Tanya Davis

Tanya Davis Moves To Halifax And Keeps On Writing
Monday November 27, 2006 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff


Spoken word poet/performer Tanya Davis masterly cajoles language into brief, simple songs embodying universal themes such as love, loneliness, loss, infatuation and art. She's catalogued her deep pockets of syllables, synonyms, verbs, adjectives and nouns into a debut disc dubbed Make A List.
"I've been writing since I was very little, it was the first thing I ever wanted to do when I grew up," says Davis, over morning coffee in Halifax. "Growing up on P.E.I., there wasn't a hell of a lot to do, as I'm sure like it is growing up in many small towns.
"I think it influenced me to write a lot. There wasn't really another option."
Nova Scotia recently adopted the burgeoning wordsmith, as the local weekly The Coast pegged her as "one of Halifax's most mesmerizing performers." In her late twenties, Davis seems to be spilling the ink from her pen anywhere and everywhere. Since her humble beginnings softly sputtering words from scraps of loose leaf at quiet cafes in Vancouver and Charlottetown, she decided to hang her literary hat in Halifax.
"I try and write every day," says Davis. "I just moved into a new house and I can feel I'm not writing as much.
"I didn't know anybody at first, so I just wrote. I moved here because I wanted to make music. I wrote every day. That was my work."
Davis draws inspiration from personal experience and the surrounding world. The well-read word hound considers Anne-Marie MacDonald, Michelle Tea and Alice Walker as lettered comrades. Her musical abilities were recently recognized in Liverpool during Nova Scotia Music Week, as she was nominated for four Nova Scotia Music Awards: new artist/group, female recording, alternative recording and album of the year.
"I'm completely honoured," says Davis. "I don't feel like I left high school deciding to be a rock star.
"It took some time to get here. Now that I am here, it's all that I want to do. It's all that I think I'm designed for. It's my passion. I have nothing to fall back on. This is it right now. This is going to be it."
Davis trumpets truth, as she consciously lives a cathartic, honest and genuine existence, both inside and outside of her music. She's comfortable being a visibly queer poet, person and public entity. "It's most important for me to be genuine about who I am, so I feel like I'd rather neither flaunt or hide," Davis explains.
"It's a non-issue for me in my life. I feel like I did the young-twenty, coming out, angry feminist. I feel like a lot of women go through it, the empowering stage. I still think about gender and sexuality issues. I don't write about it as overtly anymore."
Davis is an emotional polymath, as she combines the artful aesthetic of Ani DiFranco with the rhythmic schemes of Kinnie Starr. In the near future she hopes to record a full-length album, figure out what she should name her band and then tour. She currently plays with Don Brownrigg on keyboards, and Down With The Butterfly's Kris Pope on electric guitar and Jason Burns on drums.
Check out Davis and her untitled band at Halifax's One World Cafe with Catherine MacLellan on Dec. 1 and at Babba's in Charlottetown with Jenn Grant on Dec. 27.
—Shannon Webb-Campbell
- www.chartattack.com

Tanya Davis Moves To Halifax And Keeps On Writing
Monday November 27, 2006 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff


Spoken word poet/performer Tanya Davis masterly cajoles language into brief, simple songs embodying universal themes such as love, loneliness, loss, infatuation and art. She's catalogued her deep pockets of syllables, synonyms, verbs, adjectives and nouns into a debut disc dubbed Make A List.
"I've been writing since I was very little, it was the first thing I ever wanted to do when I grew up," says Davis, over morning coffee in Halifax. "Growing up on P.E.I., there wasn't a hell of a lot to do, as I'm sure like it is growing up in many small towns.
"I think it influenced me to write a lot. There wasn't really another option."
Nova Scotia recently adopted the burgeoning wordsmith, as the local weekly The Coast pegged her as "one of Halifax's most mesmerizing performers." In her late twenties, Davis seems to be spilling the ink from her pen anywhere and everywhere. Since her humble beginnings softly sputtering words from scraps of loose leaf at quiet cafes in Vancouver and Charlottetown, she decided to hang her literary hat in Halifax.
"I try and write every day," says Davis. "I just moved into a new house and I can feel I'm not writing as much.
"I didn't know anybody at first, so I just wrote. I moved here because I wanted to make music. I wrote every day. That was my work."
Davis draws inspiration from personal experience and the surrounding world. The well-read word hound considers Anne-Marie MacDonald, Michelle Tea and Alice Walker as lettered comrades. Her musical abilities were recently recognized in Liverpool during Nova Scotia Music Week, as she was nominated for four Nova Scotia Music Awards: new artist/group, female recording, alternative recording and album of the year.
"I'm completely honoured," says Davis. "I don't feel like I left high school deciding to be a rock star.
"It took some time to get here. Now that I am here, it's all that I want to do. It's all that I think I'm designed for. It's my passion. I have nothing to fall back on. This is it right now. This is going to be it."
Davis trumpets truth, as she consciously lives a cathartic, honest and genuine existence, both inside and outside of her music. She's comfortable being a visibly queer poet, person and public entity. "It's most important for me to be genuine about who I am, so I feel like I'd rather neither flaunt or hide," Davis explains.
"It's a non-issue for me in my life. I feel like I did the young-twenty, coming out, angry feminist. I feel like a lot of women go through it, the empowering stage. I still think about gender and sexuality issues. I don't write about it as overtly anymore."
Davis is an emotional polymath, as she combines the artful aesthetic of Ani DiFranco with the rhythmic schemes of Kinnie Starr. In the near future she hopes to record a full-length album, figure out what she should name her band and then tour. She currently plays with Don Brownrigg on keyboards, and Down With The Butterfly's Kris Pope on electric guitar and Jason Burns on drums.
Check out Davis and her untitled band at Halifax's One World Cafe with Catherine MacLellan on Dec. 1 and at Babba's in Charlottetown with Jenn Grant on Dec. 27.
—Shannon Webb-Campbell
- www.chartattack.com

The evolution of Tanya Davis
Though her transformation from shy coffee shop dweller to one of Halifax's most mesmerizing performers has been exhilarating and fast, Tanya Davis is still hard to peg. And that's how she wants it. "I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere,"


by Shayla Howell



A year ago, 26-year-old Tanya Davis had no friends to hang out with. She had just moved to Halifax from PEI to pursue a career as a poet/writer/musician, but had no connections and no album to peddle. She spent her afternoons at Steve-O-Renos writing and thinking, and her nights at live shows hoping to connect with other musicians.

Six months later, Tanya Davis stood softly before an open mic at One World Cafe on Agricola Street in jeans and a baggy sweater, her long brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, and apologized to the audience for not having yet committed her new poem to memory. She took the mic in her right hand, and, reading from the small piece of white paper in her left, proceeded to blow the minds of the dozen or so people in the room with an intensely personal, lyrically rhythmic exploration about whether or not she needed love in her life.

Six days ago, Tanya Davis was on her way to Liverpool for Nova Scotia Music Week, where she would again stand in front of a mic. This time, her thick hair cut into layers, she played in front of a packed room sporting a skirt, tall boots and a band. This time, she also stood to win awards in four categories, including New Artist/Group of the Year, and for her debut CD, Make a List, Female Recording of the Year, Alternative Recording of the Year and finally, the coveted Album of the Year. Ultimately, she would be beat out in all categories, but the mere nominations served as a loud announcent of her arrival.

So who is Tanya Davis? As a practitioner in the spoken word genre, and a very new musician to the Halifax scene, it's not surprising that most people don't know of her. Also not surprising is that, likely, they soon will.


"Her lyrics are of a mature songwriter," says Gordon Lapp, the executive director of Music Nova Scotia. "Her messaging is incredible for someone that young. She's got the attention of a lot of people. She's turning heads."

Lapp describes Davis' sound as "Leonard Cohen meets Sarah Harmer" which is apt, referencing her melding of the singer-songwriter and poetry genres. But she sounds like neither. In fact, it's almost impossible to point to a known artist whose sound is comparable. Six of the nine songs on her CD, Make a List, are mostly spoken word enhanced by musical accompaniment (Davis plays guitar, ukele and bass on the album). The other three tracks are folk songs with Davis singing throughout, ranging in tone from wistful ("Potato") to playful ("The Drums") to thoughtful ("Something").

Her voice is soft and velvety with a slightly gauzy texture. She enunciates her consonants and one can almost hear a lilt, likely her PEI heritage. The track "Sometimes" offers nuances of Dolores O'Riordan Burton from The Cranberries. No, Tanya Davis is not a Sarah Harmer wannabe. Nor Sarah McLachlan, or any other girl-with-guitar artist you can name.

"She has a delicate strength to her voice, like Feist, or Gillian Welch," says Davis' keyboardist, Don Brownrigg, "but there's no one really like her."

Davis is making a name for herself as a poet and a writer, and for that she's pleased. But it's not enough. She wants to put out pop songs as well. If that sounds random, it isn't. She's hard to pin down on purpose.

"I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere," she says. "I don't want to be just known as a poet, or as a girl who plays guitar." On her MySpace blog, she writes, "I want to have a group of people on stage with me…and we can rock people's socks off. or, maybe we can folk people's socks of, or pop them off, or indie them off…you see where I'm going with this: it's hard to define what kind of music I play...but I'm even happier to play music AND do poetry." She goes on to explain how excited she is to "introduce unsuspecting haligonians to another style of poetry. musical poetry. poem songs. pongs."

Musical stylings aside, what sets Davis apart is her approach to verse. Her writing is direct and naked, unobscured by metaphor or heavy symbolism. And within the arrangement, the lyrics always take centre stage whether she is performing solo, accompanied by an instrument or two, or a full band. The power is in her directness.

"What can be compelling about spoken work is the use of language. Language is so powerful and if it's delivered well…" she trails off. "Writing for performance is different than for it to remain in the page. It's infinite what someone could say up there. There's a privilege—we can say what we want."

Her influences reflect that. They include Kinnie Starr, Shane Koyzcan, Bright Eyes, John K. Sampson of The Weakerthans and locally Shauntay Grant, Benn Ross and Amelia Curran. For - The Coast

The evolution of Tanya Davis
Though her transformation from shy coffee shop dweller to one of Halifax's most mesmerizing performers has been exhilarating and fast, Tanya Davis is still hard to peg. And that's how she wants it. "I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere,"


by Shayla Howell



A year ago, 26-year-old Tanya Davis had no friends to hang out with. She had just moved to Halifax from PEI to pursue a career as a poet/writer/musician, but had no connections and no album to peddle. She spent her afternoons at Steve-O-Renos writing and thinking, and her nights at live shows hoping to connect with other musicians.

Six months later, Tanya Davis stood softly before an open mic at One World Cafe on Agricola Street in jeans and a baggy sweater, her long brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, and apologized to the audience for not having yet committed her new poem to memory. She took the mic in her right hand, and, reading from the small piece of white paper in her left, proceeded to blow the minds of the dozen or so people in the room with an intensely personal, lyrically rhythmic exploration about whether or not she needed love in her life.

Six days ago, Tanya Davis was on her way to Liverpool for Nova Scotia Music Week, where she would again stand in front of a mic. This time, her thick hair cut into layers, she played in front of a packed room sporting a skirt, tall boots and a band. This time, she also stood to win awards in four categories, including New Artist/Group of the Year, and for her debut CD, Make a List, Female Recording of the Year, Alternative Recording of the Year and finally, the coveted Album of the Year. Ultimately, she would be beat out in all categories, but the mere nominations served as a loud announcent of her arrival.

So who is Tanya Davis? As a practitioner in the spoken word genre, and a very new musician to the Halifax scene, it's not surprising that most people don't know of her. Also not surprising is that, likely, they soon will.


"Her lyrics are of a mature songwriter," says Gordon Lapp, the executive director of Music Nova Scotia. "Her messaging is incredible for someone that young. She's got the attention of a lot of people. She's turning heads."

Lapp describes Davis' sound as "Leonard Cohen meets Sarah Harmer" which is apt, referencing her melding of the singer-songwriter and poetry genres. But she sounds like neither. In fact, it's almost impossible to point to a known artist whose sound is comparable. Six of the nine songs on her CD, Make a List, are mostly spoken word enhanced by musical accompaniment (Davis plays guitar, ukele and bass on the album). The other three tracks are folk songs with Davis singing throughout, ranging in tone from wistful ("Potato") to playful ("The Drums") to thoughtful ("Something").

Her voice is soft and velvety with a slightly gauzy texture. She enunciates her consonants and one can almost hear a lilt, likely her PEI heritage. The track "Sometimes" offers nuances of Dolores O'Riordan Burton from The Cranberries. No, Tanya Davis is not a Sarah Harmer wannabe. Nor Sarah McLachlan, or any other girl-with-guitar artist you can name.

"She has a delicate strength to her voice, like Feist, or Gillian Welch," says Davis' keyboardist, Don Brownrigg, "but there's no one really like her."

Davis is making a name for herself as a poet and a writer, and for that she's pleased. But it's not enough. She wants to put out pop songs as well. If that sounds random, it isn't. She's hard to pin down on purpose.

"I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere," she says. "I don't want to be just known as a poet, or as a girl who plays guitar." On her MySpace blog, she writes, "I want to have a group of people on stage with me…and we can rock people's socks off. or, maybe we can folk people's socks of, or pop them off, or indie them off…you see where I'm going with this: it's hard to define what kind of music I play...but I'm even happier to play music AND do poetry." She goes on to explain how excited she is to "introduce unsuspecting haligonians to another style of poetry. musical poetry. poem songs. pongs."

Musical stylings aside, what sets Davis apart is her approach to verse. Her writing is direct and naked, unobscured by metaphor or heavy symbolism. And within the arrangement, the lyrics always take centre stage whether she is performing solo, accompanied by an instrument or two, or a full band. The power is in her directness.

"What can be compelling about spoken work is the use of language. Language is so powerful and if it's delivered well…" she trails off. "Writing for performance is different than for it to remain in the page. It's infinite what someone could say up there. There's a privilege—we can say what we want."

Her influences reflect that. They include Kinnie Starr, Shane Koyzcan, Bright Eyes, John K. Sampson of The Weakerthans and locally Shauntay Grant, Benn Ross and Amelia Curran. For - The Coast

Tanya Davis
Make a List
(independent)
The best local release in recent memory, Make a List’s charm lies in Davis’ brilliant lyrical delivery. A mix of fragile melodies and solid spoken word, Davis effortlessly draws the listener into each song, where they are rewarded with tasteful musicianship and inspired poetry.
Chuck Teed
categories: Local artist,Canadian artist,Best of the year (2006)
- 'The Coast' Best of 2006

Tanya Davis
Make a List
(independent)
The best local release in recent memory, Make a List’s charm lies in Davis’ brilliant lyrical delivery. A mix of fragile melodies and solid spoken word, Davis effortlessly draws the listener into each song, where they are rewarded with tasteful musicianship and inspired poetry.
Chuck Teed
categories: Local artist,Canadian artist,Best of the year (2006)
- 'The Coast' Best of 2006