Now based in Chicago, Ollie Davidson’s duo Almond&Olive has been touring the country with its harmony-driven Americana music and will open for Scythian Sunday at Bell’s. (Story, videos)
Back to Where He Started: Ollie Davidson, right, and Natalie Alms, open for Scythian on Sunday.
THE BAND: Almond&Olive
THE MUSIC: Harmonious, Americana and folk duo
WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE BAND: 8:30 p.m. Sunday, opening for Scythian at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe
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Sometimes things come full circle.
Special Chemistry: Almond&Olive had it from the first day.
For Ollie Davidson, who makes up one-half of Americana folk duo Almond&Olive, that’s exactly what’s about to happen. Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Davidson played gigs at coffee shops around town, Harvey’s On the Mall and the long-since-closed Club Soda in the late 1990s.
As a young troubadour, Davidson left Kalamazoo in 1999 for San Diego, where he continued to work on his music and play out whenever the chance would arise. He bounced around a bit over the past couple decades, finally settling down in Chicago, where he resides now.
Davidson has spent much of the last year touring across the continent with musical cohort Natalie Alms. Sunday, when the harmonious duo opens for high-energy Washington D.C. gypsy folk rockers Scythian, it will mark the first time in nearly 20 years he has played his hometown.
“Coming back to Kalamazoo means a lot,” Davidson said. “Just to kind of get back to where I started, not just in terms of being a musician, but as a person, and being able to come back to town with a project that I really believe in and am proud of, and to play in front of some family and friends, it’s just really exciting.”
IT STARTED WITH A THEME SONG
After years as independent solo artists, a shared passion for helping abandoned and stray animals and finding them new homes led to Davidson and Alms connecting as musicians.
The two collaborated in 2015 on a theme song for an animal welfare podcast for an organization for which they both worked. They quickly realized they had a lot in common musically, sharing a passion for Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bon Iver, Mumford and Sons, Simon and Garfunkel and more. More important than shared influences, however, they discovered a fast chemistry in the practice room.
“The first day we played together we knew we had something special together, just the way we sang together and the way our instincts were, it just seemed we were made to play together,” recalled Davidson.
The two decided to give things a go and before they knew it, they had more than a dozen songs — most of which had been written independently of one another before they met. On the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign, they released their debut LP, “Standing at the Precipice,” (Listen to the album on Soundcloud here) in January 2017.
The album, which features Alms mostly on banjo and Davidson on acoustic guitar, along with a slew of guest musicians, was recorded at KingSize Sound Labs in Chicago with producer John Abbey (Robbie Fulks). They plan to record album No. 2 at the same locale later this year and expect to release it in early 2019).
STANDING AT THE PRECIPICE OF SOMETHING SPECIAL
The name for the first album, Davidson explained, was chosen as the duo truly feels that they are standing at the precipice of something great and that the band is on the verge of going somewhere special. With more live shows slated for 2018 and a sophomore effort on the horizon, Davidson and Alms hope they’ll be reaching that destination sooner than later.
In the Studio: The duo aims record its second album later this year.
While the new album will continue to touch on themes of love, loss and triumph, as their debut release did, Davidson said, the two are taking a different creative approach this time around.
“The first record was a little more, ‘Here is one of Ollie’s songs and here is one of Natalie’s songs,’” he said. “Now we are focused on writing music collaboratively. We still are working on things individually and bringing them to each other, but we are also in the same room together, playing a couple chords and saying, ‘Hey, we like it, let’s keep going.’
“We do these little songwriting retreats while we are on tour, take an extra day to kind of work on music, just pull out a song, pull out a keyboard, work on the lyrics.”
And while fans will have to wait another year to hear the new album, they only have to wait until Sunday to see Davidson take to a hometown stage for the first time in 20 years.
VIDEOS: Almond&Olive
Mini-Documentary: https://ksr-video.imgix.net/projects/2548704/video-690352-h264_high.mp4
Copyright 2018, Spins on Music LLC
