Bart Davenport

Over the course of his career, Bart Davenport has been many things: a garage rocker with the Loved Ones, a smooth modern soul crooner with Honeycut, and a solo artist with a track record full of sonic left turns ('70s soul, dance music, bossa nova, psych pop) that makes following his career consistently surprising. His early solo records, like 2003's Game Preserve, often dig deeply into soft rock tropes, enlivening them with his honeyed lead vocals and the care put into the construction of the songs. Later efforts, like 2018's Blue Motel (which was recorded under the name Bart & the Bedazzled) added '80s pop sophistication to the template. By the time he entered his third decade making music, it was still hard to predict what a Bart Davenport album might contain, as 2022's folk/rock-inspired, 12-string heavy Episodes showed. Davenport headed out on his own in the early 2000s, drawing from any number of soft rock, classic rock, and singer/songwriter influences (Thin Lizzy, Al Stewart, and James Taylor, just to name a few) in formulating his silky-smooth, eminently laid-back indie pop tunes. His self-titled debut album was released on Antenna Farm Records in 2002, and he released two more albums on that label (Game Preserve and Maroon Cocoon) over the course of the next three years. All three albums showcased Davenport's velvety vocal prowess and a loungey, retro vibe that nodded to Call & Response, the Bees, and (in his folkier moments) the Kings of Convenience. Davenport took a break from his solo work following the release of Maroon Cocoon in order to focus on Honeycut, who enjoyed a modicum of mainstream success when one of their tunes was featured in a 2007 Apple iMac ad. It wasn't long, however, before Davenport resumed working on his solo material; his fourth studio album, Palaces, hit stores in 2008. After taking it easy for a bit, Davenport burst forth with albums released between the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011: an album of covers for Tapete titled Searching for Bart Davenport; another Honeycut album, Comedians; and one titled With All Due Respect by his new side project, the Incarnations. In 2012, he reconnected with Maroon Cocoon producer Sam Flax to record the "Someone2Dance" single, which found him dipping his toe into the world of dance music. Back on more familiar ground after moving to L.A. in 2012, he and bassist Jessica Espeleta put together a new band (Dream Boys guitarist Wayne Faler, keyboardist Nathan Lee Shafer, and drummer Paul Burkhart) to record his fifth solo album. The soft rock-informed Physical World was issued by Lovemonk and Burger in early 2014. Much of the same group, now going by Bart & the Bedazzled, was back (minus Shafer and Burkhart, plus drummer Andres Renteria) for the next record, which was produced by L.A. Takedown's Aaron M. Olson. Released in 2018, Blue Motel was another soft rock-inspired, '80s sophisti-pop affair, given extra gloss by Olson's slick production and synths. That same group also recorded a couple of dance pop singles, "People Person" and "Cardboard Man," which were produced by Nic Hessler and featured Earth Girl Helen Brown on vocals. Davenport himself returned to solo work with 2022's Episodes, which was released by Tapete. Recorded in his home studio, the folk-rock-leaning album was adorned with plenty of 12-string guitar jangle, Baroque string arrangements courtesy of Dina Maccabee, and songs that range from solo acoustic ballads and bossa nova to jaunty psych-pop and surf-y instrumentals. Also on board to help out were percussionist Andres Renteria and drummer Graeme Gibson, as well as longtime bandmates Espeleta and Faler on bass and guitar respectively.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo