With the release of Trashy Annie’s second album, Let It Kill You. I sat down with Annie Davis herself to find out about her journey through the world of music and where it all goes next.
Hi, can we start with a bit of background? You came to playing the guitar later in life than most people do. What were you doing before, and did music feature in your life in any significant way?
Annie: I was actually a trumpet player as a kid. I grew up on food stamps and welfare, and ended up putting myself through college on a trumpet scholarship by teaching myself to play. I was obsessed with music. I loved it more than anything and thought I would spend my life doing that. But as I got closer to the end of college, I realized I needed something more financially stable because I was terrified of the instability that a life in music entails. I was a volunteer firefighter at the time and was running a lot, so I decided to try a triathlon.
I fell in love with an active lifestyle, but I kept getting injured over and over again because I was fairly new to sports in general. I tried to find help with my running, but couldn’t find anybody to help me. All I could find were doctors who would tell me that I needed to stop running. I ended up pivoting in my education and went back to school, learning everything I could about biomechanics. I got my doctorate and started a company called RunLab, which I still have today. We have a couple of locations in Austin and have had locations in other states in the past.
When COVID hit in 2020, I had to lay off 28 of my 30 employees, who were also some of my closest friends, and it about broke me. I dealt with all of the pain I was feeling by buying a guitar and starting to learn how to play and how to write music. I fell right back in love with music the way I had when I was a kid. And I couldn’t get enough. So when COVID lifted, I put a band together and started playing gigs, which eventually led to touring. I was named CMA of Texas Americana Artist of the Year in 2023 and was signed to Cleopatra Records out of LA, and I have never looked back.
I love the fact that the band name comes from you turning criticism into a musical identity. Please tell me more about that.
Annie: The band name Trashy Annie came about because when I released my first song under my name, Annie Davis, I got criticism online about my clothes being too young for me. I was 44 at the time, and it hurt. It’s such a vulnerable and scary thing to put your art out into the world, but then to have people immediately criticize you for things that you can’t even control, like your age, it was pretty heartbreaking. Initially, I questioned everything about what I was doing and thought maybe these people were right. But then I sat back and thought, “What am I doing? This is my life, my passion, and my dream, and why should I let anybody tell me not to chase it?” So I decided to name the band Trashy Annie and lean into being myself, whether people liked it or not.
I’m really proud of the band and I’m proud of the music. I think a lot of the music talks about empowerment because of the way that I was originally received. I am such an advocate for people being themselves, no matter what age or size they are, and no matter what anybody else has to say about it. My song “Born Pretty” off of the first album Sticks and Stones talks a lot about that. It talks about a girl with a glass eye and a unibrow, and little bitty titties and greasy hair. The boys all ask her how she makes it in life, and she says, “I don’t know, I guess I was just born this pretty.”
It is fair to say that the new album, Let It Kill You, is a brilliant collision of blistering rock and roll and punk attitude. Is it easier to be rebellious when you have, let’s say, been around the block a few times?
Annie: Ultimately, I think my own personal journey has led me to a place where I can talk about hard things, including sometimes taboo subjects that people don’t want to talk about. Sometimes it alienates people, and sometimes they don’t feel comfortable discussing things that people normally would only discuss behind closed doors. But I think a good songwriter comes in any form and that can be old or young, male or female. It just takes somebody who’s willing to take a hard look at their insides and throw their guts on the table for everybody to see. So I think it’s less about age and more about the willingness to be vulnerable.
For those who haven’t heard it, what can the listener expect from the new album? How would you say it differs from your debut, Sticks and Stones, and how “difficult” was it to make the notoriously “difficult second album?”
Annie: I do think a second album is tough, but I knew when I wrote Sticks and Stones that I had a lot more to say. I had a lot of this second album partially written when the first one came out because I had been bitten by the songwriting bug, and I just couldn’t get enough.
I don’t know which album I like better, but I do think this new one gets even more edgy and vulnerable than the first. I really dig into a lot of the head garbage that many creatives experience and, frankly, a lot of aging women experience as well. We worry that we aren’t valued by society anymore, and we worry that we will be discounted when our looks fade. There’s a lot that goes on in our heads every day that we don’t necessarily talk about in our social circles, but we all feel it. I just want people out there, whether they are male or female, old or young, to know that they’re not alone in this world, wondering if they are valuable.
I am on this current season of Survivor on CBS, and that was a huge challenge for me as well because I came back from that experience with a lot of questions about how people perceive me in the world vs. how I see myself. So I think this album talks about a lot of those issues. I’m really proud of it. It also leans heavier into rock and roll, whereas Sticks and Stones had a little more of a southern rock/country vibe to the tunes.
Q5: And covering a Paul Simon classic, how did that come about?
Annie: I’ve always loved “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” I used to listen to Simon and Garfunkel and Paul Simon records on my mom’s turntable as a kid, and “Me and Julio” was one that I would just play over and over again. I had this idea a couple of years ago to do it as a punk song, and I got a lot of pushback from musicians I really respect as to whether that would make sense for this tune. But I forged ahead anyway, and I couldn’t be more proud of how it came out.
Who else makes up the band?
Annie: I have an awesome group of regular guys, and then I have a few guys that will play with me depending on the schedule. We played over a hundred out-of-town gigs this year, so my regular guys can’t be with me 100% of the time because they teach music lessons and have other responsibilities back at home. That being said, they’re with me for the lion’s share of my touring schedule. My band consists of Ryan Smith on the drums, Miles Barker on the bass guitar, and Blake Jurasin on lead guitar. I do a lot of studio work with P.H. Naffah and Jeff Lusby-Breault out of Arizona, as well as Chris “Frenchie” Smith in Austin.
And talking of Austin, it is one of the legendary music towns. What’s it like to be a rock and roll band in such an iconic place, and what is today’s scene like?
Annie: You know, it’s actually changing a lot and in my opinion, not really for the best. It’s sort of inundated with tribute bands these days, and Sixth Street used to be an iconic place for original music, but now it’s just a bunch of drunk college kids and tourists listening to tribute and cover bands. It makes me sad because a lot of the old historic venues, where some of the greatest musicians of all time played, are not around anymore. Just getting people to come out and see live music in general is hard, but rock, especially original rock, is in a tough place these days.
There are definitely some great venues and some amazing bands in Austin, and I love the city. I just see it changing a lot, and live music is taking a back seat. Venues are struggling, and bands are struggling as well. It’s part of the reason we are on the road so much, because we are building draws in other cities and having more success outside of Austin. I’d like to see more focus on original music in our city for sure.
Finally, what does the future hold for you and the band? What ambitious plans are you working on?
Annie: I am really excited about the future. We have a lot of touring planned, we are playing a fair amount of festivals and motorcycle rallies, and I think that is a great path forward for us because we are a great festival band. We are super high energy and fun with hooky songs that people can sing along to by the end of the tune, even if they’ve never heard them before.
So I think the future is pretty bright for this band. I will be doing more shows around Survivor. We are playing a lot of watch parties this season, and we’ll probably be doing a bunch more around Season 50 next year, which should be a lot of fun! Ultimately, there is a lot of heavy stuff going on in the world right now, and my hope for Trashy Annie is that we are building an escape where people can close out all of the negativity and hatred that is out there for a couple of hours. We can just enjoy being together, dressing however we want to, loving whomever we want to, not taking ourselves too seriously, and singing along at the top of our lungs to great rock and roll.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with me and for the wonderful insight into your world. Best of luck with everything for the future.
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