78 Photo Essay: Chase Davidson, Vocalist, Guitarist

Words by Justin Hunter | Image by Blakeney Clouse

Chase Davidson’s fingers have danced along the neck of a fretboard since his dad bought him a Squier Bullet Stratocaster at age 13. No amp, just a red electric guitar with a whammy bar. 

“I had been hounding my dad all year about getting me a four-wheeler,” Davidson recalls. “I think I nearly had him talked into it, or maybe I was telling myself that. Two weeks before Christmas, he threw something out there that changed my life forever—what about an electric guitar? My dad went from spending $2500 to $150 in an instant.” 

 Davidson, 38, embraces the cathartic freedom of being able to hold the microphone, charismatically move about the stage, and deliver song lyrics as the lead vocalist for Handshake Promise. He is enjoying a season of his voice being the instrument. It’s a nice change of pace.  

 Comprised of veterans from the Walker County music scene, Handshake Promise has packed local bars and festivals with devoted fans for nearly two decades, playing covers of top classic rock hits. Davidson, a Jasper native, joined the group a couple of years ago. 

 “Handshake Promise had wanted me to do vocals with them for a while but one thing or anything kept getting in the way, whether it was personal demons or another music project,” Davidson says. “I love being in Handshake. It’s one of the top two bands I’ve been a part of.”

 Davidson, who also plays guitar for Within Reason, a Grammy-nominated rock band from Birmingham, is working on a solo singer/writer project in which he explores the dark and melancholy aspects of living on planet Earth. The lyrics are raw and autobiographical, and yet his words are triumphant to those who have ears to hear. 

 “I don’t write conceptual lyrics,” Davidson says. “I sing about real stuff. All those things I’ve seen, felt and experienced with my own being. I write from pain and anguish, but it connects to me other people.”

 Like so many other individuals, Davidson has passed through the valley of death that is substance abuse. He has experienced the struggles associated with poverty, homelessness, and heroin addiction. His soul might bear the marks of those hard life lessons, yet Davidson views his past with the lens of optimism.  

 “I found a love that helped me realize my life was no longer about Chase,” he says. “My two kids are how I overcame my addiction. I met my wife and she pulled me out of the trenches. She gave me a baby boy and that old lifestyle was over. Now I’ve got two kids and I don’t have time to live solely for Chase anymore.”

 Davidson’s musical career has been one wild ride. He played his first show with Cedar Tree Road— a local band he formed with friends in his teenage years—at the B.C. Lounge in the Jasper Bowling Alley. It was a Sunday night and the band made a grand total of $63. 

 In 2009, he flew out to Los Angeles to audition as a singer for rock supergroup Velvet Revolver. Davidson got the job—but the group fell apart soon after his audition.  

 He has enjoyed the thrills of playing with the band Within Reason in front of thousands of fans at the Oak Mountain Amphitheater, a venue he often dreamed of playing after seeing many of his favorite bands perform on that stage. 

 Twenty-five years after that fateful Christmas when he received his first guitar, Chase Davidson appreciates being alive, creating music he enjoys, and loving his family. 78