Jonathan Howsmon Davis (born January 18, 1971), also known as JD, is an American musician who is the lead vocalist and frontman of nu metal band Korn. A pioneering act of the nu metal genre, Korn's music along with Davis's distinctive personality influenced a generation of musicians and performers who have come after them.
Davis co-founded Korn in Bakersfield in 1993 with the dissolution of two bands, Sexart and L.A.P.D. He had led Sexart during his years as an assistant coroner. Davis rapidly gained notability for his intense and powerful live performances with Korn. From 2000 to 2001, Davis and Richard Gibbs wrote and produced the score and soundtrack album of Queen of the Damned, his first work outside the band. He began his side project called Jonathan Davis and the SFA in 2007 and continued to experiment with musical styles. He released his first solo album in 2018.
Davis is known for his personal, passionate lyrics and unusual tenor vocals. His vocals, which alternate from an angry tone to a high-pitched voice, switching from sounding atmospheric to aggressively screaming, have been the trademark of Korn throughout the band's career. He is also a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, drums, bagpipes, piano, upright bass, violin, and clarinet on occasion.
Davis has collaborated with various artists over the course of his career, ranging from metal to alternative rock, rap, world music, and electronic music. He has also mixed tracks and performed DJ sets as his alter ego, JDevil. For decades, Davis has been passionate about visual arts, horror films, comics and video games.
Early life Jonathan Howsmon Davis was born in Bakersfield, California, on January 18, 1971, the son of Holly Marie Chavez (née Smith; May 6, 1949 – February 25, 2018) and Ricky Duane "Rick" Davis (born December 14, 1948). His parents married on February 27, 1970. He is of English, German, Scottish, and Welsh descent.Jonathan Davis Bio . KornRow (January 18, 1971). Retrieved on August 25, 2013.
He has a sister, Alyssa Marie Davis (born February 8, 1974), as well as a half-brother, Mark Chavez (lead singer of Adema; born November 15, 1978), and a half-sister, Amanda Chavez (born July 31, 1981) by his mother.KoRn – Jonathan Davis and his sister | Video Youtube – NMETV Latest Music Videos and Clips . Nme.com. Retrieved on August 25, 2013. His father was a keyboardist for Buck Owens and Frank Zappa, while his mother was a professional actress and dancer. His parents divorced when he was three years old. He lived with his mother at first, but, after experiencing bad situations at that home, he moved in with and was raised by his father and former stepmother in Bakersfield, but was made to feel like he "came in and ruined their perfect little family." Davis suffered severe bouts of asthma as a child. Asthma forced him to stay in the hospital every month from the ages of 3 to 10, and he survived a "critical asthma attack" when he was five years old; he said, "My heart stopped, and I didn't see no damn light or hear any music".
He attended Highland High School; however, he was persistently harassed for wearing eyeliner, baggy clothes, and listening to new wave music. He was constantly called homophobic names, which later inspired the Korn song "Faget". Davis's "HIV" tattoo on his upper left arm was also inspired by his experience of being bullied. At the age of 16, Davis found employment as a coroner's assistant; after graduating high school, he immediately enrolled in the San Francisco college's one-year coroner program. He enjoyed his time in San Francisco, where he spent his days poring over embalming textbooks and his nights living and working in funeral homes. Nevertheless, he dropped out after two semesters to apprentice at a mortuary closer to home, in the Kern County Coroner's Department. He was also a professional embalmer for a funeral home.
Davis commented in Kerrang!: "I had post-traumatic stress from seeing dead babies, and young kids that had died after finding a parent's stash of drugs – shit that I shouldn't have been seeing at 16 or 17 years old. I had to have a lot of therapy to make the nightmares go away, but I got through it and it made me appreciate life a lot more."
He did not get along with his stepmother and has accused her of harassing him and giving him tea mixed with Thai hot oil and jalapeño juice to drink while he was sick. He also mentioned that she mixed tabasco with his tea. At that time, Davis had sexual fantasies about his stepmother, dreaming of "fucking her and killing her". Though she was later divorced by Davis's father, the Korn song "Kill You" was nonetheless written about her. In an interview for The Guardian, Davis said that he left home when he was 18 because he felt like "public enemy number one", since his stepmother—quoted as "twisted and sadistic"—hated him, and his own father was too embarrassed by the situation to do anything.
Career Early career Davis formed his first group with other members in a mysterious formation called Buck Naked, of which only two songs were recorded on demo tapes and distributed to his friends in high school; including the new wave-influenced song "What I Have Done", and a love song titled "Come With Me". Davis, who worked by day in a mortuary, got free haircuts at a college where guitarist Ryan Shuck was a student. Davis agreed to join Shuck's group called Sexart, which was formed in 1991. Davis described the experience by saying "I had no clue what I was doing, I didn't know what the hell to do with my voice".
Early in 1993, ex-band members of L.A.P.D. who had started a new group named Creep, noticed Davis at The John Bryant club in Bakersfield, and were overwhelmed by his performance with Sexart. Davis, who was already a friend of Reginald Arvizu's, was reluctant to join Creep, although he was flattered by the obstinacy of the musicians to integrate him into the group. Nevertheless, he only made the decision to audition with Creep after meeting the psychic who told him that it would be beneficial for him to leave Bakersfield, move to Los Angeles and join them. Davis left Sexart in his early 20s after a convincing rehearsal with the four Creep members; he commented: "I was a little torn, because I was doing Sexart at the time, and that was my band. But I wanted to go and see what it was all about, and from the first note I was hooked. It just all clicked." Enticed by the prospect of a musical career, Davis resigned from his employment at Bakersfield judicial police, and moved to L.A. with his girlfriend to live with David Silveria and Brian Welch in the same house in Huntington Beach. Davis proposed the idea of naming the band as 'Corn'—the spelling would be renamed right after as 'KoЯn'—in reference to the horror film Children of the Corn and a sexually explicit story from his gay friend.
Korn
Solo career
Davis first began working on a solo album in 2007, forming the group Jonathan Davis and the SFA (Simply Fucking Amazings). Although he released two live albums with the group, no studio albums were completed and the band disbanded in 2014 after the death of guitarist Shane Gibson.
In December 2017, Davis began announcing solo tour dates and festival appearances and the launch of his solo album planned for 2018, which would mark Davis's first billed simply as Jonathan Davis. He said of the album in a 2017 Louder Sound interview: "It's the Jonathan Davis And The SFA record, but JD SFA is no longer. Unfortunately, since Shane Gibson passed, that band's done and it can't be recreated. So this is J.D. right now."
In January 2018, Davis released his first solo single, "What It Is". On January 26, 2018, he released the music video for "What It Is", while the single was included on the movie's soundtrack for American Satan. At that time, Davis said he was "a big fan" of science fiction movies such as Blade Runner and Dune, and noted being an admirer of Vangelis. On May 25, 2018, he released his debut solo album, Black Labyrinth, on Sumerian Records. The writing process of Black Labyrinth—whose thematic focuses on "religion, consumerism and apathy"—was initiated on the road in 2007. Davis contributed mainly to the sound of the album, playing guitar, keys, and "anything else he could get his hands on to the record".
On October 1, 2020, Davis released an alternate country version of "What It Is".
On July 16 and 17, 2026, Davis performed a new orchestral arrangement of "Freak on a Leash" created by Japanese musician and composer Yoshiki during Yoshiki Classical 2026 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Solo band members Jonathan Davis – vocals Chris Nix – guitar Brian Allen – upright bass Sven Martin – keyboards Ray Luzier – drums Emilio "Zef" China – violin, rhythm guitar, backing vocals
JDevil
JDevil is the EDM alter ego of Davis. He has been DJing since 1987 while he was still in high school. At 16, before he joined Korn, Davis started out as a DJ working for Pacific West Sound and spun at high school dances and parties on the weekends in Bakersfield. At the time, his teachers were C-Minus, Choc, and Eric and Vidal. He used to spin New York freestyle, Miami bass, old school hip hop, goth, and industrial.
In 2009, he began to DJ again and he introduced JDevil to the world in 2011 at Infected Mushroom appearances.
In 2012, JDevil collaborated with Sluggo and California producer Tyler Blue, and while touring, he started working on an EP and writing every night in the studio of his tour bus. In March 2012 JDevil collaborated with Datsik and Infected Mushroom on a song called "Evilution", the tracks would appear on Datsik's debut album Vitamin D. JDevil was one of the opening acts for Korn on their The Path of Totality Tour from November 2011 – July 2012 in North America and Europe. While on a short break from touring with Korn in July 2012, JDevil had a short four-day club tour which consisted of The Junkyard in Nashua, New Hampshire, Pufferbellies Entertainment Complex in Hyannis, Massachusetts, Lizard Lounge in Dallas, Texas, and The Garden in El Paso, Texas.
In July 2012, JDevil had signed on to perform at select Identity Festival dates throughout North America. He only performed at two shows, Comcast Center (amphitheater) in Mansfield, Massachusetts, and Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia.
In 2012, JDevil was supposed to open for Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson on their Twins of Evil Tour at select dates in North America, but had to drop out of the tour due to exhaustion. Davis stated it was very important for him to evolve in different styles after two decades in Korn, he said in Rolling Stone: "It keeps me motivated. It keeps me being creative and not getting bored with music." In October 2012, Davis released his EP with his new group called Killbot, the EDM collective including Sluggo and Tyler Blue.
Other projects
In the early 2000s, while on tour, Davis was looking for artistic hobbies to satisfy his creative impulses and decided to team up with composer Richard Gibbs to write film soundtracks. Davis and Gibbs were introduced to each other through Zomba Music Group, which published their respective music at the time. Shortly after, Warner Bros. asked them to work on the movie Queen of the Damned, an adaptation of Anne Rice's third novel in The Vampire Chronicles and a sequel to the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire. Ten songs will be composed by the two men, but only five have been kept. These songs include "System", "Redeemer", "Forsaken", "Slept So Long" and "Not Meant for Me", and sung by the band The Vampire Lestat in the movie. While Davis's voice is heard performing the songs in the movie, through the singing voice of Lestat, contractual obligations kept his vocals from appearing on the soundtrack album released in 2002. Aaliyah, who died during filming, was supposed to record a duet with Davis.