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We had the great fortune of seeing Blair Davie in person in LA and it immediately solidified us wanting to dive deeper into this amazing artist's story. Between songs they expounded on love, road trips, and the magic of meeting your quest provider, we were instantly obsessed. After their latest EP, First And Last, dropped, we had to know more, and luckily they had enough time after their LA show to make it happen. Please stay tuned for an amazing story, journey and artist, one of the best to see live if you have the chance:

OnesToWatch: Please introduce yourself and tell me why you are an artist. 

Blair Davie: My name is Blair Davey, and I'm an artist because I have to be. It's just an instinctual need. I found music very early in my life, thankfully, and I feel blessed to have always had that North Star guiding light. A lot of people don't find that until they're a lot older, and it was my compass. I started learning the guitar and it became an obsession, then I started writing songs before I even knew that I was writing songs. Then, there was the experience of sharing songs and the connection that you have with other people. And luckily at this point in my life, it's my job. I just hope that it will be forever now. 


What if, you were to have all your musical talents removed, is there a pivot? Can you imagine yourself doing anything else? 

So, my mum runs a children's nursery in Scotland, and when I left school, I worked there for three years while I was trying to get my band off the ground. I absolutely loved that job. I'm a fully qualified childcare practitioner. So I can always fall back into that. I would maybe write children's books as well. I just think there's something so brilliant about kids and their honesty and their joy and their love. It was a really special time in my life, actually. 

If you've worked at a nursery, I imagine the music industry, it feels very familiar… the Venn diagram of children to drunk adults in bars. You mentioned you've been writing for so long that you didn’t even quite know you were songwriting, but when would you say you wrote your first song with the intent of it being shared and performed? 

Oh, probably 13 years old, when I joined my first band. There was a music department trip in my school; they were going to Austria. There were these two kids, three years older than me that wanted to go on the trip. One of them played drums and one played guitar, and the music teacher said they could only go on this trip if they formed a band and got a singer. So they asked me and we joined this band together, went on this amazing trip to Austria and played music in these classical music schools. You should have seen their faces when we played Wonderwall. You know, jaws dropped. When we came back from that trip, we decided, let's try making our own songs. We'd had enough of playing covers. I can remember specifically writing this song to have the most impact live.
We loved playing live and that was always our thing. And so we were writing songs that were going to get people going live. That was the first time I guess the audience was a part of my thought process. 

Love that. Do you have a consistent writing process? Do you consistently start with melody, themes, top lines?

I'm a narrative girly. I write in projects. So for the last EP, that was about the kind of love that begins and then lasts forever. The next EP I’m writing is another story. So I’m always writing with an overarching theme, but I would say it's either melody, lyrics or chords first, in whatever order they land. It can be in the shower, it can be in the car, or on a walk. I don't really listen to music. So when I'm just walking around, I’m open to the ideas falling from the sky as I believe that they do. We just receive the ideas and we have to catch them and do something with them. The process is different every time. I do love writing with other people, so I will usually come into the session with an idea that's falling from the sky, and present it to them and see what happens when other people bring in where they think the song should go. Sometimes it's a wrestle. I was talking earlier with my friend about how sometimes the song arrives fully formed and sometimes you have to battle it, and it's like Sudoku, trying to fit the pieces together. It’s always different, but it’s always joyous. 

There's not a lot of artists I come across that still write narratively.
Does that mean the songs are all written in the same time period, or do you pull songs from different periods when they fit the narrative? 

I think you can definitely pull them. My preference is when I have an initial idea and I set it out to write with intention. But then sometimes when you have that intention, you realize, “Oh, maybe I've already done that by accident a year ago.” There were some songs on this EP that are a little older that ended up fitting. But on the whole, I usually work from the exciting, initial spark of an idea and dedicate a couple of months to trying to squeeze all the magic out of it that I can. 

Love that. Well, it sounds like a perfect time to pivot to the EP. When did you have this thematic epiphany? 

I think it took me a long time to realize the theme: that I wanted to write love songs.
When I first became a solo artist at the end of 2021, we were still in lockdown. I was writing a lot of mental health songs about feeling lost and broken and bruised and damaged, and I did that for a while. Then, I figured out that I was a non-binary person, so suddenly all the art became about finding who you are and celebrating that and dreading that and grieving so many different aspects of that. 

Then, at the start of 2024, I wrote a love song almost by accident. It was a song called “Prague,” and at the end of the session, I put my phone up, and I sang the song, and I posted it online and for some reason it connected. I realized that by writing about love, it did what I've always wanted my music to do, which is just connect with people. I still had the trans kids in the comments, but I also had everybody else. For the first time I had everybody else. I'd been in a relationship for two years at this point, so I've been building up this well of love in my heart. And I suddenly realized that I was ready to sing about it. So then when I knew that I was going to make an EP, I set out with the intention to tell my story of finding love, moving into our first flat together, hopefully getting married, proposing, first dance, and this love that just stretches out into forever. 

Beautiful. Thank you. You do speak to a lot of different audiences; you have a unique perspective, unique story. What was it about writing love songs that was uncomfortable for you previously? 

I just don't think it was intuitive. I didn't necessarily want to do it. I felt for a while that sharing my deepest darkest truth was the way to go. And I think to a large degree, it still is. But I think that sometimes the world – and perhaps more than ever – needs joy. And so I set out to make this thing where it wears its heart on its sleeve. “I love you” is the message of the EP. I'm happy that I'm sharing that message. And it resonates with everyone, so that's special. And not to give too much away, but I’m headed in other directions, too. The upcoming EP is about love, but with fractures, and there’s themes of brokenness and being broken alongside someone and figuring out growing together. Through my relationship that I'm in, I’ve healed from so many scars. But, every now and then, it just takes something you see on TV or something somebody says on the bus that's just like, oh my God, the wound is ripped open and I'm bleeding again. But then, having that person to come home to and connect and share with is so important to the healing. So, I’m exploring that in the next project. It’ll be a little darker, still with love as the impetus, but a little more broken and real about it. This first EP is almost a fairy tale in how lovely it is, but it’s not always like that. So I'm looking forward to sharing that side of things next. 

Beautiful. I'm going to pivot to some lighter questions.
If you could perform with anyone, anywhere, what’s your dream performance? 

I don't know if he's in the best light, but somebody whose music was important to me growing up was Eric Clapton. His unplugged album was the first album I can remember listening to. So I'd have Eric Clapton in there.
I'd have Doctor Hook in there because that was another one from my childhood. Drake Bell, too, watching the Drake and Josh movie was when I first realized that I wanted to do music for real. The whole movie is him trying to get to Hollywood so he could play on this radio show, and at the end he does it he makes it there, and I said to my mom, I want to do that. So I'd have him there. And Adrienne Lenker to give you a modern one. I love the Big Thief stuff, but her solo stuff is kind of all I've listened to in the last year. 

Oh, wow. What a compliment. If you were forced to whip up a meal for your hungry bandmates, do you have a go-to? 

I make a really good chili. I'm vegetarian, so I’d do a veggie chili. I think that chilis only work if you put maximum love into it. I don't cook with skill,
I cook with love. And so I'll make a good chili because of how much I love the process and how much I love the people. Chili is something that you share with people. And I think that's what cooking does.

I love that. If everything works out and the dream continues as is, do you have a place you end up somewhere you... 

Geographically? 


Geographically, personally, metaphysically, etc. 

Geographically, there's a place in Scotland that maybe my parents are going to move to soon, called the Isle of Lewis. It's beautiful, serene, turquoise water. The beaches are stunning, but it's harsh and brutal as well, so there's that kind of contrast. I'd love to live there and personally, I think I'd just be happy that I got to do the thing that I've always wanted to do. I think my fear and the thing that drives me is having it all taken away. I'm very aware that the rug can be pulled out from underneath me at any time. So I'm trying to work really hard to make sure that doesn't happen. If I can get to the end of a long career where I get to sing to people that know the words to the songs,
I'll be pretty happy with what I've done. 

Last set of questions. Do you have a recommendation that is non-musical, something you would recommend? 

The Catcher in the Rye. I've always loved and felt really connected to coming of age stories. Catcher in the Rye is a little bit of a cliche when it's the English teacher's favorite, but I think there's some real truth about growing up and realizing that nobody has a clue what's going on. We're all pretending to various degrees of success. He calls adults phony. He realizes that everybody's just pretending and that was a lovely realization to somebody that was completely lost back then. 


How about a music recommendation, any up and coming artists you’re loving? 

There's an artist in London that I've become friends with called August Carvalho and we work quite closely together. They're a non-binary artist who is so brave and writes with their heart and has one of the best voices I've ever heard. They were a fan of me first, which is weird because we're best friends now, but they saw me play a show and then messaged me asking for advice. Then they told me that they were playing a show, so I went and there was about five people in the room and it felt like watching Phoebe Bridgers before she was famous. So I just think it's gonna be a lovely rise for August. 

That's a great one. And then lastly, anything you'd like to share? Could be a joke, anecdote, advice, shoutouts. 

Oh, shout out to my mum. I love my family. I'm so grateful. Shout out to my partner that drives me every day.
And go and check out my EP first and last. It's full of joy and it was made with love and not skill – like my cooking. Be kind to people and be gentle with yourself and give yourself grace. 

Thank you so much. 

Absolutely.