[Cover photo credit to Doug Coombe]

Detroit singer/songwriter Ethan Daniel Davidson has released “Your Old Key,” the latest single to be shared from his forthcoming album Cordelia, which will be released on May 30, 2025.

Davidson says about the track:

She was particularly talented in terms of home improvement. Probably the best carpenter I’ve ever met––was able to make doors out of a single piece of wood without warping. She was so good that she built a whole new house for herself while I was out getting the paper. I have the key, but it doesn’t work for the door anymore. I’m not even sure where the house is, actually. I made this song up on the spot as we recorded it a dozen years ago for the Silvertooth album. Sometimes these things just kind of come out of you.

Cordelia finds the veteran singer-songwriter exploring new creative territory while tapping into “philosophical explorations and ruminations on his past, present, and future.”

Cordelia follows 2022’s Stranger, which marked both a conclusion and a new beginning after a decade and mor of creative collaboration with Warren Defever of Experimental Rock group His Name Is Alive. Davidson was armed with songs that hailed from a COVID-era songwriting span, and he reached out to Producer David Katznelson for some ideas on who to work with, who in turn recommended North Mississippi Allstars frontman Luther Dickinson as the perfect co-producer alongside Katznelson.

Cordelia was sonically inspired by Davidson’s love for the raw blues records that storied label Fat Possum were releasing in the 1990s.

He says:

I’ve always been a fan of that hill-country punk blues. That’s not the kind of music I do, but it always had a big impact on me, and I knew Luther [Dickinson] would be a good guy to translate these songs and put a real good band together.

The album’s title is inspired by the daughter featured in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy King Lear, who Davidson “finds a sense of personal kinship with.” 

Davidson explains:

My adopted father was a great guy, but by the end of his life, he had a lot of sycophants gathered around him when he was in declining health. I came to feel like Cordelia, because I wasn’t around him for his money—it was because I was this kid that he took in and took care of, and I loved him for it.