BF: You’re doing a lot of things like these that have a purpose or a message behind it. Is that something that’s always been important to you, or is that something else that just developed as you traveled down this proverbial road?
SED: Go back to when I was hired to write Powerful Day for P94 Spectrum School. I had never worked with that population before and I was just a writer. I was just doing whatever I was trying to do in the business. I sat down with this group of ten students, and I started dialoguing. I had my notebook and I was asking them about their experiences, just to learn. I went home that weekend and based on what they had said, I wrote a song called “If the World Only Knew” and it became their opening number, which I taught everybody on Monday.
I never in a million years thought that that song would eventually be sung around the world. At that moment, it was just for them. Musical Theater International produced a documentary called Spectrum of Hope, where I took those kids, went to Atlanta, performed in this big 5,000 person festival. And it was getting to know them and getting to know that population that made me realize that I want to represent them in theater. Because they all need it, and I just wanted their voices to be heard in ways that they couldn’t necessarily do for themselves.
That’s where it started, and I think it found me rather than me going out and seeking it. Even with [the subject of] dementia, it became a thing that I was writing about and doing really well writing about. It just became another thing that I just said, “Okay, well, this is something that I feel passionately about.” But rather than me waking up one day and saying, “I am going to find a cause,” it definitely organically found me.
BF: In the middle of all this, you also have amassed a TikTok following as the “Prince of Snarkness,” which everyone strives for that kind of audience. How did you become a social media star?
SED: I was lying in my bed and I was talking about Tik Tok and I didn’t know how it worked. I didn’t know what it was. So I just said to myself, “You know, I’m going to take this pandemic to do something different. I’m going to use it,” because I teach voice and piano students and I have all my music. “Well, maybe I can use TikTok to get my music out there. Maybe I can use it to build new students, do voice lessons.” I didn’t know what. None of that spoke to me. All I did when I flipped through TikTok was laugh. The only videos I liked were the ones that made me laugh.
I said to myself, “I do enough for my career. I want to do something that’s just an outlet for me, that is funny.” So I started doing Golden Girls lip-syncs. I love The Golden Girls, and I got all the wigs and every day I did a lip-sync, and it got exhausting because that content was hard to create and hardly anybody watched them anyway. Then I said, “Well, let me just see if I can do this easier and just talk and be funny,” because I like being funny. I like making people laugh. I always have. I just sort of did these sarcastic one-liner things and it really evolved. The more I did them, the more people followed me. I think I have like, I don’t know, 270,000 followers on TikTok or something like that since December [2010]. And it’s really just because people like to laugh.
What ended up happening was I started getting these followers who only knew me as this sarcastic sort of guy. I said, “I’m going to go live every morning.” I go live from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM EST every morning on TikTok and I do this little talk show. More and more people come in and we talk about everything, doesn’t matter what. And through that, I started sitting at the piano sometimes, I started playing my music. I even wrote a song on TikTok Live, which I then released. It’s all about my insecurities and imposter syndrome, called “Falling Everyday.”
I realized that I had an outlet. If I could draw people in with comedy somehow and then let them know who I really was and what I did with my life, they would have more of a vested interest. And it worked. So I don’t know if I figured it out; I just know that I tapped into something in a roundabout way.
For more with Scott Evan Davis, visit his website and follow him on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. You can also stream his music on Apple Music.
Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
TVBrittanyF.com 