Biography
Michael Daves, a New York-based musician Grammy-nominated for his work across bluegrass, country, and rock, has earned near-fanatical devotion through his unruly takes on American roots standards, earning the label "renegade traditionalist." Audiences treat his weekly Tuesday sets at Rockwood Music Hall as local lore. He has also appeared onstage and in recordings alongside Chris Thile, Steve Martin, Nickel Creek, Aoife O'Donovan, Tony Trischka, and Rosanne Cash.
Born in Georgia in 1977 to parents immersed in amateur bluegrass, Daves grew up with a banjo-playing father and a fiddle-playing mother who hosted regular jam sessions. He picked up guitar early, displaying clear talent; by ten he was performing in church while absorbing the Ramones, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin. Throughout high school he balanced bluegrass with rock, then continued both pursuits at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts while formally studying jazz and ethnomusicology. After relocating to New York in 2003 he began teaching music and frequenting clubs and open-mike nights, where his irreverent, unstudied handling of bluegrass drew crowds. Daves positions himself nearer the genre’s original insurgent spirit than later, more pious practitioners, describing bluegrass as a rebel form that updated older folk traditions via then-new influences such as jazz, blues, and swing.
In 2004 he contributed to Sonya Kitchell’s Cold Day EP. By 2006 he had secured his own solo slot at Rockwood Music Hall, where he performed alone and connected with numerous players including Thile; his following and standing among fellow musicians expanded rapidly. He self-produced and released his debut album, Live at the Rockwood, in 2007. His bespectacled, animated stage persona called to mind the fierce backwoods Appalachian players of earlier eras. In 2009 he appeared on Martin’s The Crow and joined the subsequent tour. Daves and Thile cut Sleep with One Eye Open live to tape over four days at Jack White’s Third Man Studio; Nonesuch Records issued the album to broad praise and a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. The duo also supplied “Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel” to ATO’s 2013 anthology Divided & United: Songs of the Civil War.
Daves followed with the double album Orchids and Violence. Its first disc presents mostly traditional songs captured live to tape inside a nineteenth-century church, along with an all-star acoustic-roots rendition of Mother Love Bone’s “Stargazer.” The second disc, tracked in his home studio, applies a raw, experimental rock treatment to the same repertoire, featuring electric bass by his wife Jessi Carter plus drums and electric guitar played chiefly by Daves himself. Nonesuch released the project in February 2016.
Born in Georgia in 1977 to parents immersed in amateur bluegrass, Daves grew up with a banjo-playing father and a fiddle-playing mother who hosted regular jam sessions. He picked up guitar early, displaying clear talent; by ten he was performing in church while absorbing the Ramones, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin. Throughout high school he balanced bluegrass with rock, then continued both pursuits at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts while formally studying jazz and ethnomusicology. After relocating to New York in 2003 he began teaching music and frequenting clubs and open-mike nights, where his irreverent, unstudied handling of bluegrass drew crowds. Daves positions himself nearer the genre’s original insurgent spirit than later, more pious practitioners, describing bluegrass as a rebel form that updated older folk traditions via then-new influences such as jazz, blues, and swing.
In 2004 he contributed to Sonya Kitchell’s Cold Day EP. By 2006 he had secured his own solo slot at Rockwood Music Hall, where he performed alone and connected with numerous players including Thile; his following and standing among fellow musicians expanded rapidly. He self-produced and released his debut album, Live at the Rockwood, in 2007. His bespectacled, animated stage persona called to mind the fierce backwoods Appalachian players of earlier eras. In 2009 he appeared on Martin’s The Crow and joined the subsequent tour. Daves and Thile cut Sleep with One Eye Open live to tape over four days at Jack White’s Third Man Studio; Nonesuch Records issued the album to broad praise and a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. The duo also supplied “Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel” to ATO’s 2013 anthology Divided & United: Songs of the Civil War.
Daves followed with the double album Orchids and Violence. Its first disc presents mostly traditional songs captured live to tape inside a nineteenth-century church, along with an all-star acoustic-roots rendition of Mother Love Bone’s “Stargazer.” The second disc, tracked in his home studio, applies a raw, experimental rock treatment to the same repertoire, featuring electric bass by his wife Jessi Carter plus drums and electric guitar played chiefly by Daves himself. Nonesuch released the project in February 2016.
Albums
