Exclusive Interview: Devin Dawson Spent a Lifetime Making New Album, ‘Dark Horse’

Devin Dawson’s debut Dark Horse album is finally getting to see the light of day. The 12-track record, out Friday, Jan. 19, is the singular thing Dawson has dreamed about for most of his life.

“It feels great. I’ve been writing music since I was 12,” Dawson tells PopCulture.com. “It’s crazy because I spent at least two or three years writing for this. During the process of writing every single day, waking up and writing and then doing an afternoon, then being in the studio, then waking up and doing it again, you don’t necessarily forget what you’re doing it for, you don’t lose sight of it, but you kind of get lost in this washing machine of just being creative. Actually, I remember the first time we locked in the date, January 19th 2018, I was like ‘I can hold it now. It’s tangible, it’s real.’”

Dawson co-wrote all dozen songs on Dark Horse, joining forces with people like Brad and Brett Warren, Brett Beavers, Luke Laird, Chris DuBois and fellow rising star Jillian Jacqueline, among others, to make the project sound not like something that’s already been proven to be successful, but something that was unique and authentic to him.

“It’s really just kind of an example of everything I’ve picked up along the way,” Dawson reveals. “I grew up listening to country music and that’s how I learned how to write lyrics, or write songs, or tell a story. So, lyrically the songs on the record are super country influenced. But, sonically I also listen to a lot of rock and a lot of R&B, and lot of soul and so there’s some different kind of colorings in there.

“Really it’s every little corner in my creative heart, that’s represented,” he adds, “whether it’s heartbreak, whether it’s love, or whether it’s just a song about who I am. So, it’s the best example for people to get to know me in one place. The idea is that I just want people to listen to this and get to know me through it.”

Dawson’s path to Dark Horse was far from a straight line. The California native began with a love a heavy metal music, which influenced him along with the country music that permeated his childhood. But Dawson found a way to incorporate all of his influences, which can all be heard on Dark Horse.

“The outside perspective, I get it, is that this guy goes from heavy metal to country. How do you make that transition and why?” Dawson shares. “But for me, I grew up listening to country, and I have always written my own songs on the side of being in this rock band, just for myself, my own sanity, my own selfish needs or whatever, and those were my roots, in a way. So for me it was more about realizing that I was quickly growing out of head-banging every night and playing this super fast, heavy music.

“I wanted to fulfill my heart, my creative heart, in a different way with these songs that I was writing in my room on the side, just for myself,” he adds. “It slowly transitioned into that taking over more of what I wanted to do musically and creatively, and so, it was really almost a Renaissance in a way of my going back to what I had started with and how I had grown up. It was an easy transition for me. I moved to Nashville to go to college and write songs, and obviously being here, and the song writing community here in the home of country music and all of that was just this perfect storm of everything that I’ve been wanting to do and I had the ability to do it here.”

Asked what Dawson hopes to accomplish with Dark Horse, the 28-year-old says his goals for the record have very little to do with chart success or album sales.

“I really hope to impose the will of this entire album on the world and just let them experience it and let them feel what they want to feel, and let them latch on to their own song,” Dawson says. “Whether it’s the one on the radio, or whether it’s the one in the middle of the record. I just want people to get to know me. That’s it.”

Dawson, whose debut single from Dark Horse, “All on Me,” became a Top 15 hit, opened last year for Michael Ray as well as a few shows on Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul Tour, and will hit the road later this year to open for Brett Eldredge, on Eldredge’s The Long Way Tour. The success may seem sudden, but for Dawson, it’s taken a lifetime.

“It reminds me all of these things I’ve been doing were for a reason,” Dawson says. “They were for an end goal. They were for a product. The best feeling, I think, is to know that all of this hard work that I’ve been doing and my whole entire team has been doing is going to finally come to fruition in the form of Dark Horse.”

See a list of all of Dawson’s upcoming shows on his website. Purchase Dark Horse on Amazon and iTunes.

Photo Credit: Instagram/ZDevin