Temperatures in the upper 20s. Wind whipping up a bone-blasting chill. The second substantial snowstorm of the season in the forecast for the following day. On this mid-January afternoon, it’s certainly a lot different in the Hudson Valley than it is in Jamaica, which is where Mikaela Davis was less than 24 hours ago. “Yeah, it’s definitely really cold,” says the singersongwriter and musician, who flew back last night from a well-earned vacation on the Carribean island between tours by her band Southern Star, and days ago was hanging out on the beach and watching her partner John Lee Shannon perform with his group, Circles Around the Sun. “It was sad to leave that weather behind, but I’m happy to be back.”
Davis is a master of an instrument not often found in rock music: the harp. “ As soon as I saw and heard one there was just this feeling, this connection,” explains the Rochester-raised 31-year-old, who started playing when she was eight. “The music program was starting up at school, and one day they were showing us all the different instruments we could study. I knew I wanted to play something that was off the beaten path, but I wasn’t sure what. I was thinking maybe cello or viola—just definitely not violin, that was too common. I wanted to be different. They showed us the harp last, and that was it. I started taking lessons as soon as I could after that.”
Classical Past
Along with harp Davis began studying piano. “Right away, I just loved playing so much,” she says over coffee in Catskill, where she, Shannon, and her band members live. “I’d wake up extra-early every morning just so I could practice before school.” Alongside the classical canon she learned about classic rock, reggae, and zydeco from her guitar- and saxophone-playing uncles and was enchanted by the lilting pop of singer-songwriters Vanessa Carlton, Fiona Apple, and Michelle Branch. Davis’s parents split up when she was 11, and she and her younger brother stayed with their mother, a speech pathologist by trade. Composing her first songs brought a bit of solace during that difficult period. “I thought, ‘Can I write songs?’,” remembers the singer, who put on a concert for her school when she was in seventh grade. “And then I thought, ‘I don’t see why not.’ I still have recordings of some of those songs. [Winces.] They’re emotional, pretty dark. But, looking back, they were my self-therapy, and writing them brought a kind positivity.”
Also bringing positivity was Rochester’s longstanding and nurturing music community, which is famously centered around the Eastman School of Music and the revered Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. The city boasts strong indie rock and jazz scenes as well. At 14, the budding prodigy toured Europe as part of a local youth orchestra, but when it came time for higher education, she headed nearly four hours north to the Crane School of Music in Potsdam. “Crane was secluded and cold,” recalls Davis, who earned a degree in harp performance. “There’s nothing to do there except play and practice music, and most of the students major in music education or get ready to look for a good orchestra position. I had a really great teacher and mentor there, Dr. Jessica Suchy-Pilalis, and I think she was bummed at first when I told her that I didn’t want to do either of those things and that I wanted to go out and play my songs. She’s supportive now, though.”
Special Delivery
While at Crane, Davis met brothers Cian (guitar, keyboards) and Shane (bass) McCarthy and called up her childhood friend Alex Cote (drums) to accompany her. She played solo and with the group and self-released a 2012 eponymous debut and a pair of EPs before her 2014 graduation. A YouTube video of her unaccompanied performance of Elliot Smith’s “Twilight” attracted a booking agency that put her and the group on the road as small-venue headliners and opening for alt-rock band Filligar. She signed with Rounder Records for 2018’s Delivery, which was produced by John Congelton (Angel Olsson, St. Vincent, the Decemberists) and generated buzz with its blend of dreamy ’70s AM gold, funky soul, synth pop, and modern indie styles.
It was music that initially brought Davis to Catskill—but not her own music. “In 2019, [producer and engineer] Kenny Siegal at Old Soul Studios was doing the second volume of the Harry Nilsson covers albums that he put together [This is the Town: A Tribute to Harry Nilsson, Vol. 2;],” the harpist explains. “He invited us to record something for it, so we came up and did a song [Davis’s version of “Take 54” opens the album], and we really liked the vibe of the town and the whole Hudson Valley area. When we were doing the session, Kenny kept saying, ‘You guys should move to Catskill!’ and we were, like, ‘What? Who, us? Move to this small town in the mountains instead of some big, ‘happening’ city? Hmm, I don’t know about that.’”
But it was too late, the spell had taken hold: The following year, Davis and her collaborators relocated to the historic riverside Greene County village, and Shannon arrived not long after. “We already knew a lot of musician friends who live in Hudson, Kingston, Woodstock, and other places,” she says. “So we get to meet up with them a lot, whenever we’re not on the road.” The move has been beneficial for Old Soul as well as Davis’s band, with the members finding occasional work on other sessions at the studio.
Different Direction
As Davis settled in, she and the group began incorporating other influences into their sound, adding pedal steel guitarist Kurt G. Johnson to the lineup and shifting things onto a cosmic country path. The newer direction would seem to reflect their slower surroundings, although the bandleader herself isn’t so sure that’s entirely the reason for it. “I guess it’s more from being around different musicians, hearing different styles,” muses Davis. “I started to get more into Neil Young and Cass McCombs, and then I started finding out about the Buffalo Springfield, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. So I think [the current musical course] really comes from that. I hadn’t thought about nature seeping in. But maybe it did.” With the McCarthy brothers and Cote contributing more to the songwriting, it felt like a name change was in order when Davis and her sidemen returned to Old Soul to make their 2023 sophomore album; thus, its title, And Southern Star, a declaration of the backing unit’s new moniker.
With haunting, atmospheric, folk-based tracks like the fragile opener “Cinderella,” the coy “The Pearl,” and “Home in the Country,” a cowrite with Cian McCarthy whose title could be an acknowledgement of the band’s rustic residence as well as its newfound love for country music, the release is a rich, now-generation interpretation of the regional rural rock traditions established by Bob Dylan and The Band. “As a songwriter, Mikaela has a knack for writing distinct, catchy, and memorable melodies,” says Siegal. “Her complex harp parts provide beautiful counterpoint, and her vocals bring a whole other psychic dimension.”
Days of the Dead
Another impact on Davis’s course came from deep dives into the early Grateful Dead that found her quintet improvising on nuggets from the San Francisco icons’ catalog circa 1967-1969, a move that has been highlighted by an in-its-entirety cover of the psychedelic pioneers’ brain-bending Live/Dead double album.
Sometimes sharing shows with Circles Around the Sun, she and Southern Star have found a warmly receptive following on the jam-band scene, and she even sat in with the Dead’s Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, an auspicious occasion that led to more spots for her with Weir’s group. “The time I played with Bob and Phil, in 2018, was so much fun,” says the musician, who has also jammed with Christian McBride and appeared with Bon Iver and Lake Street Dive. “I started getting serious about improvising after that, and it’s opened a whole new world. We’ve all learned so much about ourselves as musicians by playing the Dead’s music.”
So what’s next for Davis? At the moment, having wrapped up a late-fall tour with Shannon’s Dead covers project, Grateful Shred, she’s mainly just enjoying the cozy Catskill winter. “I love living here,” she says. “It’s so peaceful, and there’s a real community feel. Going out and walking down the street—nine times out of 10 I run into somebody I know. It’s great, going on tour and visiting all of these big cities—and then coming back and literally being able to see the mountains from my window in the morning. It’s great.”
Mikaela Davis will perform at the Winter Hoot at the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge on February 3. Mikaela Davis and Southern Star will perform at the Solid Sound festival at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, on June 30. And Southern Star is out now on Kill Rock Stars Records. Mikaeladavis.com.
This article appears in February 2024.
