David Borne

David Borné believes a song can change a life.

He has watched it happen in his own life, in a combat veteran's, and inside prison walls. "The art and act of songwriting can be used to heal trauma," he says, and he has spent the last decade proving it. Every show he plays comes from that place.

Borné is a Nashville-based Americana singer-songwriter who performs solo, with his band, or as a duo with his wife Anna Grace. He built his chops in bar bands from Louisiana to Tennessee, and it shows in a room. Before booking him at the Acoustic Lounge in Crystal River, Florida, promoter Gene McGee asked a few songwriters he trusts what he was getting. One told him, "He's the best of us." McGee's verdict after the show: "He absolutely owned the Acoustic Lounge. Our audience loved him, we immediately wanted him back."

He has shared stages with Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Sierra Ferrell, Ruston Kelly, Lainey Wilson and Brothers Osborne. His songs have been recorded by William Clark Green, Charlie Mars and Fancy Hagood, among others, and his work as an artist and writer has earned more than 3 million streams, including a #1 song in Texas. His 2016 debut EP, Break My Heart, reached #4 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart. His full-length GENESIS (2023), produced by Jarrad K (Ruston Kelly, Lucie Silvas) and engineered by GRAMMY winner Gena Johnson (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, John Prine), was called "a masterpiece" by Revival Roadshow.

The purpose behind the music took hold in 2017. Burned out on bar gigs and the music business, Borné wrote a song with a combat veteran living with severe PTSD. A year later the man told him the song had saved his life. "It was a defibrillator on my fading musical heart," Borné says, "and the moment that led me to the work I do today."

Today he and Anna Grace facilitate a 10-day songwriting and performance workshop in prisons through Beyond Bars, founded by songwriter Caitlin Cannon with the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, FL. Twelve programs and more than 150 graduate songwriters later, each cohort ends with a concert where incarcerated men perform their own songs for their peers. "Where they were once hurt people hurting people," Borné says, "they are now healing people healing people." He also works with veterans through Creativets and offers trauma-informed songwriting classes for at-risk groups, available alongside performances.