Exactly a year ago I had my first Artist Of The Month Turning Virtue.  Their frontman Davey K has been working on an EP, going back to his folk roots for months on end for now.  I just got my copy in the mail today, and decided to take a break from the insanity we promote here.  Listen to something stripped down, acoustic and emotional.  Just like Turning Virtue’s most recent album, David had Bruce Soord of The Pineapple Thief mix this EP as well.  He wrote the music and recorded it at his studio MFB Studios.  It’s pretty easy to tell what the theme is of the EP, as he has taken a heavy interest into the Tao.  If you’re interested you can snag a copy right here.

I’ve known Dave for a few years now, and it’s an honor to call such a great musician and even better person a friend of mine.  He’s been a guiding light of the sorts in the time we’ve known each other these few years.  One great thing he does as portray emotions superbly.  This EP is very melancholic, reflective and downright creepy at times.  Taking into account all the hats he wears, he booked a week long tour of Canada with his friend Ragnar Zolberg (Sign, Ex Pain Of Salvation) who also has new music as well.

As expected Soord did a fantastic job mixing the EP.  Considering a good amount of what we promoted is more technical music and generally heavily layered, we’re used to hearing a ton of tracks within a song.  This is the total opposite of the case here with “The Tao Of Davey K”.  It’s stripped down, there are some vocal harmonies in certain points…..but 75% of the time it’s Dave’s voice and his acoustic. There’s some lead guitar melodies here and there, no drums even any sort of percussion on this EP as well!  I totally believe it’s much more challenging to mix music that has less layers to it, rather than something that has a ton of tracks.

I personally love melancholic music, I’m not one for happy stuff I tend to feel it’s forced and extra cheesy (like power metal cheesy).  I’m all about natural emotion and feelings, that kinda stuff tends to feel super artificial and fake in my opinion.  Dave here created a reflective and somber EP that will take you to a whole other universe where his Tao resides.  In his younger days he was into classic metal and rock (in comparison to folk and acoustic music) much more than he is now.  David has drifted closer to progressive music, folk music and pop more so the older he got.  The Tao Of Davey K is a return to his roots as an artist, and is a fun listen.

Take a break from the blast beats, gutturals and 300 BPM songs.  Let Dave take you to another universe, sit back and relax.  I totally suggest supporting his project, so grab your copy while its available.  I shouldn’t be shocked one of our area’s better musicians released a stellar piece of music, but it’s always great to get this sort of reminder.  Dave won’t tell you humbly, but he really is a pretty good artist.  Fronting a progressive rock band to doing a folk EP gives you a diverse catalogue of music and styles, that’s for sure.  Support Dave’s journey and pay attention to see if he has any more shows coming up promoting The Tao. That’s because Turning Virtue is now in the studio writing their follow up to “A Temporary Human Experience”, so we don’t know how many shows he will play this year acoustically as I’m sure he’s gonna be deeply focused on the next Turning Virtue album.