“Playing live was very complicated,” he said. “We had a computer and triggers. I was trying to find something that felt as authentic as possible.”
So in early 2015, Davidson and members from his previous band Pang formed a guitar-based rock band called Carey, which will play a 9:30 p.m. show today at the Bishop.
Carey has only released one song to date, a fuzzy pop song called “Smokin’ It” that arrived with a lo-fi music video of a person wearing a bear suit and smoking a cigarette.
But Davidson, 24, said more music from the band will come soon, including a debut EP set to be released in early March.
In the songs on the EP, he said, he drew from 1990s college rock bands like Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., as well as music from earlier eras.
Carey self-recorded the EP in a house in east Nashville, Davidson said, with bass player and audio engineer Daniel Green helming the process.
He also said Nashville, which has recently bred similarly minded bands like Bully and Diarrhea Planet, is hospitable to Carey’s brand of rock.
“There’s definitely a scene where people are doing the warm, fuzzy guitar rock thing,” Davidson said. “Everybody is in it for the same thing.”
Davidson said the forthcoming EP deals thematically with social anxiety and personal insecurities, and those difficulties still manifest live despite the supportive scene.
“I didn’t start singing until about a year ago,” he said. “The first show we ever played, I puked in the bathroom five minutes before we went on. It’s gotten a lot easier, but when we go to start the first song, some of those feelings come back.”
Looking to the future can also be stressful, Davidson said. He studied music business at Belmont University, but after graduation, he realized loving music didn’t mean he’d love the music industry.
“Working on Music Row ... would be less than fun for me,” he said. “I’d rather not work in music than work in the corporate part of it.”
For now, he said, he’s putting his energy into writing songs and working enough to get by.
“Carey will tour more in the spring,” Davidson said. “Including a stop at South by Southwest.”
Davidson said he also expects Carey to release a second EP in late summer, and though he’s still early in the songwriting process, he’s found himself moving away from guitar rock and into music with drum loops and lo-fi recording.
“I’m trying to make music that I would want to listen to,” he said.
