Summer Nightwind is the fourth studio album by songwriter and recording artist John Davey. It was composed in a flurry in the months preceding the birth of his daughter. “Late Bloomer” is the first single. It establishes the paradoxical relationship between the life of the imagination and the embodied experience of day-to-day routine, a theme which plays throughout the album. The title track is a series of vignettes compiled as an homage to the American West and the memory of Davey’s brother Amos. “Summer Nightwind” depicts A Truck, A Horse, A Man and is the closing paragraph of the adolescent chapter of life.
“AM Angel” and “Jesus is a Friend (of the Working Man)” are set to the rhythm of manual labor and the natural movement of people across vast stretches of the American landscape. They return Davey to his gospel roots, a common denominator of country music and rock ‘n roll.
The juxtaposition of light-and-dark, give-and-take of a long, intimate relationship plays out in “Laugh Track” and “Sacred Heart”. Both are accompanied by the promise that the narrator will continue to be a presence to be contended with.
The final set of companion songs on Summer Nightwind are the character sketches “Sad Prince” and “Employee of the Month” which examine heroes and anti-heroes in two dramatic coming-of-age sequences. These are set to the backdrop of a Midwestern indie rock aesthetic so familiar to John Davey’s generation of seekers and wanderers.
“Our Ladies Anno Domini” is the jubilant and tongue-in-cheek bookend of the record which enters with laughter and a half-cocked appreciation into the spirit of the Feminine. The only song on Summer Nightwind that precedes Davey’s migration from Tennessee and Indiana, this recursive refrain gratifies and sets the stage for a second listen.
The sound of Summer Nightwind was conceived by Davey’s longtime collaboration with drummer Bud Clowers and his baritone guitar. The album was produced by John Davey and Ryan Staples at Dead River Sound in Marquette, Michigan and elevated by performances from Mark Wayne (pedal steel guitar), Luke Arquette (bass and electric guitar), Liam Joyce (drums), and Pete Gummerson (organ). It was mastered by indie rock royalty TW Walsh (Pedro the Lion, Sufjan Stevens, Damien Jurado) in Massachusetts.

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