Ethan Daniel Davidson is a troubadour of many songs, a cross country traveler from Detroit with an eclectic repetoire built for lengthy, legendary and ongoing tours. His Spector-pop premiere of “Til the Light Comes Shining In” is fresh from his new album Silvertooth that brings along the incandescence of 70s pop that reflects the golden era of what Elton called “when rock was young”. Elaborating further is Ethan's production chief Warren Defever (4AD brass, His Name is Alive, etc) on the process of engineering the 'wall of sound' brick by brick:
Having already done a couple sessions together recording mostly old time country, gospel and ragtime styled music, Ethan asked me how to respond to the challenge laid before us:
What hasn't been done before, and possibly more importantly: What hasn't been re-done before? We agreed that one of the great unexplored areas in music was what we decided to call “THE 50's IN THE 70's.” The strange and nostalgic era of American Graffiti, Happy Days, Sha-Na-Na, John Lennon's Rock'nRoll album, and Laverne and Shirley. We analyzed all the great early rock and roll stars 1970's re-do recordings of their original hits.
We spent countless evenings methodically taking apart Phil Spector's productions with post-Beatle breakup George Harrison. His “wall of sound” work during the Nixon presidency was dark, tired, flat, reverby but hollow in a seriously drugged out way that had none of its original innocence or cheerful bounce. We looked at waveform charts and spectrograph readings and concluded that this lost world of hope in a hopeless time could done again. -Warren Defever, producer
Ethan Daniel Davidson's new album Silvertooth is available now.
