About John Davis

I am a musician, educator and organizer who has recently relocated to Brooklyn, NY after living and working in Durham NC for 13 years. I am from Cambridge, MA originally.

Musically, I’m most known for having released a bunch of records in the ’90s as half of a duo called the Folk Implosion that I co-founded with Lou Barlow in 1993. Folk Implosion songs have been featured on various film soundtracks, (Kids, Adaptation,) soundtrack albums, (American Beauty, A Life Less Ordinary) and TV shows, (The People vs. OJ Simpson, NFL on Fox, 20/20, The Today Show, Pepsi, Where’s My Jet.)

The works we recorded for the film Kids compiled and reissued by Domino Records in September of 2023. Joyful Noise has reissued our albums, Take a Look Inside and Dare to Be Surprised in 2023 and 2025, respectively. Our full length “comeback” album Walk Thru Me came out on Joyful Noise Recordings on 6/28/2024. We subsequently completed a 41 city “First Shows in 26 years” tour that stretched from 2024-2025 through the US and the UK. Interscope Records reissued One Part Lullaby on vinyl in July of 2026.

I have also released numerous solo projects since 1993. Pure Night, Leave Home and Blue Mountains were the LPs of the ’90’s. Spare Parts, El Pulpo, and Love in the Time of Capital have been the lyrical long players from the ’10’s and ’20’s. I’ve also released a trio of instrumental side projects called Gnawing On the Bone, Outside A Small City, and We’ll Teach Them How to Privatize. I sometimes collaborate with Dennis Callaci, as heard on Room For Space from 1994 and Arches & Pathways from 2020. You can find most of my solo material on my Bandcamp site, under the nickname jdsoundbite, which I use online to offset the ubiquity of my given name.

A new JD and the Cicadas album called I Saw Sonora Hypnotized will be released in late November of 2026. One of the songs from the album, Blowback, was recently featured during the break of an interview with one of my favorite authors, Dr. CBS, on an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Upstream ( “a weekly show of conversations for political education featuring a wide variety of  post capitalist, anti-imperialist, and socialist voices.”) You can check out details about that album here on this website, and keep an eye on the blog for news of other upcoming projects.

I was born in Brattleboro, VT, grew up in Cambridge MA, and spent most of my life there until I moved to Durham NC in August of 2013. I have practiced Vipassana or Insight meditation since 1986, as adopted by westerners from Thai and Burmese traditions, as well as in a few different schools of Zen that came to this country from Vietnam and Korea. I identify as a 21st century socialist and want capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormative gender roles, and the rule of the corporate duopoly to die a swift death – but realize those are multigenerational projects that require patience.

If you want to send me a message, the best way to reach me is through my Instagram account. I also accept friend requests on my personal Facebook page from people if they have enough mutual friends for me to be able to tell they know me apart from the million other JD’s out there. That’s where people respond the most to news I put out there of what I’m up to musically.

Metta,

John H. Davis