Not playing the game

Sisters Fern and Adrienne are on a mission. They gave up their jobs and left their home in 2011 to travel the country in a rusted old camper van. Their mission? To play their own particular brand of indie soul music to audiences wherever they could, because they believe they have a vital message for this generation.

Seven years on from their decision to hit the road, Daughters of Davis have produced several albums, made numerous radio and TV appearances, shared the stage in the UK with the likes of Peter Andre, Sam Bailey, Leona Lewis and Beyoncé, and have toured across Europe with Eels and Rebecca Ferguson. And their mission continues.

The sisters write and sing songs that bear messages for this generation, about relevant issues such as mental health, emotional conflict and self-worth. Their latest release, entitled #NotPlayingTheGame is a concept album that confronts the pressures society places on young people to conform to expectations of body and appearance, personal identity and a whole welter of other issues.

I heard Daughters of Davis perform at Spring Harvest in April 2018 and again at Creation Fest in August the same year. Their soulful, almost plaintive vocals, complementary harmonies and rolling hook lines make their songs memorable. Their enthusiasm and honesty are evident as they perform. I thought it was high time I captured their thoughts, so I set out to interview them. I caught up with one half of the sister duo - Fern - back stage and recorded this for CrossRhythms Radio:



Daughters of Davis have made several videos to promote their music, and all can be found on YouTube, but in my estimation, perhaps the best of their videos is the thought provoking production below, entitled Footprints, featuring the single from their second album British Soul, released in 2014.


Photo credit: Daughters of Davis

Creative Commons License
Not playing the game by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Location: Plymouth, England

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pioneers of CCM: Parchment

Image
Keith, Sue and John in 1972 I have told this story before, but it bears repeating. I came to faith in early September 1973 after a day at the Bromyard Folk Festival where I heard a folk-rock trio called Parchment play. I can still remember the rich aroma of the trampled grass that had been baking all day under the warm canvas, as the hot late summer sun beat down upon the large marquee we were sat in. The stage was small, and rather make-shift, but the sound system was powerful, and the microphones on their stands glinted silver. Parchment came onto the stage, looking a little dishevelled and Bohemian, and also quite hairy - and performed a short set that included several of their new songs, but also the CCM classic Light Up The Fire. It was this song that hit me like a ton of bricks. The classic chorus is still sung in schools and churches all over the world today: 'Light up the fire, and let the flame burn. Open the door let Jesus return, take seeds of His Spirit and l...
Read more

Dartmoor prison blues

Image
This is continuation of my short series of posts about how I became involved with Contemporary Christian Music. Previous posts are listed and linked at the foot of this post. Me c 1980 I met Roger Lenk while we were both at Marjons in Plymouth (then a teacher education college). I soon discovered that Roger identified as a 'Messianic Jew' - someone who had been born into the Jewish tradition, but had accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as his mashiach (Messiah). We actually first met during a journey up to Dartmoor Prison where we were both billed to play at an event organised by Youth for Christ. It was a daunting trip for me, because Dartmoor Prison can be a forbidding place at the best of times, and we arrived at Princetown that autumnal evening as an eery fog was drifting in over the moors and the sun had already set. The granite walls of the prison stared at us gauntly, and the sodium lamps cast a sickly yellow hue over the stonework. As the large gates of Dartmoor slammed sono...
Read more

Just Vinyl

Image
I've spent a lot of time in the studio over the last week or so, recording programmes for my new show which will air this Autumn on CrossRhythms radio  (see dates below!) The show is called Just Vinyl, and it features classic Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) tracks, drawn largely from the 1970s and 1980s. I'm playing exclusively vinyl because it has a particular quality and although there are a few clicks and pops every now and then, I think this just adds to the beauty of the medium. Many of the artists I'm featuring are giants of the genre, pioneers of CCM when it was in its infancy, when very few of the musicians were full-time. Today, Christian music is big business - there are radio stations, record labels and management/touring companies dedicated fully to promoting it. Back in the day, very little of this existed, and those who were involved in pioneering CCM had to forge their own pathways. It was not easy to finance ventures into Christian music - most musi...
Read more