Here you’ll find hundreds of the songs written and/or recorded by me, Jed. Some you can just download; some you’ll have to buy. But all of them stream for you, free, on demand, whenever you visit.

Don’t know where to start? Try playing one of the five songs in the sidebar under “LISTEN TO THIS”. If you like what you hear, click the name of the song to get more.

In the blog section of this Web site, I’ll keep you apprised of what I’m working on and share songs in progress.

Why should you care about any of this? A dude called Jimmy Vario attempts to explain in the following testimonial. I assure you, I am not him.

Love,
Jed.

_______

“I can see what Jed Davis was trying to say to me.”
So ad-libs Daniel Johnston during his cover of Jed’s “Enlightenment.”

What Johnston sees, what Jed shows through his immense catalog of songs, is: Life is like passion fruit, its bitterness inseparable from sweetness. To understand joy and love you must also experience loneliness; but thanks to loneliness, you will truly appreciate joy and love.

Jed began recording demos of his painstakingly crafted alt-pop tunes and giving them away at solo coffeehouse performances in the mid-1990s. The demo cassettes traveled far and wide from Jed’s home base of Albany, NY, finding their way into the hands of artists like Johnston, King Missile, Anal C*nt, Agnostic Front and Brian Dewan, all of whom recorded covers of Jed’s tunes.

Upon moving to New York City, Jed put out two albums of techno-punk as programmer for the Electroclash-pioneering band Collider. He also began to collaborate with the legends of the punk rock scene, particularly the Ramones. Joey Ramone invited Jed to open for him at his final CBGB performance; when Jed wrote “The Bowery Electric” in posthumous tribute to Joey, the surviving Ramones reunited to record it as a single and perform it live.

After releasing a couple of records as a member of The Hanslick Rebellion (whose video for the song “You Are Boring The Shit Out Of Me” was a YouTube smash – and the Jed-penned guitar hook from that tune was called “The year’s most undeniable riff” by Spin magazine), Jed returned to solo duty in 2009 with an album and tour, followed by the 2010 release of “Yuppie Exodus From Dumbo”, a single pressed to, of all things, wax cylinder.

While continuing to produce new recordings as a solo artist, Jed currently serves as a member of three bands: Sevendys, an ongoing exploration of classic rock forms with Avi Buffalo guitarist Avi Zahner-Isenberg and drummer Sheridan Riley, bass pioneer Chuck Rainey, and percussion great Jerry Marotta; the experimental-psychedelic-indie-metal Skyscape with singer Dom Maltempi; and the ferocious Jeebus, which boasts an all-star lineup that includes guitar legend Reeves Gabrels, drummer Joe Abba, and Hanslick Rebels Mike Keaney and Alex Dubovoy.

Jed’s 2009 album, I Am Jed Davis!, is an excellent introduction to his approach. Featuring 16 genre-smashing tracks culled from Jed’s wild musical adventures over the past decade, the album includes the aforementioned “Bowery Electric” – the only recording of the surviving Ramones playing together – as well as incredible instrumental performances by Dweezil Zappa, Tony Levin, Brian Dewan and Anton Fig. From late-night recording in the back booth of a Denny’s restaurant, to cutting tracks live to tape with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, it’s a crash course in making records the Jed Davis way!