About Southern Spirit Assembly

Many songwriters. One Assembly. One honest catalog of southern music.

The Man Behind the Music

Chris Davenport grew up in South Carolina, where the air is heavy, the summers are long, and music finds you whether you're looking for it or not. He grew up around country, gospel, rock, and the kind of blues that creeps in when nobody's calling it blues. By the time he landed in Nashville and started studying Music Business at Belmont University, he already had the foundation that would define his sound — a raspy baritone that draws comparisons to the greats without trying to be any of them, and a way of writing that starts with a chord and ends somewhere true.

He plays eight instruments, though guitar and piano do most of the heavy lifting. His songwriting process isn't rushed — a single song can take months or even years to get where it needs to go, built up over time from chord progressions, lyrics inspired by real moments, real places, and the quality of light on a particular morning. He works mostly solo, though he's found a strong community in Nashville's songwriter circles, and that community shows in the depth of what he creates. Every song in this catalog has been through the full process: written, recorded, mixed, and mastered with intention. It's a real southern foundation shared by all of the great writers of the Assembly.

Today, Chris runs Southern Spirit Music, LLC out of Nashville, Tennessee, focused entirely on the craft of writing and recording original southern songs. The songs are registered with Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) in the US and with other PROs around the world. The recordings are available to stream, to buy, and to use as pitch demos for film, television, advertising, as well as other commercial uses. But more than any of that, it's available to listen to — on a long drive, on a slow evening, or whenever the South is calling you home.

What We're Building Here

Southern Spirit Assembly exists to put original, Nashville-crafted southern music into the world — and to make sure it lands in the right hands. That means songs built with the same care and craft that the best of this tradition demands, published with the proper legal foundation so they can be enjoyed and licensed without complication, and presented in a way that respects both the music and the people who connect with it.

This isn't a hobby project. It's a real catalog, backed by a real publishing structure, built by someone who takes the South's musical heritage seriously. The mission is simple: original southern music is the business, and passion with craftsmanship goes into every single song.

How the Songs Get Made

Every song starts somewhere small — a chord progression that has an interesting weight to it, a phrase overheard at the wrong moment that won't leave, a view of something ordinary at a time of day when the light makes it look like more than it is. From there, the song develops on its own terms. Lyrics come from moments and places, not from formulas. The Southern upbringing bleeds into the stories. The Nashville training shapes the craft. The result is music that sounds like it came from somewhere real — because it did.

We write and record from many locations in the south.  The final mixes are completed in a home studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, using software and hardware tools and a setup that gives the recordings room to breathe without losing the intimacy that makes southern music worth listening to. No shortcut versions. No rushed releases. When a song's done, it's done right.

Stay Connected to the Assembly

If you want to hear about new music before it drops, get the occasional note from the studio, and stay part of what's being built here — the email list is the best way to do it.