We caught up with the brilliant and insightful McCall Bliss a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi McCall, thanks for joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
My bandmate and partner Mike and I took an unexpected route to our creative career – both of us met our final year of school after studying computer science and started out working 9-5 for most of our 20s. The two of us did music in the background as a hobby but never went all in so we struggled to progress. In 2020 during covid, we decided to make the move to Nashville and finally chase the dream. We started building a team here and met some incredibly talented writers, producers, and other friends to work with. Since then we’ve built our nostalgic brand across socials with over 400,000 followers now. Sometimes I wish we had just decided to go all-in sooner, but I’m still so proud of where we’re at now.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hey! I’m McCall and with my partner Mike we make up the Nashville-based alt rock duo “davvn” (pronounced dawn). We’re two kids who grew up on AIM and MySpace and draw influence from early 2000’s pop punk and modern alternative with a nostalgic focus. After multiple viral TikTok songs (including a new version of 1985 featuring Bowling for Soup) we’ve released two EP’s and been on multiple US tours. The group’s name “davvn” channels the energy of the bittersweet pink & blue morning hours when the night before is ending and the sun comes up on a new day.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I’ve started to feel lately that making it in music (or on social media) is just a test of your determination. People say it takes 10 years sometimes to break an artist, I think that sounds about right to me. It takes an incredibly long time to find your vision and create a piece of art that’s true to you and resonates with an audience. During covid we started making short form content for TikTok and began posting 3-4 times a week with some mixed results. After moving to Nashville we started working with a friend who had seen some success on socials before us to help teach us the ropes. She got us in the habit of being consistent and finding other creators in our niche and taking inspiration from them for our own content. From then till now – 5 years later, we’ve been posting 6-7 times a week on not just TikTok but Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook as well. We have a lot of respect for how much daily effort adds up and results often are not immediate but gradual. Building off-platform communities like Discord has really helped us to energize and communicate directly with our base. And starting to tour and make in-person connection with fans has helped us even more. There was a time when we felt like touring wasn’t as important as socials – given how hard and expensive it can be, but now that we’ve seen the impacts we think of touring as one of our top priorities to continue building the brand.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One thing that we’ve had to unlearn recently is that often it doesn’t make sense to do everything yourself. It’s important to find a team of people you can rely on and work with even if it costs you more or you lose a little bit of creative control. Being able to delegate is vitally important as you grow and need to bring people on to keep maintaining your brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.davvn.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davvn.music/
- Facebook: cebook.com/davvnmusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@davvnmusic
Image Credits
All photos by Hayley Mikell – https://www.instagram.com/hayleymikell/?hl=en