The Davenport Family

The Davenport Family is a musical collective from Madison, Wisconsin, active since 2001 and led by Clay Ruby. It is a group project associated with folk, jazz and psychedelic rock, although its music is also described through freeform jazz, experimental avant-garde music and related loose labels such as free folk, psych folk, freak-folk, acid folk, wyrd folk and New Weird America.

Style and recording approach

The project uses shifting combinations of acoustic instruments, hand-held percussion, cheap electronics and vocals. Its performances are usually improvised, and the studio recordings often retain the feel of spontaneous ritual rather than carefully arranged composition. The group also favours field recording over conventional studio work, using locations such as barns, caves and pastures, with environmental sounds like dogs, birds and other ambient noise appearing on recordings. Early material includes both improvised recordings and some composed pieces made in the studio.

Releases

The Davenport Family releases a large number of recordings, especially in its early years, many of them issued in small runs on CDRs, lathe cuts and cassettes. A number of these titles document live actions or intimate family rituals. In 2005, Free Country appears as its first official studio album on Last Visible Dog. That is followed by the self-titled vinyl LP, which combines studio and live material. Before Free Country, Clay Ruby records Rabbits Foot Propellor alone on a handheld device that cannot erase previous takes, allowing continuous overdubbing without monitoring; the result is issued on Three Lobed Recordings. Another later release, At The Foot Of Zodiac Mountain, appears on Meudiademorte as a one-sided C70 cassette in 2006.

Line-up and personnel

Clay Ruby appears on all of the project’s recordings. The line-up changes frequently and includes Nico Kain, Tony Endless, John Gould, db Pederson, Dan Woodman, Nic Stage, Tyler Olsen, Theresa Behnen, Iam Lee and others. Earlier releases often use the name Davenport, reflecting the group’s shifting personnel and its connections with other musicians and bands in rural Wisconsin and beyond.