Old time strings, a crackling radio dial moving over various stations, big bands and vaudeville are what first greet you on Davina and the Vagabonds' latest album, Shoot for the Moon.
Designed as a personal mixtape for frontwoman Davina Sowers, the album covers a lot of emotional ground. It’s intimate with moments of melancholy, catchy and hopeful with the group's usual dose of fun while also a bit more up front about the complexity of life. Also included are three covers that the band took into its own hands.
They are a jazz and blues swing band at their core, but Sowers sees herself as solidly in the pop world too. That is apparent in “Find My Love," a song that came to Davina in a dream and started out as a kind of mantra to help her through difficult times. She told Malachy Koons on New Music that she was “just feeling dull in life. I had a lot of life changes, just really kind of struggling to find hope and love in anything, to be honest with you.”
Davina is an open book when it comes to her past struggles with addiction. She lays that bare in “Mighty Scar,” a song that takes you through the darkness, sitting with your sadness and where that dangerous line is. In her conversation with KAXE, Davina said that even though she’s been clean for many years, sometimes she still just wants to dig a hole and "burn the town down."
“Ho Hum” combines reflections of her time growing up in a train town in Pennsylvania with pandemic boredom. During the shutdown, the hum of trains from near her Minneapolis home would fill her with anxiety about what she wasn’t doing, with reminders to also keep on moving.
On KAXE, Sowers said a song that she likely won’t perform live very much — but one that needed to be written — is “Life Lessons.” Featuring Davina alone at her piano, it is an on-the-nose description of the father figures in her life in chronological order. Prior to the album release the singer stated she was nervous for her mother to hear the song.
The band's version of “Kiko and the Lavender Moon” features vocals by Connor McRae with foreboding tones and a swing not found in the Los Lobos original. Sowers said the covers on the album are all songs she learned during the pandemic, and they recorded this one for the album in one take.
The other two covers on Shoot For the Moon are “Please Don’t Bury Me,” a John Prine song done with Jillian Rae, and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” a song one of her father figures used to sing to her all of the time. Born in 1902, he introduced her to a variety of old songs on their Edison phonograph. The song is done in honor of him and appears on the CD version of the album as a hidden track.
Check out Shoot For The Moon on KAXE this week as our featured Album of the Week. See Davina and the Vagabonds live at the Bemidji Block Party on Saturday, June 22 with The Foxgloves and DERECHO Rhythm Section (featuring Alan Sparhawk from Low).
Must listens
- “Kisses In A Jar”
- “Kiko and the Lavender Moon”
- “Find My Love”
- “Ho Hum”
- “Please Don’t Bury Me”
