Faith, doubt and effort: It takes all three to bring anything meaningful to fruition, according to Anthony David.
“I always liked music as a kid, but I’m from Savannah [Ga.], and music just wasn’t an optional career choice for us there,” says the singer/songwriter about his early qualms about becoming an artist. “I just really didn’t think I could do it.”
This mindframe is what led the then-16-year-old former marching band member and choir boy to sign up for the army. Thankfully, after completing his four year stint in the military, David left his fears of the music industry behind him and moved to Atlanta, joining the local poetry scene there.
That move opened the doors for him to meet aspiring producers and songwriters, one of which was an up-and-coming artist at the time named India.Arie. “The producers I was working with wanted me to be an artist. Encouraged by them and the people in the local scene, I started to do music with India, recording my own songs and selling them,” says David.
Shortly after, India signed to Universal Motown and asked David to write for and tour with her. David eventually penned three songs for the singer — one appearing on each of her albums — and after warming up to the idea of being a performer, signed to independent label Brash Records. While signed to them, he released two albums – “3 Chords & the Truth” in 2004 and “The Red Clay Chronicles” in 2006. “They were looking for who was next, and I was that person, so I recorded with them,” David says about his decision to join the label’s roster.
Still, he didn’t reject the idea of signing to a major label one day. By chance, after Arie made the switch from Motown to Universal Republic last year, she partnered with the label to launch her own imprint, SoulBird Records, and tapped David to be the first artist signed to the label. On June 24, he made his major label debut with “Acey Duecy,” which he describes as “new millennium blues. We have R&B, acoustic and hip-hop in there. It’s basically a compilation of the other two albums. We just took our favorite songs from both sets and made one album out of them.”
The first single off the set, “Words” featuring India.Arie, is currently No. 84 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and No. 24 on the Hot Adult R&B Airplay tally. Other songs on the set include the nostalgic “Smoke One,” the family reunion song “Kinfolk,” “Georgia Peach,” an ode to the women from David’s hometown, and “Something About You,” which is in contention to be the second single.
In the future, David hopes to continue touring to “raise my profile” and get involved in “expanding, exposing and exploiting the underground soul artist scene.”
