Hi! I'm Davin Kingston. This album, Before I Move On, is the culmination of my life up until college. I first moved in my Sophomore year from Clermont, Florida, to Gainesville, Florida; a transition that, though it wasn't very far, shook me up to my core. Looking back, I see it was the for the best, but at the time teenage angsty Davin definitely wouldn't have said so.

For the first couple of months I would lock myself away in my home studio and write sad songs detailing my emotions; thank god those songs were never released. My plan was to create an album called "Before I Move" (sound familiar?) and release it all alone as a solo project, however, it never felt quite right, and as I continued to grow in my craft, I would discard old projects as fast as I made new ones.

As I spent more time in Gainesville, I started to feel more at home. I fell in love with the choir program and the area. I started to make some of the best friends of my life (many featured on this album, spoilers!) who got me through the treacherous trials of high school (intense, I know). I expanded my little haven recording studio and invited my friends to come in and record! Wow they were all awesome. I co-founded a band with two of my best friends, Christian Boria and Gus Knudson, called Away From Stress; later, Collin Stivender was added. Though they were a year older than me, we spent our collective upperclassmen years creating an album called "City of Egypt" (check it out, you won't), The memories made during the process and post-release are some of the best of my life that I know I will cherish forever; performing a song we had written on-stage in front of the whole school for example. Thank you guys for everything, and can't wait to make music with you again.

After they graduated, Christian went on into the marines (Oorah!) and Gus went to study composition in North Carolina. I had a blast my senior year with some of my other best friends, being a leader in the choir program and writing songs the whole time. By the end of the year, I had amassed a huge amount of songs under my own name that hadn't been released, featuring many of my friends from Gainesville. Though they were fully recorded and had been performed at local open mics, most of the world had no way of hearing them. I had been accepted to NYU and was going to go in for engineering; however, I realized this was not what I wanted to do. I decided to go to Berklee with my audition scholarship and go into Music Production.

Right after this, I decided I would release an album. Going back to what I had originally had 3 years before, I decided that "Before I Move" didn't feel quite right; it didn't have any optimism. I changed it to Before I Move On both because it showed excitement for the future and the sadness of leaving my friends. I wrote some songs in this period and carefully picked some of my old ones, arriving at the 13 that are here today.

The album would be NOTHING without all my friends providing there lovely voices, playing, and advice/critique. Thank you to Gus Knudson, Luke Adams, Dylan Moore, Marisa Martin, Madison Peters, Andre Bostic, Molly Diblin, K.C. Johnson, Collin Stivender, and Alanna Parfait. Thank you for all your support and always being there for me. I mention these people by name because they helped specifically with the album by playing on it or featuring on it, but there are so many more (Christian, Jacob, Camila, Alex, etc.).

Thanks especially to Gus, who on his breaks from college came back and helped me so much. Without him, this would have been insurmountable. Thanks especially to my dad, who is the best piano player I know and my eternal best friend/rock.

I love you guys.

Hopefully, when you listen to the album, you can hear not just my message and voice, but the combined passion and message of all my friends. Thanks so much.

~Davin

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Before I Move On

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Before I Move On

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