Davis John Patton

Davis John Patton crafts meditative, atmospheric indie folk as a singer and songwriter. A streaming playlist propelled his breakthrough via the track “Motives,” taken from his 2018 EP Forest Park, while his fourth EP, Songs from Davis, arrived in 2021 as his first release on Nettwerk Records.

Born in Iowa, Patton began piano lessons in first grade and added guitar three years afterward, also lending his voice to the local church choir. Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago prompted him to devote himself to acoustic folk during his teenage years as a singer and songwriter. Still in college, he created and captured his debut EP, Forest Park, early in 2018 alongside Jacob Swegle. Once the spare electric guitar number “Motives” landed on a prominent playlist, it accumulated more than a million streams; the follow-up single “A Tale of Rescue” soon drew hundreds of thousands more. The exposure led singer and songwriter Tyler Johnson—known for work with Sam Smith and Harry Styles—to summon Patton to Vancouver for recording sessions. Five tracks cut across seven days in late 2018 became the January 2020 release From the Garden, after which Poetry appeared that October.

Patton subsequently joined the Nettwerk roster, which issued his fourth EP, Songs from Davis, in November 2021. High school friend Patrick Cunningham shared production duties, and Chris Bethea—whose credits include Penny & Sparrow and Brett Eldredge—handled mixing.