Featured Artist
September25 - October 1, 2000

The "Artist of the Week" web site feature highlights a new flatpicking guitarist each week. Brad Davis has been a columnist for Flatpicking Guitar Magazine from the start. His band WhiteWater has just released a new album with a music video soon to follow. It couldn't be a better time to feature Brad on this page.

Brad Davis:

Double Down Up, Brad Benders, and WhiteWater

by Dan Miller

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Prior to Brad Davis' success in Nashville as guitarist for Marty Stuart, most flatpickers probably knew Brad through his "Tony Rice Style Guitar" course offered through Workshop Records. That is the way we found out about Brad and it is the reason why we first made contact with him to see if he would be a columnist for this magazine. What blew us away during an interview we conducted with Brad at Merlefest this year was that when he wrote that course and the tab that goes along with it, he was only about thirteen years old. Quite an achievement for a kid not yet in high school! And Brad has continued to excell in every musical endevour his has undertaken since then.

In addition to playing lead electric and acoustic guitar on the road with Marty Stuart for the past ten years, and playing on Marty's gold selling albums "This Ones Gonna Hurt You" and the Marty Stuart "Hit Pack," Brad Davis performed on Marty Stuart's latest MCA recording "The Pilgrim," played on the soundtrack of Steven Seagal's "Fire Down Below," and wrote, performed, and engineered music for Billy Bob Thorton's upcoming Miramax release "Daddy And Them." Additionally, Brad has worked for, or recorded with, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Pam Tillis, The Forester Sisters, The Sweethearts of the Rodeo, and currently also tours with banjo legend Earl Scruggs as the lead guitar player for the band Earl Scruggs & Friends. He has also produced numerous instructional courses for both acoustic flatpicking and country electric guitar.

In an interview conducted with Marty Stuart in September of 1999, Marty had this to say about Brad, "It has been incredible for the last nine years to watch Brad Davis grow as a player. I was never so proud of him as I was just recently. We played the Grand Ole Opry with Scruggs. Randy couldn't come and play one night and so I asked Brad to fill in. It is pretty intimidating to walk into the Scruggs house if you have never been there. But he walked in there and sat in the circle. I said, 'Let's run through what we are going to do tonight.' It was 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' or 'Flint Hill Special' or one of those kind of tunes. Man, when Brad Davis hit it, he took it to another place that I have never heard guitar sound like in that kind of music. Man, it raised eyebrows all around the room. Earl called me the next day and said, 'That boy you got on the guitar is good.' So he was endorsed by the master. When I heard him play with his bluegrass band at Doc and Merle's festival this year I was in awe of him. I said, 'This boy has got it and gone with it.' "

The Davis Brothers

Brad Davis, a native of Dallas, Texas, began learning to play the classical guitar in 1969 when he was 5 years old. Shortly thereafter, his older brother Greg, a banjo player who is eighteen months Brad's senior, and a friend began playing bluegrass on stage as a banjo and guitar duo. Brad says, "I would go and see them play every weekend and it really made me want to get up there and play." When he was eight years old he got his first steel string guitar and joined Greg playing on stage shortly thereafter when Greg's friend had to quit. In the years which followed, the Davis brothers formed the core of several different Dallas based bluegrass bands. Now in Nashville, Brad and Greg Davis are still tearing it up on stage in their newest band "Whitewater."

When Brad first started playing with his brother, he was simply filling a rhythm role behind Greg's Scruggs style banjo. Later, he fell in love with Norman Blake's playing and began to learn how to flatpick leads. Brad says, "Norman Blake was the guy. I wanted to play just like him. I had seen him play on a TV special when I was about 9 years old and I thought it was great." Other than taking about a month's worth of lessons from Joe Carr when he was 8 or 9 years old, Brad is completely self-taught.

When he was about 12 years old, Brad got some Tony Rice recordings and began to devour the Tony Rice style. Brad says, "I would sit down and learn every song on his albums. I couldn't learn them note-for-note, but I would get as close as I could. I would write them out and I started doing books." At the time, Dan Huckabee was playing with the Country Gazette in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and helped Brad publish some of his Tony Rice style solos. That book, along with another called "Improvising Bluegrass Guitar," is still available from Workshop Records.

Brad's first steel string guitar was a Yamaha that he got when he was eight years old. His second guitar was a dream come true, especially since Brad was such a big Norman Blake fan. Brad explains, "When I was about 13, Mom and Dad wanted to buy me my first Martin. Through a guy named Tom Orr, who is a bluegrass songwriter in Dallas, they got in touch with Norman Blake and bought a 1956 D-18 that he had had for years. I still have it and use it as my studio guitar for Marty's records." Later Brad met Richard Hoover at a festival and was impressed with the Santa Cruz guitars that Richard was making and played those until he got his next guitar of choice, a Collings Clarence White model, from John Holman. Brad played the Collings for about ten years until just recently when he found what he calls "The guitar I have been looking for my whole life." It is a new Merill C-28 model built by Jim Merrill of Williamsburg, Virginia. Brad says, "This guitar fits me like a glove. It is incredible!"

The Move to Nashville

While playing with his brother in the Dallas-based band Ten Degrees, Brad got a call from Ricky Skaggs to come to Nashville and try out for the acoustic guitar spot in his band. Brad says, "I was just knocked out." He moved to Nashville and tried out, but Ricky decided to hired Waylon Patton. In need of a job, Brad went to Opryland and got a job playing fiddle there. Shortly thereafter, Brad got a job playing lead guitar with the Forester Sisters. He kept that job for five years.

When a guitar player spot in Marty Stuart's band opened up in about 1989, Brad went to the "cattle call" and tried out. He said that there were about thirty Telecaster players there that were great players, but he got the job because Marty was looking for a bluegrass player who he could mold as an electric player. Brad held that job until May of 1994 when he decided to take some time off. Almost a year later, when the guitar player who took Brad's place got his own record deal and left the band, Marty asked Brad to come back and he stayed with Marty until January of 2000 when he decided to play bluegrass full-time with his band White Water.

White Water: Back to Bluegrass

Although Brad continues to occasionally play and tour with Marty Stuart and he also goes out with Earl Scrugg's band "Earl Scruggs and Friends" several times a year, he and his brother have decided to focus their efforts on their bluegrass band "Whitewater." Brad said that they started the band because he was really missing the bluegrass.

What began as a "fun gig" for four of Nashville's top sidemen looking for a "creative outlet" when they were not working with major country acts has recently come to a full rolling boil with the new Rose Records release of White Water's project "No Gold On The Highway." Brad Davis, explains, "I have spent the last ten years on the road and in the studio with Marty Stuart. While I loved the gig with Marty, I missed playing acoustic music and I missed performing my own material. White Water was originally formed so that I could occasionally get creative and have my acoustic fix when I wasn't out on tour with Marty. I never imagined that the band would take off like it has and I never dreamed that it would turn into my full time gig."

White Water's unique blend of bluegrass with hillbilly rock and roll is driven by Brad's lightening fast acoustic guitar solos and accelerated by his brother Greg's turbo-charged seven-string banjo. Greg Davis' fresh and exciting banjo style propels this band and his vocal harmonies blend perfectly with Brad's lead voice as only two brother's can. The four piece band also includes Junior Sturdivant on drums and mandolin (Junior is the grandson of Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright), and Randy Childers on bass.

Also along the bluegrass lines, Brad has release his a solo CD "Climbin' Cole Hill." This CD features Brad's unique "double down up" picking style and includes some tunes that he smoked through at about 196 beats per minute to demonstrate how fast he can zip along using this method. Brad has also published "The Blue Book of Speed Picking" in order to help teach his amazing technique.

Double Down Up

Those of you who have read Brad's column in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, "Nashville Flat top," know that he has come up with a unique flatpicking style all his own with his "double down up" picking technique. When asked about how he came up with this technique, Brad says, "I had started playing with Greg when I was eight and I was having trouble playing up to speed. I went and saw a Van Halen concert in Dallas and Eddie Van Halen had this tap thing that he did. I couldn't learn the tap thing, but I was trying to duplicate the "machine gun" like sound that he got with his tap technique and stumbled across this pattern. It allowed me to play a whole lot faster. I got with Greg and could finally play as fast as he could, so I started incorporating it into my 'style.' I asked around to see if anyone else was doing it to make sure that it was something new and from what I could find out, it was something that was new."

Although pioneer flatpicker George Shuffler and those that followed him incorporated a down-down-up picking pattern in their crosspicking years ago, Brad's technique is different because his use of this pattern is not restricted to crosspicking. In fact, Brad says he doesn't use the down-down-up pattern when he crosspicks. His pattern usually works across two strings instead of three or more strings as in crosspicking (see his column in this issue for some double down up examples). The style has a unique sounds which Brad describes as "humming like a machine gun."

The Brad Bender

In addition to the unique double down up picking style, Brad has added another innovation to flatpicking the acoustic guitar with his "Brad Bender." The Brad Bender is a string bender attached to the B string on the peghead. A cable runs from the pulling device mounted on the back of the peghead to a pedal on the floor. The B string tuning machine is fitted with a cam that allows the string to easily loosen when it is pulled and wind back when the pedal is released. The bender can be adjusted with a wing nut to vary the degree of string pull. It will adjust for a quarter step, half step, whole step, or what ever else is desired. Brad says that being around Marty Stuart so much and seeing him playing the bender on the Telecaster (Marty owns Clarence White's old Tele), gave him the idea to try and do the same thing on an acoustic guitar.

After his first stint with Marty Stuart, Brad played for a short time with The Sweethearts of the Rodeo. It was with the Sweethearts that he first introduced the bender and "worked out the bugs." John Holman helped Brad incorporate his ideas for the bender and attach it to his Collings Clarence White model guitar. Brad says that he had originally only intended to use the bender in the studio, but now he uses it live when playing with Whitewater. Brad likes the pedal system versus a Scruggs/Keith type tuner or a shoulder strap bender because the foot pedal frees up his hands and arms and allows him to play more naturally.

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