DHK by Davidson Hart Kingsbery (LP)

Davidson Hart Kingsbery (the band) formed in 2010 and shortly after, they were invited to serve as house band for a series of underground 2-step parties. Playing marathon sets instilled the kind of locked-in musical teamwork that can take some bands years. Building a fanbase from the two steppers, they began playing around Seattle and found that the dance movement was contagious.
 
“You don’t see much dancing at regular shows here, but when we started playing out and our dancers showed up and hit the floor, suddenly all kinds of kids were getting up and jumping around. It’s pretty cool” says Hart Kingsbery (the person).
 
After his birth in a rent house in Paris, Texas, Kingsbery’s Christian Scientist parents remember that he stopped breathing and after they prayed to God, he started breathing again. He continued to have breathing issues growing up and immersed himself in art and music instead of sports. The folks weren’t big music fans, but they did own records by Beethoven, Mozart and the Beatles that Hart listened to for years, along with singing hymns in church. He began piano lessons at 11, switched to cello, drums and guitar along the way, hanging out with the Mormon kids, teaching Sunday school at camp and playing in musicals like Godspell and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. After being completely immersed in his religion, in college he began to question everything it represented and the leaders he’d once looked up to. Eventually turning his back on what had once been his entire world, he headed back to Seattle and settled in the working-class stronghold of Ballard. After leading the Kinks/Beatles-influenced Hart and the Hurricane, a girlfriend started playing Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and others and his long dormant love of country music was reignited. Hart may have left the large, close-knit community of the church, but he gained a new family, who share a love of timeless music and dancing.