Lear by Ethan Daniel Davidson

Rabbi, musician, and author Ethan Daniel Davidson releases his new album Lear via Blue Arrow Records. Co-produced by Luther Dickinson and David Katznelson, Lear is a rich, legs-stretched companion record to its counterpart Cordelia, released earlier this year, where Davidson draws from his life’s experiences like water from a freshly tapped well. Lear’s eight songs possess a distinct ache akin to Neil Young’s On the Beach. Every lyric, a new road to be explored, and Davidson, the perfect guide to the journey.

Lear, Davidson’s fourteenth studio album, emerged from the same sessions that birthed Cordelia. He’s accompanied by the same crackerjack team: producers Katznelson and Dickinson, bassist and Emmylou Harris collaborator Byron House, drummer Marco Giovino (Robert Plant, John Cale), and pedal steel legend Rayfield “Ray Ray” Holloman. Leading up to the album’s release, Davidson shared the singles “Stop Breaking Down,” the lush and echoing opener which nods to two country classics, Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and “Not Breaking Hearts,” which features a lead guitar performance from Duane Betts, the son of late and legendary Allman Brothers six-stringer Dickie Betts.

There’s a thematic thread that unites Shakespeare’s Cordelia and Lear in which Davidson has consistently found parallels to his own life. “King Lear had a real resonance with me,” he explains. “I always identified with Cordelia, because she wasn't after her father for money or anything like that—she just loved him. My adopted father was very successful, and he had sycophants who tried to drag my reputation through the mud, to try and drive a wedge in between us. Whether or not he ultimately bought into that, it's hard to say—but the situation definitely made me feel more like Cordelia.”

Lear is imbued with the worldly perspective that Davidson—a newly ordained rabbi, having completed his ordination shortly after putting the final touches on the album—has long brought to his work as a thinker and storyteller. “When I look at the world and think about how we’d like to change things about it, we lack the political will to actually do anything about it,” he reflects. “As a global society, we just don’t have it. The way our information universe exists now, the world has somehow flattened out for all of us. We paint nuanced issues with broad brushes, but I want to tell people that the world isn’t really that way.”

Davidson’s messages on the album ring loud and clear, marking yet another high point in a steadily expanding catalogue, which over the years has been praised by NPR Music, All Music, American Songwriter, Magnet Magazine and many more.

ethandanieldavidson.com