Biography

Davis Raines

When Davis Raines sings a song about one of life's drifters who ran afoul of the law, it's no pose. The singer-songwriter didn't get around to a music career until his mid-30s, after he decided to leave behind his job as a captain of a maximum security prison in Alabama, where, for a time, he was in charge of Death Row. Raines doesn't get completely bogged down in prison songs, though. The music on his critically acclaimed 1998 debut, Big Shiny Cars includes hardcore tunes like Working Homicide, Hell for Breakfast and Last Hard Man in Elmore County. 2003's Parts Unknown found Raines further developing a broader cross-section of country-tinged singer-songwriter fare with a storyteller's gift for metaphor. As a songwriter he has a cut on the Grammy nominated album Wave On Wave by Pat Green. The album was recently certified Gold.