Hear The First Taste Of Barrett Davis’ Upcoming Album The Ballad Of Aesop Fin With “Quiver (feat. Woody Platt)”
Album out October 7th; Watch a live from the studio video of “Quiver” today via Fretboard Journal
Asheville, NC – August 26, 2022 – 29 year-old musician-turned-carpenter-
That something is Davis’ latest album, The Ballad of Aesop Fin, a vibrant tapestry, meandering from modern Americana to classic country, indie-folk to the “high, lonesome sound” of bluegrass. The record itself is a kitchen sink of tones—as heard on “Quiver,” “Lazarus,” and “Carolina Still”—one which ideally showcases the wide-range and unknown depths of Davis, his musical pursuits and exploits.
Today, Fretboard Journal shared the first tune from The Ballad of Aesop Fin, “Quiver (feat. Woody Platt),” via their exclusive premiere. A driving, rhythm section-backed bluegrass feel carries Davis’ story of two young lovers finding their way through a forbidden affection and, in his words, “Crushing social boundaries and overcoming their fear of achieving true freedom through passion and determination.” Davis is joined on vocals by Woody Platt, longtime lead singer for Brevard, North Carolina’s Grammy-winning outfit Steep Canyon Rangers—a band whose songs and sounds Davis drank up throughout his teenage years. Their voices blend together effortlessly in the tune’s resounding refrain: “Love / I am free / For the first time in my life I can hear the angels telling me to breathe.” Under the surface of “Quiver” lies a message for those who may need to hear it. “It can stand as a show of support to all who find their love lives to be under the restraint of societal norms or religious condemnation,” says Davis.
Fans can pre-order or pre-save The Ballad of Aesop Fin ahead of its October 7th release right here.
More About Barrett Davis and The Ballad of Aesop Fin: “Aesop Fin is a mythical character, raised in the woods. His dad is a moonshine runner, his mother nowhere to be found,” Davis says. “Aesop finds a lover and ends up getting killed in a gambling incident, then she ends up tumbling into a waterfall—it’s symbolic of the vicious cycle of tragedies in these mountains of Appalachia.”
Growing up in Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, a rural outpost community in the mountainous ridges of Transylvania County, Davis was surrounded by music from an early age—exposed to the blues licks of his guitar-playing father, the swirling classical sounds of his mother’s piano playing or the inner echoes of his sister, now a professional opera singer.
“But, for me, I stuck with bluegrass and carpentry,” Davis chuckles. “There was just something about bluegrass, folk and mountain music that has always called to me, conjuring something from real deep inside me that I haven’t been able to shake since I first heard it.”
Davis himself went on hiatus for several years, getting married and raising a young family, all while starting his own construction business to put food on the table for his wife and two kids. “Eight years of carpentry was draining, where it was a lot like working in a kitchen. On the jobsite, there’s a lot of old man emotions getting thrown around that none of us would ever talk about,” Davis says. “Hearing all those stories? It just fed me all kinds of song material. It was like therapy for me to filter out someone’s traumatic experience they told me, and to learn something about myself within that process.”
All things Barrett Davis can be found at Barrettdavismusic.com.