Singer-songwriter Patrick Davis is pictured in his home in Camden, S.C.
Photo by Lauren Jenkins
Patrick Davis
Age: 48.
Hometown: Camden.
Claim to fame: South Carolina-raised, Nashville-based singer-songwriter.
Gamecock album: The USC alum and die-hard Gamecock football fan was inspired after a 2009 victory over No. 4-ranked Ole Miss to pen a song about his favorite team. The ultimate result was The Gamecock Album (2013), which, for many Carolina fans, is a get-pumped-up, pregame staple.
New album: Davis’ latest album, Carolina When I Die, celebrates his roots and includes appearances by such friends (and South Carolina musical luminaries) as Darius Rucker and Edwin McCain.
Patrick Davis is a man of many talents—songwriter, guitarist, storyteller, even television personality—but he admits he’s no mathematician. Still, he’s run a few calculations in his head.
“In Nashville,” he says of the city where he moved to pursue a music career, “there’s probably at least a couple hundred thousand people who write music, who write songs. Let’s just say … that’s 100,000 songs a day being written.”
In other words, it takes a lot of talent and hard work, even a little luck, for songwriters to get heard through all the noise. But Davis has done just that. He has credits for songs recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Jewel, Guy Clark, and Lady A—just to name a few. He’s put out five solo albums; started a musical retreat called Songwriters in Paradise; and hosted an ETV and PBS special, Southern Songwriters with Patrick Davis, that mixes live performance with small-town storytelling. And he was awarded the Order of the Silver Crescent, one of the state’s highest civilian honors, in 2019.
That’s a lot of success for a fellow raised in Camden who played more sports than music as a kid. But Davis will be the first to tell you he attributes it to the musical household in which he grew up.
“I grew up with my dad, who is still kind of a local guitar hero in Camden—I always call him the Eric Clapton of three counties—and that’s where I was always around music,” Davis says.
When he got to USC, he played in bars at a time when the Columbia music scene was thriving. When he moved to Nashville to work in the music industry, he embraced co-writing songs with people “who speak the same musical language.” Now, he’s hosting them on his television show or having them play at his curated music-and-wine festivals in places like Cabo, the Bahamas and Napa.
Still, for all his travels and success, Davis likes to bring it all back home.
“Life has a tendency to beat you down and tell you that you always need more, more, more,” he says, sounding just like a songwriter. “Sometimes, it’s great to remember what success would have looked like to that 21-year-old kid playing … at the University of South Carolina. That gives you a different perspective.”