It was a pleasure and a privilege to bear witness to twangy singer-songwriter Haylie Davis’ solo show last night in New York City. Beyond the doors of Nightclub 101, where Davis held court, the East Village was very alive in the remains of a rare warm day after a long cold snap of the autumn season, and many were celebrating out at the nearby sidewalk eateries on Avenue A or partying across the street in Tompkins Square Park. So a small but rapt audience filled the venue, perfect for the deep, intimate qualities of Davis’ music.
With origins in northern California and a long spell in Los Angeles, Haylie Davis was signed to London-based independent label Fire Records in 2025, which released her solo debut Wandering Star in June 2026. Davis was part of a once-flowering LA scene that created music in the vein of 1960s-70s country-rock and folk-pop, including her collaborators Drugdealer, Sylvie, Sam Burton, and former singing partner Will Worden, but has now dissipated. Now she has sloughed off the prevalent Laurel Canyon comparisons, as are they all, with a move across Turtle Island to New York, where she resides and works in Brooklyn.
New York City piano-driven song traditions are starting to appear in Davis’ sound, harking back to the heydays of Carole King, Roberta Flack, and Laura Nyro. There is also a strain of Judee Sill’s piano melodies. This new direction was evident in her second and third tunes last night, transporting new ones, albeit on acoustic guitar, and as yet unreleased, titled Should’ve Been You And I and My Love. On the latter, the way she held the lyric “loovvve” was a tour-de-force. These were prefaced by the clarion call of Give Me A Rainbow.
Still, Davis has not completely abandoned the Cosmic Americana aspects of her songwriting; the Wandering Star songs shone to great effect in her set last night. Produced with naturally compatible collaborators and session musicians in Los Angeles, the album has anointed her as one of the very best young americana and country singer-songwriters on the rise – far more intriguing and talented than Ella Langley. The audience’s energy towards Davis onstage was so powerful that one could safely say she is headed for theatres and stadiums in the near future, with limited opportunity to gain access to her as was available at the small venue Nightclub 101.
There is a rich continuum of current young female artists, from Britain’s folk singer Sorrel Nation to the USA’s Banjo Witch Emily Johnson-Erday and Weyes Blood, of whom Davis is a fan, that display vintage fonts and dresses and rock their cowboy boots across stages, and though there are veterans in this lane recording competitive projects like Cactus Rose NYC and Nicki Bluhm, their solo male counterparts are given far more attention and acclaim from reviews, whilst it’s the women who are renovating the singer-songwriter field, each uniquely empowered.
The songs rooted in the experiences of young womanhood and the spaces between LA’s storied highways ensued with the fourth track I Was Wrong, which was delivered with particular strength live. There was a folksy two-fer in the middle of the shimmering gold Lily Of The Valley and Lady Apple Tree, an early song written at home in northern California as well as the name of Davis’ former musical project. This was followed by the country jukebox lament Born To Be Blue.
Davis shifted seamlessly between guitar and a piano that was borrowed from touring with Mia Wilson, who was also on the bill, and with this change delivered her two most wonderful performances of the evening. On the album’s title track, she fully displayed the glory of her soprano voice, soaring through the song’s sweeping choruses in a way that even outstripped Wandering Star’s great rendering. The spiritual and secular meshed on the lachrymose set closer, another new song, It’s Not Enough, that was a stark and deeply personal sojourn into the tensions of lost love. Davis’ usual passionate delivery exceeded any limits as she detailed the drug descent of the song’s male subject and pondered why what the couple had as a shared life wasn’t sufficient to keep them together. It’s Not Enough is simply stunning and is a harbinger of fantastic things for Davis’ follow-up to Wandering Star.
At a recent show in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighbourhood at the bi-coastal country venue Desert 5 Spot that invokes the California desert’s Pappy & Harriet’s, Davis debuted her new band led by singer-songwriter Luc Swift and featuring longtime Brooklyn Country scene bassist James Preston, and they are a crack outfit indeed. Yet, here in the East Village last night, the pared-down simplicity of Davis with only six-string and electric piano was just as glorious.
In this era of hyper pop monoculture, it may seem passé to go to a small room and see a folk artist seated in a chair, playing guitar, but Nightclub 101 is a good space to take this in, and Davis is worthy of being received in such a setting as her following grows. She excels at auto-ethnography, keeping the self and social context balanced as well as engaging in deep self-reflection, helping to bring discovery to light. Her songwriting keenly observes the heart and mind of a young western woman navigating the vicissitudes of the urban experience, and though her onstage demeanour could be described as stealth, without any introduction, offering little banter there beneath the sole blue spotlight, the show remained stunning throughout.
Davis’ sometime genre, Cosmic Americana, has been seeing a resurgence in the last decade or so and is attaining its apogee in this current season of the Godfather of Cosmic American Music, Gram Parsons, a great inspiration to her, becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Parsons died for his fellow country/soul/rock-bridging musicians’ sins and showed a sonic road map for all to follow. Los Angeles is fêting Parsons with a Troubadour show featuring the great Beachwood Sparks as house band and his former singing partner Emmylou Harris, which sold out in two minutes. Here in New York City, the Brooklyn and Manhattan-based community of “country-rockers” may not be able to compete with that tribute, but they are holding an 80th birthday gathering at the ‘Gram-honouring club’, Wild Horses, where Davis shall make an appearance singing her specially commissioned cover of his November Nights. Haylie Davis – despite the lack of a Nudie suit – is being blessed by this inheritance, and she is the shining light of Cosmic Americana this side of Trummors and multiracial group Ghost Hounds. It’s high time to keep in the loop on Davis’ live progress on both sides of the Atlantic, as her arresting and vulnerable vocal performance is sure to enspell one and all.
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