nothin Chris “Big Dog” Davis Focuses On Life | New Haven Independent

Chris Big Dog” Davis Focuses On Life

Jazz musician, producer, Grammy nominee and Dixwell favorite Chris Big Dog” Davis had a brush with mortality this spring. As a result, this Friday, he’ll deliver Focus — his first solo album in a decades-long career of music.

The album happened because of my sickness,” Davis said. In early January, he continued, I was diagnosed with lymphoma…. That’s what put me in the mind to stay focused. That’s why the album is called Focus.

Davis grew up in Waterbury and started playing piano at age 4. He played every day in the Refuge Church of Christ, where his mother was choir director. He ended up in an after school program for the gifted at Yale University, where he studied classical composition. He recorded his first gospel records with his church youth choir at 16, and went on to study at the Hartt School of Music. Through New Haven guitar king Rohn Lawrence, he connected with Brian McKnight in 1995 and appeared with him on The Arsenio Hall Show, The Tonight Show, and The Rosie O’Donnell Show. In the past decades he has worked steadily as a producer and recording and touring musician, including with funk legend George Clinton, singer/songwriter Will Downing, singer-songwriter Syleena Johnson, singer-songwriter Chanté Moore, and singer Maysa.

At the end of 2019, Davis had just finished a Christmas tour with saxophonist Gerald Albright and I started feeling very uncomfortable,” he said. He’d had a previous bout with lymphoma in 2010. You have an inkling — I started losing weight. Sometimes you try to pay no attention it, but it was showing up, and people started asking questions, because I’m Big Dog. People started saying I was looking like Little Dog.”

One morning I woke up and thought, yeah, I got to get to the emergency room,’” he said, and I didn’t come out until three months later.”

While Davis was in the hospital, he talked to the label heads at Shanachie Records. I’ve been working with Shanachie for years, but I’d never done my own record,” he said. As a musician and producer, I was the Steven Spielberg, behind the scenes. I love that. That’s what I’m most proficient at.” But the return of illness put him in a different frame of mind.

If I’m going to leave this earth, I want to make my own record,” he recalled telling the record label.

The record label agreed. In March, he was released from the hospital and began chemotherapy at Smilow Cancer Hospital Care Center. But he started going through his vault,” he said, music I’ve made or that I’ve worked on, that I hadn’t finished yet. I had some material, and I put it together in a way that was fitting for this project. And I wrote some new songs, too.”

Davis could make his album in part thanks to his sister, Carolyn Ellison. Davis lives in Granby, where he also has a studio. He has been working there for three years. When Davis was due at Smilow for chemotherapy treatments, she’d take me there, and stay in the hospital for days, and then I would come home and do the record.”

Focus was done on chemo, during chemo — the whole nine yards,” he continued. The chemotherapy was stronger than it had been in 2010. I had a bucket by my side in the studio,” he said. But every time I got to the computer or the keyboard, it made my spirit feel good.”

He created most of the album himself. The programming. The bass on most songs. The keyboards. I played it, I mixed it, and I engineered it,” he said. But he also enlisted help from several of the artists he had worked with over the years, turning Focus into a who’s who of contemporary jazz, superstars,” Davis said. The guests on his record included Albright, saxophonist Kim Waters, trumpeter Rick Braun, saxophonist Dave Koz, Maysa, musician Bluey, and guitarist Nick Colionne. I used a lot of Connecticut musicians on this record, too,” Davis added. I always do that.”

It was amazing,” he said. I didn’t know they would come bearing gifts as they did. It was like it was Christmas. It was beautiful.” The March recordings all happened virtually. Everything was WeTransfer and Zoom,” Davis said. I never saw anyone. I sent them the track, and everyone has a recording device that is sufficient, and they sent me back the wav. file, and I put it all together.” It was all done in three months.

But why make a solo record, after such a long career? If he was making a parting statement, what was it going to be? My favorite saying is that it’s all love,’” Davis said. I’m staring down my life, and what may be my last record…. If there’s nothing else to do, what are you going to do? And that will get you through.” For Davis, the focus on love was true whether he beat cancer or not. Because that’s a higher power call,” he said.

I’m not afraid of dying,” he added. We’re all going to leave here. It’s just how we go.”

The good news is that it looks like Davis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. After months of chemotherapy, he said, I just had a PET scan and it’s all clear,” Davis said. So he has gone back to work, doing projects with saxophonist Marion Meadows, saxophonist and flautist Najee, singer Kimberly Brewer, and Stevie Wonder.

I don’t want any time off,” he said. If he does take time off, I think I’m going to go fishing. But right now, it’s work, and I thank God for the opportunity. I’m fortunate that I can work from my home. I live in the woods. I’m 30 minutes away from civilization.” He said that some artists and clients visit his studio, and they all wear masks.

In November, he has a Christmas record coming out called Christmas in Connecticut, for which he looks forward possibly to returning to New Haven as he did in 2019. We’ll still keep the kids involved, but this time we’ll do something for the adults as well,” he said.

But for right now, he is counting what he sees as his many blessings. The album drops Friday and I’m clear of cancer,” he said. Everything is beautiful.”

Focus will be out from Shanachie Records on June 26.

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