Coming soon to a couch near you! We’ve been booking some intimate home shows in the Portland area this summer and are looking for some more homes to invade. So if you would like to host an Acoustic Living Room Concert please let us know!
0 About Dawson
As a brief introduction I am a Christian singer/songwriter living just outside Portland, Oregon with my lovely wife Jessica. I have been leading worship and writing songs for more than 20 years and was once described as “Dave Matthews sings Rich Mullins.”
For those who really want some biographical bullet points my musical journey began in the womb with my dad playing guitar and banjo and my parents subjecting me to CSNY and John Denver. My parents divorced when I was young, but the musical heritage had planted roots that would spring up later.
In the early 80s shortly after my mom remarried a wonderful godly man, my parents became missionaries and joined YWAM (Youth With A Mission), serving at the Kona base in Hawaii. Even as a child, while my parents were team leaders and later on staff, I witnessed amazing acts of God’s faithfulness and answers to specific prayer. There were some difficult and rough patches, but looking back I can see how much growing up in such a tight knit community, where we served and praised God on a daily basis, really impacted my life and later on my songwriting.
At a young age I noodled on piano by ear but it wasn’t until we moved back to Oregon at the start of junior high that I began to learn my first musical instrument—the flute. I still play flute occasionally on some songs, but it wouldn’t be until my junior year in high school that I picked up the guitar—somewhat by accident as the lesser of two evils. I had an open period I needed to fill and the only two options were ceramics or beginning guitar. Since the guitar class was taught by my band director, and I was already more musically inclined, guitar won out!
And that marked the beginning of my songwriting days in 1990. I continued to write songs when I went away to college at Oregon State University in 1992 (Go Beavs!), and began to lead worship for Bible studies, Campus Crusade, Young Life and at various churches. Since then I have written several hundred songs and recorded over a dozen CDs, playing for small living rooms, coffee shops and for crowds of thousands. At the end of the day, though, I much prefer gathering together with a group of friends and leading worship in a small home group, so if you have room on your couch let me know and I’d be happy to swing on by!
We are currently working in the studio on a new full-length CD and several singles from the project are available on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon along with the rest of my discography. Some of the most recent songs include “Jehovah Jireh”, “Shades of Grace” and “Turn Your Eyes”. This spring we have been scheduling some living room acoustic concerts in the Portland area as well as various coffee shops around the state, so stay tuned for some additional dates happening later this summer.
Please read more about my vision for my music and ministry.
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