Devon Gilfillian
A couple years ago, Devon Gilfillian was working at City Winery here in Nashville and had the chance to meet Lori McKenna, one of his favorite songwriters. She was playing in support of her acclaimed album The Bird and the Rifle, and Gilfillian used the opportunity to tell her how much he loved the record. This spring, he’ll fly to Boston to spend a couple of days writing with her — a collaboration that stemmed not from that meet-cute, but from his increasing recognition in Nashville’s soul community. He’s quick to credit his good fortune to his proximity to a vibrant scene.
“The scene in Nashville, especially the soul scene, is growing so exponentially,” Gilfillian tells the Scene by phone. “Jason Eskridge does his Sunday night soul thing, and I was very encouraged once I went out to The 5 Spot and saw that. It was way easier than if I lived in Delaware County, Pa. I’d be scouring Craigslist trying to find people to jam with.”
That’s just one of many dreams that have come true for Gilfillian, who grew up in Morton, Pa., a small town just outside of Philadelphia, and moved to Nashville in 2013. He released his self-titled debut EP in mid-2016, and in October 2017, he signed a deal with Capitol Records. This year, he’ll release his first full-length album.
“I’m still pinching myself and waiting for them to be like, ‘It’s just a dream, Dev, wake up!’ ” he says. “I had never imagined being signed to a record label. We released the EP in May of 2016, and a year-and-a-half later we get signed to Capitol.”
Gilfillian seems to be living the Nashville dream: A young musician moves to town, starts a band — and voilà! He’s signed to a major label. Sounds easy, right?
Not exactly. For Gilfillian, the road to a record deal was a winding one. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Pennsylvania’s West Chester University, Gilfillian joined AmeriCorps and was assigned to a position in Nashville in 2013. He met musician buddies working in restaurants like City Winery, and found himself playing in a number of local outfits, doing brief stints with a reggae band and what he describes as “this Delta blues cover band with these old guys out in Lebanon.”
It’s not just Gilfillian’s musical skills that are putting him into a position to take off.
“I just talked to a friend of mine about having a life other than being identified as purely a musician or a singer,” Gilfillian says. “I’m very grateful that I went to college, even though I look back and I’m like, ‘Screw these student loans.’ I’m glad I went to school for psychology. It’s definitely taught me a lot about human behavior and my psyche and ego, and how people behave in certain situations. I think being a songwriter, that’s helped me, just understanding why people act the way they act.”
You can hear a bit of Gilfillian’s psychology background in his breakout track “Here and Now,” a guitar-heavy groove in which he pleads with a lover whose head is in the clouds to “come back to the here-and-now.” The tune also shows off Gilfillian’s guitar chops in a restrained, bluesy solo that recalls Buddy Guy. The EP’s four other tracks show Gilfillian to be a dedicated student of soul and blues music, using his rich voice to pay homage to the classics without veering into mimicry. Some or all of those tracks could land on Gilfillian’s debut album, which he plans to record in May or June of this year.
“That still is a tentative date, because we’re looking for the right person who wants to produce it,” he says. “Right now we’re just writing and writing. We’re getting on the road a little bit. It all depends on who’s going to produce the record, when their availability is, but hopefully early summertime we can get in the studio.”
Gilfillian’s social consciousness will likely be evident in any forthcoming music. In addition to working with AmeriCorps, he’s participated in events advocating for health care for musicians, and he contributed the politically inflected song “Use Your Words” to fellow Nashville artist Matt Haeck’s 2017 compilation album Strange Freedom: Songs of Love and Protest.
“I definitely think that given today’s day and age, artists and musicians have a certain responsibility to bring some kind of light to the craziness that’s happening,” says Gilfillian, adding with a laugh: “Hopefully mommy and daddy at Capitol will accept that.”
Email music@nashvillescene.com
