Top Country Spotlight: Dan Davidson on CCMA Nominations & More!

Dan Davidson on CCMA Nominations, New Single ‘Say We Did’ & More!

Dan Davidson has many reasons to celebrate this summer. He released a new single ‘Say We Did‘, received muliple CCMA nominations and his debut single ‘Found‘ will soon be certified gold! We sat down with Dan who shared his excitement for the CCMA nominations, especially as an independent artist.

TC: What was your initial reaction when you found out you were nominated for the CCMA Rising Star award?

DD: I was kinda blown away, I knew I had some good stats and it was a great year for me. Being in the same category as Meghan Patrick, James Barker Band & JoJo Mason who all have labels behind them, it’s tough competition. I mean I try not to think about it like competition cause [they’re] all friends and all people I get to see on the road…but it was an honour, it really felt like it was a nice sort of nod to the amount [of work] that I’ve put in this year.

TC: You’ve mentioned that songwriter circles are some of your favourite places to perform, with that, what does a nomination for Songwriter of the Year mean to you?

DD: That was huge…’Found’ was a song that kind of took on a life of its own… It was the weirdest way to write a song… Clayton Bellamy and I call them ‘sky songs’, they just fall from the sky. I was just stompin’ around in my kitchen, without a guitar or anything, and I came up with the chorus and the pre-chorus more or less. I was like this is cool, I think this is something. It’s amazing to me to see how that went from my kitchen to being one of the top 5 songs this year, according to the CCMA nominations.

I’m huge fan of Dean Brody’s song ‘Time’, I think that’s an unbelievable song and to be in the same conversation as that and Brett Kissel and all the other nominees, it’s awesome. It’s really something I feel like I can hang my hat on, it’s something I’m really proud of.

TC: What’s one thing that people who are just discovering you and your music would be surprised to find out?

DD: Probably that I’ve been doing this for 13 years. I was in a rock band for over 10 years and we had a lot of success. We had two albums in the top 10 on iTunes, a number 3 video on Much, a bunch of top 40s and song placements on commercials in the States… It was an independent effort and it all kind of lead me here….I had to figure out how to do things on my own and [I met] a lot of people that crossed over into the country world. So I think that’s kind of a big part of my story that not everybody really realizes… It’s always funny being branded as a new artist or up and coming artist when I’ve been at it for 13 years.

TC: Your Dreams Would If….

DD: I think if I could have a wall full of gold records, independently, that would be a huge dream for me…I’ve done everything without a label and I’m feeling like that’s really rewarding to me… It’s sort of a culmination of all my efforts and learning that I’ve done throughout my music career… [I like] figuring out what people are doing on the bigger scale and then trying to do it myself. So now I’m at a spot where I have a great team around me, with an agent, a manager, a publicist and a promotions [team]… but still, it’s an independent release… I think that’s really cool, so if I could keep that going, dreams come true.

TC: You videos are always incredibly creative. ‘Say We Did’ is no exception. How did the concept for the ‘Say We Did’ video come about?

DD: Well, I realized that I’m a professional man-child after the second video and that became kinda my thing. After we did the Barn Burner video in Japan, it was the topic of interviews for the whole year… People are starting to know me for doing these wacky videos so I brainstormed with my director.

We had all these insane lofty ideas for videos, like stuff that would probably cause a lot of bodily harm to me… We were going to pull the trigger on them but timing was a bit of a crunch for Say We Did. We were like how can we do something cool without really going somewhere?

For some reason we got on the topic, completely unrelated to the video, about Star Trek. We were talking about how funny it would be to have costumes and just wear them in our daily lives… Then it kind of hit all of us in the room at the same time, we have to do a Star Trek video… We wanted to do it indie and low budget and kind of just quirky and grainy, like we always do it. We built the entire bridge of the Star Trek enterprise out of cardboard in my garage.

Watch the Say We Did Video HERE!