Chris Davis

His father, Danny, and his grandfather, Elzie, were bluegrass performers around Dayton, and as a youth he played in a family band with his grandfather, father and brother. He played in the Dayton area until 2006, when he took his first touring job, with Larry Cordle, and he worked for Cordle for five years. He went on to work with Melvin and Ray Goins, Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers, Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice, Wildfire, Alecia Nugent, Honi Deaton & Dream and Marty Raybon & Full Circle. In 2014 he filled in with the country group Diamond Rio while their mandolin player, Gene Johnson, was off the road.

In May 2019 he joined the Grascals on guitar and lead vocals, taking the place of the founding member Terry Eldredge, and he sang and played guitar on the band’s album Up All Night (Mountain Home, 2021). In May 2022 RBR Entertainment signed him as a solo artist and released his single “Down South in New Orleans,” a Johnnie Wright and Jim and Jack Anglin song he had heard as a boy on a record by the Powell Brothers with Red Spurlock. Late in 2022 he left the Grascals to take the mandolin chair in Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers, replacing Jeff Parker, and he played mandolin on that band’s Lovin’, Fightin’, Losin’ Sleep (Billy Blue, 2025).

Pinecastle Records signed him in September 2024 and issued the singles “Blue Kentucky Wind,” by Larry Cordle and Leslie Satcher, and, in March 2025, Jerry Salley’s “Gold Rush Town.” When Mullins retired from touring at the start of 2026, Davis formed the Chris Davis Band, singing lead and playing mandolin, with Zach Collier, his Radio Ramblers bandmate, on bass. The band signed with Billy Blue Records in December 2025, and by April 2026 it had Josh Raines on guitar and Mike Mullins on banjo. In June 2026 it released Conrad Fisher’s “Jenna Lea.”