalgia and progression. In an act of pure artistry, Davis came out of the experience of working on her debut with a newfound lease on her creativity and entered her sophomore LP with unquenchable ambition. The results are nine gorgeous takes on modern folk lined with Davis’s signature harp strumming infused with enough twang and vulnerability for the rest of us.
The difference comes from a sense of freedom. And Southern Star was a self-funded record produced by Davis herself and her band. Her band consists of a collection of longtime friends; drummer Alex Coté, guitarist Cian McCarthy, bassist Shane McCarthy, and steel guitarist Kurt Johnson. Each member had their hand in the blueprint of And Southern Star and this in-house approach allowed Davis to show us a side of her that wasn’t found on her proper debut. We were introduced to a new side of Mikaela Davis, one that puts the music before anything and in turn produced a landmark album for the young artist.
Glide had the pleasure of catching up with Davis while she was out on the road. We discussed her stellar sophomore release, the recording process, and life on the road. Check out our full conversation below:
And Southern Star is a few weeks old now. How do you feel about it all?
It feels good. I’ve been on tour since it came out so everything is a blur. It’s hard to take a step back and look at it for what it is but it’s been fun.
How has the tour been going?
The tour has been really fun, I love being on the road with my band. We had a really great show in Seattle after the album came out and we had never played a headlining show out there before. It’s fun to meet new people while on the road and play music.
Photo by Jamie-Goodsell
What has been your favorite song from the new album to play live?
We’ve been playing these songs for quite some time. When we went into the studio, we had been playing most of And Southern Star for years so we recorded all the instruments live and knew how we were going to have them arranged. On this tour, my favorite song to play has been the last song on the album “Leave It Alone”. The studio version melts into this electronic section that comes out of nowhere then melts back into the song. We don’t do the studio version live but we do transition into playing Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda”, so that’s been really fun.
I see on the tour schedule you’re heading back to upstate New York, where you’re from. Does that stir up any emotions?
Mostly just excited. We play a lot, we’re on the road for a good chunk of the year so we spend a lot of time playing these markets. I’m just excited to get back and see some friendly faces.
You’ve shared the stage with some serious legends, what are some of your favorite live performance memories, and is there anyone left on your bucket list you still want to perform with?
I love collaborating with different artists. Circles Around The Sun and I are working on something special you’ll hear more about in the future. I would love to work with Melody Prochet of Melody’s Echo Chamber or Dungen, those are two of my absolute favorite bands. The last time I saw Melody, a couple of members of Dungen were playing in her band which was really awesome to see.
Considering the amount of time between your 2018 debut and this latest release, how do you feel you’ve evolved as an artist?
A lot has changed. My first album was very influenced by my old label and my whole team, everyone had an opinion. I was trying to please everybody but this time I had no label and my team was far more supportive of my choices. It was a clean slate because it was all self-funded so I was leaning on help from my band and some friends. We made it the way we wanted to make it and that made a big difference. I think you can hear how spirited it is and I’m really happy with how it turned out.
What was it like producing And Southern Star with your band?
It was just really fun, I didn’t feel any pressure and we didn’t have any sort of timeline. We recorded it while the world was still in semi-lockdown so the future felt completely unknown. There were no promises or expectations and no direct path for the future. We just made it how we wanted to and treated it like “who knows if it will come out or not” so it was just a really fun process. I’m happy we’re working with Kill Rock Stars and happy they wanted to put it out.
So you’ve recorded an album with a label and now one independently, do you have a preference?
I definitely like having full control, I really liked putting all these songs together with my band because I trust them and their opinions really matter to me. I just prefer doing it this way, we tracked most of the instruments live and overdubbed later. Cian [McCarthy], my guitar player, was doing most of the production and he recorded most of my vocals and all the extra parts we added. It mostly felt really comfortable, we could take our time. My vocals are one thing that I feel I kind of rushed through on my debut so I was happy to be able to come back to ideas later. When you’re in the studio and you booked the time and that’s costing money and all the boundaries that come with that, this time it was nice to stretch that time out and sit with a song for a while and come back to it and decide “change this” or “try that”. You can get way into the weeds that way too so I tried to set timelines for myself but you just have to find a happy medium.
The drums, harp, bass, and most of the pedal steel guitar were recorded live at Old Soul Studios in the Catskills Mountain of upstate New York. My good friend Kenny Siegal engineered those sessions and we were there for three days recording the bones of the track. The rest of it was recorded in my apartment with Cian.
What was it like putting the tracklist together for And Southern Star?
That was fun, Cian and I had a sense of what we thought we wanted the sequence to be. When we took the album Tarbox Road Studios to have our friend Mike Fridmann mix it, we changed our minds. After we listened to the final mix of “Cinderella” and heard what he did with it we immediately thought “Wow, I think this should be the first track on the album” and I didn’t think of that until that moment. The way he mixed was really interesting, cool, and inviting. I originally wanted “Promise” to be the first track, I thought something pop-oriented would be good but changed my mind after hearing the final version of “Cinderella”.
The album feels very reflective and meditative and considering how long it took to finalize these tracks, was there a conflict of emotions when older songs express feelings that may have changed?
For me, songs evolve with me so I can change the meaning of the track to relate to each phase of my life. This album was very collaborative though, some songs I wrote, some songs Cian wrote, some of them were co-written by myself and my drummer Alex [Coté], and one of the songs Cian and my bass player [Shane McCarthy] wrote and I added some things at the end. Whether I wrote them or not, I relate to these songs and they mean a lot to me. It’s never difficult to record a song, it honestly feels better to let it go because you’re holding it all in for so long. Once it’s recorded and released into the world it’s definitely an exhale like “it’s out there and it’s time to move on to the next phase”.
It’s kind of weird too because there’s so much build-up to your release date and it’s so exciting to be releasing singles and have music videos and seeing all the press but it’s kind of scary. The release date is technically the beginning, it feels like the end because the promotion is the heaviest before the album comes out. Not scary in the sense that everyone is going to hear the full album, I’m always excited about that but it’s scary in the sense that it’s the end. This project you worked so hard on gets released and it could be forgotten about so that’s scary but it motivates me to move on and work on the next album.
You mentioned the press And Southern Star has gotten and I’ve seen nothing but positive reviews. Did you set expectations going into the release date?
I tried my hardest to not have any expectations. I know from past experiences that having people tell you “This is going to happen” and “This is going to be big” and then it doesn’t happen. It’s disappointing so I try to not have expectations. I learned that I have to write songs for myself, not for other people. There was definitely a time in my life when I felt I was just trying to please everybody else but at the end of the day, that’s not going to make me happy. This time, I decided I was going to make an album that I really like and makes me happy and I don’t care if anyone likes it because I can look back on this project and be really proud of it no matter what happens.
You mentioned the music videos for And Southern Star, how important are visuals to you?
They are definitely important and I’m not a videographer so it’s important to choose the right people to work with. I always work with my friends so my good friend Evan [Daves] made the music video for “Cinderella”, I trusted his vision for it and it turned out really nice. We made that in Los Angeles and Evan was living out there at the time. We had the idea for this video years ago and weren’t able to make it when we were both living in the Catskills. It was a stroke of good luck that I was in LA when he had some free time and we just planned a day and went for it. My friend Miranda [Gruss] made the dress I was wearing in the video so everything was done by my friends. The dress wasn’t one piece, she had to put it together on me for the video and you can tell it was all made with love. My friend Madalyn Stefanak did all the artwork for the album and I love what she did, she did the lettering and logo and it’s all hand-drawn. I sent her some classic albums that I really like for inspiration, I wanted it to look like something not from this time.
Going back a little bit, how old were you when you started to learn music? Was the harp your first choice and do you remember the first song you learned to play?
Harp was my first instrument, I started to play when I was eight. I can’t explain what drew me to it but I just remember thinking it was the coolest-looking instrument and I felt an unexplainable pull. I studied classically throughout college, I went to Crane School of Music and I have a degree in harp performance, I was in the Rochester Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. I did all those things and then a booking agent approached me in college. I was also writing songs and playing small festivals around town with my band. They asked me if I wanted to tour so my life took a turn halfway through college. I realized that I might be able to do this professionally rather than continuing and trying to get a job in an orchestra or be a harp professor in a college, so I switched gears.
When did songwriting come into the picture?
I’ve been writing songs since I was eleven. I started writing on piano actually, I started harp and piano around the same time. I would come home from school and try to figure out how to play songs I heard on the radio or I would just try stuff that sounded cool. I was learning “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton by ear and I didn’t get it right and ended up playing something different but I liked it anyway and I thought “Oh, maybe I can just make my own songs” and then I wrote my very first song. I still remember how to play it and everything.
Was there a lot of folk music being played around your house when you were younger? How did you end up blending your classic training with the genre?
My mom played a lot of Americana and Country music growing up, she loved Alison Krauss and Nickel Creek. It’s kind of funny that the first label I signed with was Rounder because my mom told me that she used to go to the record store and buy records because Rounder released them, she knew she would like them.
What are you looking forward to most on this upcoming tour? Is there anything else you want to add about And Southern Star?
I’m just excited to continue to play and for more people to discover the music. Hopefully they can relate to it and if any song can help anyone in any sort of way, that’s what I’m here for.
