We are excited to feature Brittany Davis, for our PNW Artist of the Month for May!
Brittany Davis is a Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist singer, songwriter, soul innovator and performer who is blind and non-binary. Their 2022 critically-acclaimed debut EP ‘I Choose To Live’ was produced and engineered by Davis and Josh Evans (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Brandi Carlile) and praised by media outlets such as NPR Tiny Desk, The Seattle Times and American Songwriter. You can hear Brittany’s newest release “So Fly” featured on 98.9 KPNW.
John Fisher sat down with Brittany at a grand piano in Stone Gossard’s beautiful and funky Studio Litho in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood for a conversation and live performance.
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Full Performance & Interview Videos with May PNW Artist of the Month Brittany Davis at Studio Litho.
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BRITTANY DAVIS INTERVIEW
Our 98.9 KPNW Artist of the Month for May is Brittany Davis. Davis, who uses they/them pronouns, is a Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist singer, songwriter, soul innovator and performer who has been blind since birth. Their 2022 critically-acclaimed debut EP ‘I Choose To Live’ was produced and engineered by Davis and Josh Evans (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Brandi Carlile) and praised by media outlets around the country. Their newest release is a haunting and inspiring song called “So Fly,” which we’re featuring on 989. KPNW.
Davis also serves as a core member of the Seattle-based psychedelic rock band Painted Shield featuring Mason Jennings, Stone Gossard, Brittany Davis, Matt Chamberlain and Jeff Fielder.
John Fisher sat down with Brittany at a grand piano in Stone Gossard’s beautiful and funky Studio Litho in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood for a conversation and live performance:
JOHN: Let’s get your story. Born and raised in Kansas City, right? What was that like?
BRITTANY: I can’t really remember. I just spent a lot of my time making music. I spent a lot of time making music in church. I was full of energy and full of musical inspiration. And I stayed in my room and I didn’t go out a lot.
So you eventually made your way to Seattle. Why did you come to Seattle?
Well, it was a lifestyle change. My mother moved here with my brother and I, and it was kind of crazy – when I was three, she was incarcerated and she did a10-year sentence, and after her release she wished to make a lifestyle change. So she was just, “let me get out of this state, let me take it to the next level,” and we’ve been here ever since.
So you’re here in Seattle, you’re making music, and you get on the radar of Stone Gossard, from a little local band called Pearl Jam. How did that happen?
So one of his friends introduced me to him, and when he heard me he was enamored, like, “who’s this kid?” We were just like musical peas in a pod. It’s just effortless with us. We just vibe.
And as it happens, Stone has a record label called Loosegroove Records, so that came in kind of handy, right?
(Laughs.) Yes!
So you put out an EP last year – I Choose To Live – and your new single just dropped – it’s called So Fly. And it’s such a positive and self-affirming song. I can hear somebody giving themselves a little pep talk first thing in the morning, popping in the AirPods and playing “So Fly.” It’s like “YOU GOT THIS!!!” Is that kind of where you’re coming from with this?
Absolutely. You got this! And also, we talk about body image a lot but a lot of us don’t know there’s a mental image we have of ourselves too. It’s not all about what we look like. Sometimes it’s about what we feel like we look like. And not being able to physically view myself, as a person who’s born without eyes, a lot of how I see myself comes from the mental image. So when I wrote the song “So Fly,” I envisioned what it would be like if instead of looking at my reflection in the mirror, I could hear it. If it were a song, how would it sound? And “So Fly” was the result.
This may be a dumb question, but you just referred to not having your sight. Since you can’t look at yourself in the mirror, who do you trust to pick your clothes for you? You’re wearing this beautiful sparkly silver dress, and every time I see what you’re wearing, you just look FIRE! Your clothes, your hair, your shades, your shoes – who do you trust to put that together in a way that expresses who you are?
I gotta be honest – you can’t trust; you just gotta go by faith. Because no matter who you got, everybody has their own style. There’s things that you like to wear. My grandmother, my family, you know, they help me pick things out, but that’s not the whole of it. There’s more to it. How you go ahead and develop your individual style is your preference. I haven’t really experienced that luxury. Because if the person I’m with likes mohawks . . . . . (laughs.)
So it’s a really deep process. Everything is really deep with me. Everything turns inside. There’s no trivia to my existence – everything has to me worked through. And it’s a deep an intimate thing to trust someone to help put your clothes on. And I appreciate the compliment, because we look so fly, so beautiful – that’s how we want to look in the body and the mind. And trusting my family to help me do it is really easy to do, but I also have to find my own expression. I’m learning how to trust myself, too, and find the clothes I like.
Well I think it’s working.
Thank you!
Do you mind talking about the sleep thing that you do? You get up at three in the morning, stay awake for half an hour, then go back to sleep?
Yes I do. I always say in the morning I get two people ready – there’s me, the body, and me, the mind. And we gotta get ready. So when I wake up in the morning it’s almost like little rewards and treats I give myself, and positive affirmations. So I wake up at three in the morning, and maybe I stay awake for a half-hour. Then I go to sleep, and I wake up again, probably about 4:30. And when I get up then, I have myself a little smoothie, a little meditation, and then because I can – and I did the work to prepare that mind – I go back to sleep. Then I wake up about 7:30, eight o’clock, shower time, clothes, done. And I’m up!
It takes the shock out of being woken up by an alarm that one time and you have to think everything at once. I call it calibration. I’m just calibrating my mind to handle it. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like because of the way that I exist through the impact of blindness, I actually process about 20 to 30 percent more information at one time than the average Joe. So I need a whole ‘nother half of a mind just to do that. Just to think, “okay, I have to get down the stairs.” Going down the stairs is easy if you can see the stairs. If you can’t see the stairs, you have to remember – how many steps is it? – but you can’t be wiping sleep from your eyes. You gotta get all the stuff that could make it critically dangerous for you out of the way. You’re wide awake enough to count!
That might work for everybody . . .
Let’s do it! Calibration, everybody!