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Mem Davis is a singer, songwriter and – as I found out during this interview – a book editor from the south coast of New South Wales, although she’s currently not there, because she and partner Neil have been travelling Australia in a caravan since September last year, performing as the Mem Davis Duo along the way, with their elderly Boston terrier in tow.
The musical life was not one Davis thought she would be leading. As she tells me, she spent years believing she couldn’t sing, having been told so by people close to her. It wasn’t until she was in her twenties that she booked a singing lesson and discovered that, as she says, ‘[e]verything I believed about myself was essentially thrown out the window’.
She has been writing and performing ever since, though the happier songs, she notes, only arrived in her late thirties.
‘I realised music didn’t have to be therapy,’ she says.
Davis’s latest single, ‘It’s All Just Love’, was produced by Liam Kennedy-Clark, a multi-instrumentalist and, as half of Wicker Suite, a Golden Guitar winner. The song uses bees as a central metaphor for community and the balance between individual responsibility and collective support.
Davis attended the CMAA Academy of Country Music and writes regularly at the DAG songwriting retreat, where she has made connections she credits as among the most valuable of her career, a co-write with Luke O’Shea being a particular highlight. A second single, recorded with Kennedy-Clark, is due later in the year, with an album the eventual goal.
At the time of recording the interview, Davis and Neil were based in Tamworth, preparing to head to the Northern Rivers. There are shows coming up, including one for the winter solstice in Uralla. Details at memdavis.com.
Listen to ‘It’s All Just Love’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘It’s All Just Love’ on YouTube
