Ethan Daniel Davidson’s thirteenth studio album finds the veteran singer-songwriter exploring new creative territory while continuing down the beguiling and wondrous road that his discography has charted thus far. Cordelia is as lush and deeply felt as Davidson’s music has ever been, with countrified balladry and unvarnished blues accompanying this journeyman’s philosophical explorations and ruminations on his past, present, and future.
Cordelia follows 2022’s Stranger, which marked both a conclusion and a new beginning after a decade-plus of fruitful creative collaboration with Warren Defever of experimental rock legends His Name Is Alive (who Davidson is continuing to collaborate with on future projects as well). “I was overdue to start all over again with a bunch of new people,” he explains. But sometimes a change of scenery is needed for a spell, and so as Davidson was armed with an array of songs he had in his arsenal largely from a COVID-era songwriting span (the aching “Your Old Key” dating back more than a decade in terms of creative conception), he reached out to producer David Katznelson for some ideas on who to work with, who in turn recommended North Mississippi Allstars frontman Luther Dickinson as the perfect co-producer alongside Katznelson.
Davidson headed down south to link up with the North Mississippi Allstars frontman to shape the seven songs that became Cordelia—a collection that takes a left-turn from the darkly shaded textures of Stranger and was sonically inspired by Davidson’s love for the raw blues records that storied label Fat Possum were releasing in the 1090s. “I’ve always been a fan of that hill-country punk blues,” he explained. “That’s not the kind of music I do, but it always had a big impact on me, and I knew Luther would be the guy to translate these songs and put a pretty good band together.”
Joining Davidson and Dickinson on Cordelia: bassist and Emmylou Harris collaborator Byron House, drummer Marco Giovino (Robert Plant, John Cale), and multi-instrumentalist Rayfield “Ray Ray” Holloman, who contributed pedal steel and piano across the record. “Ray Ray came out of what’s called the sacred steel tradition, which is a small culture of Black churches where the pedal steel guitar is the main instrument of worship,” Davidson explains. Obviously, being a Jewish guy, we don’t have a lot of pedal steel at the synagogue, but I’ve always liked that kind of music, and Ray Ray really brought these songs alive.”
Cordelia sounds robust and thoroughly lived-in, so the average listener might find it surprising to learn that Davidson and the band put these songs to tape within the span of three days total. “I like to work pretty quickly,” he explains. “I’ve been making records in Detroit for so long that it was great to get a fresh approach, especially in Mississippi, where a lot of my music comes from. The whole way we did this record was really quick. Working quickly allows me to maintain my relationship with the songs. I like to try to get into the studio, make the record in as quick a time as I can, and then get it out there.”
As with Davidson’s estimable catalogue, his lyricism is front and center across Cordelia, expressing his own specific worldview in a way that’s informed—especially on the twinkling opener “I Know My Rider Knows My Name”—by his Jewish faith as well as the tenets of Buddhism. “I’m not a musician— I’m a performance philosopher,” he says. “The music is the vehicle for the lyrics where I’m trying to unpack what’s going on inside of me. Doing this is part of my psychotherapy practice—trying to find dark places within myself and understand what’s going on in there.”
The album’s namesake is inspired by the titular daughter featured in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy King Lear, who Davidson finds a sense of personal kinship with. “My adopted father was a great guy, but by the end of his life, he had a lot of sycophants gathered around him when he was in declining health,” he recalls. “I came to feel like Cordelia, because I wasn’t around him for his money—it was because I was this kid that he took in and took care of, and I loved him for it.”
The refrain of Cordelia’s swooning penultimate track “Along in the Wind and the Rain” borrows from the song that the play’s fool sings, and within this mirroring Davidson reflects on his own travels as a human being amidst his life’s experiences. “I’m still on this crazy journey to figure out what’s going inside of me—who I am, and how I fully complete myself,” he explains.
Elsewhere, atop the luxurious pedal steel of first single “Gasoline” Davidson explores songwriting territory treaded on by precious few before him: “I thought, ‘What’s a song that hasn’t been written?’ Nobody’s written a song about a career arsonist getting out of prison and reconnecting with his old flame. That’s a country song we haven’t heard—and, being middle-aged myself now, I could relate to the sentiment of, if you still got some fire, I’ve got some gasoline, and we could still rekindle this romance and burn down a few buildings along the way.”
A unique perspective, for certain—and reflective of not only Cordelia but Davidson’s career as a whole thus far, which has found him on an eternal search for self as well as for the communal aspect of others. ”I write these songs because I’m trying to meet people and have real relationships,” he explains. “I want to find people with whom I share a common language. That’s what I’m interested in doing, and if music is a vehicle for that, then that’s why I continue to do it.”
