"There were two things I was never going to do," says Chip Davis, composer, percussionist and conductor of Mannheim Steamroller, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek - "write country music and live in Nebraska." Well, from 1975 to 1978, Davis toured extensively as co-writer, drummer and musical director for the tremendously popular C.W. McCall and band, a country music group. "Convoy," a platinum selling rec-ord, is the most important example of his phenomenal success in country music. He has composed the music for a dozen hit country singles, totaling around 20 million recordings sold.
Actually, he grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where his father was a country doctor, then moved to Nebraska by accident. He came for an eight-week musical commitment that became 28 weeks - and then permanent. Today, he lives with his wife, Sharon, in a rambling country home on a 40-acre spread in a wooded area north of Omaha - nothing like the Nebraska most of us envision. Rather than plains and corn, his secluded area of Nebraska is composed of hills, oak forests and 2,000 acres of riding trails."It reminds me of York, England," he says.
It is appropriate inspiration for a man who has always composed about nature. It is also appropriate for Davis' latest project, "Yellowstone - The Music of Nature," to be performed at the Salt Palace Accord Arena on Saturday, May 12, at 8 p.m. It will feature Davis, Mannheim Steamroller and the 80-piece Yellowstone Symphony, a group of the finest classically trained musicians from major American orchestras. (Tickets are $22 and $16 from the Salt Palace Box Office and all Smith'sTix locations.)
It is a benefit concert to assist in the rehabilitation of Yellowstone National Park. Davis says he went to Yellowstone as a kid with his grandparents. When the fires came, he had a strange feeling that the park was not going to be there any more. "I felt guilty that I had not seen it again as an adult." But when he did see it again, he saw that this was part of a cycle, and that the park needed some "imaging." He became determined to increase public appreciation for Yellowstone.
This concert does that, with its four screens, measuring 20-by-40-feet, so that Yellowstone images can be projected to coincide with music of nature compositions by Respighi, Debussy, Sebelius, Vivaldi, Grofe and Davis himself. The program's first half is a musical montage of important nature pieces, while the second half shows the audience Yellowstone before and after the fire.
Davis is most famous for a series of six "Fresh Aire" albums performed by his group of accomplished studio musicians under the name "Mannheim Steamroller," which have sold more than two million copies. "Fresh Aire III" just went gold, he says, and the others will probably go gold this year. Utahns are especially familiar with his 1985 double platinum-selling "Mannheim Steamroller Christmas" album, now a classic, and his 1988 holiday album "A Fresh Aire Christmas."
Davis, 40, got the name Mannheim Steamroller from his history courses at the University of Michigan. "In 1749 in Mannheim, Germany, a conductor came up with the musical device known as crescendo, to increase in volume. In German, it was called Mannheim valse, which means roller. The slang for it was steamroller. Since my experimental music used the classical form with rock 'n' roll drums and synthesizers, I felt the name fit. Though it was a classical term, it sounded like the name of a heavy-metal band."
In 1974, Davis formed his own record company - American Gramophone - one of the largest independent labels in North America. His music has been called "eclectic," a creative method of blending cross-related music genres within a single, dynamic format.
He is the first to admit that his musical empire was created by selling warmed-over classics to buyers who don't know any better. He produces gentle, sweet, made-to-order music for a generation of consumers too grown-up for rock 'n' roll yet not quite comfortable with "serious" classical music. It is an effort to spoon-feed culture to the baby boomers. The music is basic and simple, says Davis, "and it appeals to people's emotions - it does something pleasant to them." Many also see visual images. He remembers one particular fan who wrote a letter describing "to a T" the setting where the musical piece was composed. Davis is classically trained, yet has the background in commercial jingles that allows him to produce the Mannheim Steamroller genre.
"I wrote a number of jingles for commercials. I once decided that I had written 2,000 pieces of music, and 90 percent of it was jingles. For McDonald's, Levi, Lee, Continental Trailways - I can't even remember them all."
The Fresh Aire format is unique. "Some people have taken classical music like Bach and put a swing beat to it, and I have always found that unacceptable. My pieces are original, but they have the architecture of the classical composer. I don't take the actual compositions of Bach and others, but I use the structural form."
It usually takes two or three years for Davis to research a piece of music, but when he actually starts writing, it comes very fast. "I create an entire piece of music in three or four hours. It is like a stream of consciousness."
He is currently working on "Fresh Aire VII," due out in the fall, about the mystical significance of the number seven. Once, recently, he did seven colors of the rainbow by assigning a frequency for each color and then a frequency for each corresponding note."I orchestrated the whole piece that way. I thought about that for six months, but it only took 2 1/2 hours to write it."
Asked if anyone has ever copied his style, Davis says, "People who are entirely classical or entirely popular have a hard time mixing it as I do. So the competition is not there. I don't know anyone who has done anything like it. In fact, if you can figure out what it is that I do, I wish you would let me know."
Davis gets occasional criticism from both classical and popular musicians, "although Juilliard is now using some of my forms and picking apart what I do. When something sells well, people become skeptical about what it is you do."
Someone as productive and successful as Davis is bound to suffer stress occasionally, and his own music is not necessarily the solution. "One day I had six caps put on my teeth on the same day. It was a drillothon! And they had several speakers in the office. Suddenly they piped in Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, and I went through the ceiling! When I have a show, I put slides with it, and if I hear the music again, I find myself looking around to see if the right slides are being shown. Composing itself is effortless - I really enjoy it. Then I can listen to it on a plane and find it relaxing. But once it has been in a theater - it is a different story!"
What does the future hold for Chip Davis? He has been working on a personal album for 10 years. He's been writing pieces as gifts for friends and relatives, such as a happy birthday gift for his mother."My dad figured it out right away, but she plinked it out on the piano three times before she figured it out," says Davis laughingly. When it is finished, he will call it "Impressions," - "and it will not be Mannheim Steamroller - it will just be ME."