John Paul Davis profile picture

John Paul Davis

El conejo está volando!

About Me

I'm a writer and sometime musician. I represented Chicago in some poetry slams in the late 90s. I played keyboards and laptop for Maery Lanahan for a year or so. I made a letterpressed poetry book and CD called Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy. I had a blog before they were called blogs. I have another about my son . I run a poetry reading called The Neighborhoood . I own my own graphic design company . I like to go to Friends Meeting and listen.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 8/22/2005
Band Website: johnpauldavis.org
Band Members: Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy
John Paul Davis: speaking, piano, synths, touchtone phone, beats, loops, and other laptopish workings
Eric Brown: bass, guitar, djembe, conga, kalimba
Tristan Owner: guitars
Todd Dengler: guitars, electric piano
Brian DeWeese: tabla
Live At The Neighborhood
John Paul Davis: speaking
G. Scott Jones: trombones, flute, digeridoo
Chris Sloan: bass
Julian: drums, percussion
Mario: trumpet, percussion, piano

Influences: Too many to name. Are we just the cross-sections of our influences?

In stream-of-consciousness order:
Wendell Berry, Yusef Komanyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Billy Collins, Jeff McDaniel, Mike Doughty, Wilco, Brian Eno, Bjork, Godspeed You Balck Emperor!, Charles Mingus, Crazy Late 70s Electric Miles Davis, Mos Def, Dennis Kim/Denizen Kane, (Let's take a short break and ponder here: is this really a list of my influences? What does that mean? Will you hear the strands of these people's thoughts and works in my sonic offerings? Or is this just a list of stuff I dig?), Don Delillo, the entire city of Chicago, Northern Exposure (the television show, not the musical act), William James, noisy Radiohead b-sides, of late: Mr. Sufjan Stevens, Over The Rhine, Martin Luther King, Jr. (Another interjection: does Aaron Hodges count? He should count, I wager, because even though he's not famous, or even relatively well-known, and he doesn't make stuff people can buy, he was a very big influence on me. Does he count?) Aaron Hodges, Andy Farkas too, and also, John Murphy. Richard Jones. And Andia Esguerra (who opened the door of grace for me again and probably doesn't even know that or how she did). I digress from listing performers and authors (even though Anida is both and if you haven't seen her do what she does, you've missed out). Huzzah! More performers: SOUND team. Blackalicious. DJ Shadow. Fela Kuti. Every last damn one of the Cheiftains. The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau, Mogwai. Paul Simon. Modest Mouse is also quite good. Allen motherfucking Ginsberg. Gil-Scott Heron. Am I leaving anyone out? Yes, yes! Annie Dillard! And Frederick Beuchner! And James Baldwin! And, God help me, Bono! And Garth Hallberg.
And that is enough for now.
Type of Label: None

My Blog

Christmas 2007

Supposing the angel come to youwith its prophecy or demand,a child to be born of youor one to be taken to the mountainto be eaten by the god. Supposing you were given a scroll to eat,or a word to spea...
Posted by John Paul Davis on Sun, 30 Dec 2007 04:31:00 PST

Different

The second one's differentor so they tell me, meaningnot just the obvious factthat you're not numero unoor that your hair or eyesor metabolism could be different.No, they mean really different. Greg's...
Posted by John Paul Davis on Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:11:00 PST

Why do people use MySpace?

This has got to be one of the worst-programmed sites in the history of web sites. How is it that it took almost ten minutes to figure out how to post a new entry to the "blog"?
Posted by John Paul Davis on Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:58:00 PST

Two new poems

Two new poems in the player. One, "Raven Song", is based on an Eskimo creatino myth. The other, "The Reassurer", is a Wendell Berry poem. Both were recorded at "The Neighborhood", a monthly poetry eve...
Posted by John Paul Davis on Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:54:00 PST