Who says you can’t reinvent yourself in your 40s? Annie Davis is living proof that it’s never too late to chase your wildest dreams. In just the past few years, she’s launched a music career, shut down digital haters and tested her prowess on Survivor…all with pink hair and plenty of glitter. Obviously.

After a whirlwind stint on Survivor Season 49, Davis didn’t let a few days on coconuts and a tribal blindside define her story. Instead, she’s channeled those emotions into her band Trashy Annie — a high-voltage blend of rock, resilience and self discovery that flips a middle finger to anyone who ever said you shouldn’t be yourself. From backstabbing tribemates to vitriolic social media commenters who can’t fathom a 40-something flaunting pink hair and studded two-piece outfits, Davis has a knack for turning negativity into creative fuel.

This grit shines through on Let It Kill You, the sophomore album from Trashy Annie that dropped on Oct. 31. PopHorror caught up with Davis to discuss the heavier, punk-inspired sound of the new tracks, what sparked her decision to pursue music later in life, her short-lived but unforgettable Survivor experience and the special meaning behind her Halloween release date.

PopHorror: I’d love to hear about your musical background. I understand that you didn’t pick up a guitar and write your first song until your early 40s. That’s incredible! What inspired you to start making music?

Annie Davis: I grew up on food stamps, welfare, single parent household, super poor, that whole thing. I was in fifth grade and was like, “Man, there’s going to be no money for college unless I teach myself some kind of a skill.” So I ended up picking up a trumpet and teaching myself to play. I put myself through college on a trumpet scholarship. I loved music and I thought that was what I was going to do with my life. I was playing in every band I could. Then I got close to the end of college and was like, “Crap, what am I doing? I’m gonna end up right back on food stamps and welfare if I want to be a musician.”

So I made a big old pivot, left music altogether and got into the biomechanics world. I got my doctorate and started a company. Fast forward to right before COVID, I actually bought myself a drum kit because that’s what I’d always wanted to play and I wanted to pick up music again in some form. Then COVID hit and people don’t want to play with the new drummer anyway. No one’s like, “Yeah, come on down, by all means.” That was already a challenge on top of COVID. Nobody was getting together and I was going through a lot at the time with my company. I had to lay off 28 of my 30 closest friends because of COVID and it was just a dark time.

I’d lost my dad to cancer and I ended up picking up a guitar just thinking I wanted to write one song, conquer this fear I’d always had of singing in front of people and just move on with my life. But I ended up falling in love with songwriting. That’s how I was 44 at the time when I bought my first guitar and then released my first tune in 2021, right after COVID lifted. Then it just spiraled from there and I ended up putting a rock band together. Now, we’ve toured 21 states and two countries last year and it’s this crazy thing.

PopHorror: How was Trashy Annie born? Where did the name come from?

Annie Davis: It was a lifelong fear, this idea of singing in front of anyone. I had never even done karaoke. I was like, “This is terrifying to me.” So I wanted to feel empowered that I had done something scary. When I ended up falling in love with songwriting like I did, I put the song out into the world, but I had to learn so much. How do you even get a song on Spotify? What does a producer do? What is mixing and mastering? It was all of these things aside from just learning to write, sing and perform. So I’d done all this big, scary stuff to get to this point of putting the song out there and I was really proud of it.

I made a little homemade YouTube video because it was in the thick of COVID and I was like, “That’s what the kids are doing these days.” I was really proud of everything. I put it out there under my name, Annie Davis, and the very first comment I got was this woman talking about my clothes being too young for me. She was like, “Who do you think you are doing this in your 40s? What’s wrong with you?” It was heartbreaking because I’m a pretty tough chick with thick skin, but you put your scariest thing out into the world and they’re like, “What are you doing?” It’s a vulnerable place to be.

I was pretty heartbroken for a very short amount of time. Then I sat back and thought, “No, fuck this lady.” We should be able to do what we want, wear what we want and be who we are no matter age, size, purple hair or anything else. I ended up naming the band Trashy Annie and just leaning into the idea that we should always be who we are, no matter what age or what anybody has to say about it. So that’s where the band name came from.

It’s been such a cool thing because even in the Survivor world, people gave me endless crap about my hair. People were like, “Who is this girl dressing like she’s 20 when she’s almost 50?,” and blah, blah, blah. It’s super mean, like, this is really what you guys are spending your time on? Worrying about a stranger’s hair color? So it’s been cool to sort of carry that torch, especially for women, and just say, “You do you. Everybody should be able to be themselves.”

PopHorror: I love that you’re leaning into it. You should message that lady and thank her when you really pop off.

Annie Davis: Her screen handle, I’ll never forget it. I clicked on her profile because I was like, “Who would say something like this? I have to know what kind of person this is.” It was before I understood that there are trolls. I clicked on her profile and her thing was, “I love Jesus and beer.” I was like, “Oh, my God.” It was very off putting from an early stage with this whole social media thing. So I had to figure out how to lean into it and not let it hurt me because social media can be a really gnarly place for all of us. You’ve got to kind of take the good with the bad and let the bad stuff roll off.

PopHorror: Is that where the concept for your 2023 album Sticks & Stones came from?

Annie Davis: That is where Sticks & Stones came from! That was the first album that I released in May 2023. I’m super proud of it, it’s a cool album. The album art, it was after that lady said that, I thought, “How can I spin this in a direction that is sort of positive?” So I started screenshotting every mean thing people would say to me on social media. There’s some horrible things in there. And so I screenshotted it with their handles and everything, and made it the back album art. The front album art is a big, glittery middle finger.

PopHorror: Since then, have things gotten more positive for you? I saw in one of your YouTube videos that one fan requested you sign her boobs!

Annie Davis: I have signed more boobs in the last three months than I’ve ever probably seen in my entire life. [laughs] It’s so funny, I love it. I was playing a show in Portland, Oregon last night and somebody was like, “Hey, can you sign my boob?” The same thing happened in the middle of nowhere in Arizona a couple of weeks ago.

I feel like one thing that Trashy Annie shows bring is this really inclusive environment. It’s people from all walks of life. We get the gay guys, the motorcycle Harley guys, the little art school girls, the anime kids and the older ladies. It’s just so fun because these people are all right there next to each other having a good time, just listening to rock ‘n roll despite all of the craziness that’s out in the world. Despite the politics and all the darkness that’s happening to us right now, everybody can just kind of shut that out for a couple of hours and listen to some rock ‘n roll together. It’s a really cool thing.

So yes, I think leaning into the positivity of what music can be for people and the connections that it can make with people who otherwise would never relate to each other is such a cool thing. I love being in music for that reason.

Talking Sophomore Album Let It Kill You

PopHorror: You have your new album coming out on Halloween. Was that date intentional? Are you a horror fan?

Annie Davis: I am! I started watching horror movies with my dad from the time I was 5, much to the disappointment of my mother. She’s like, “What are you doing?! You can’t show our 5-year-old horror movies!” But we had the best time. I knew they weren’t real, I knew it was just a fake thing. I loved that whole genre. This next album is called Let It Kill You and that came about because I found this quote that I loved that said, “Find the thing you love and let it kill you.” I thought, “That’s what music is to me. It may kill me, but I will let it because I love it so much. I’m willing to put every ounce of myself into this thing.” Halloween just seemed like a fitting thing because it’s a little tribute to my dad, too, because we both loved watching horror movies together so much. It is a special time of year to me because of that connection.

PopHorror: Do you have a favorite movie that you used to watch with him?

Annie Davis: Oh, my God, we watched so many. I’m a big Quentin Tarantino fan and I know those aren’t full horror genre, but I love all of his kind of grittiness. I love his soundtracks, too. But yeah, my dad and I watched the campiest stuff. We watched everything you could possibly get your hands on. He would usually fall asleep and I would be like, “Dad, you have to wake up, the scary part’s on!” It was such a fun memory that I have with him. So I don’t have a favorite, we just watched them all.

PopHorror: Talk to me about the creative process behind Let It Kill You. Have you evolved musically/artistically at all since Sticks & Stones?

Annie Davis: I think there are some similarities and some differences between this and the last album. The similarities are that I’ve always envisioned the way that I do music as being kind of a mixed tape style, where one song might be metal and the next song might be a little country, then there’s some hip hop and on and on. Sticks & Stones was like that, where it had some very heavy country, Nashville-y vibes, then it had some heavier rock ‘n roll stuff. But it leaned a little more in the Southern rock genre.

The next one is a little heavier, a little more of a punk vibe. It’s still got one or two songs that could probably fall into the Nashville country realm just because the way I write is, I usually do the lyrics first and the hook to the chorus, then I try to wrap whatever music around the song makes the most sense. If I’m writing about a breakup, country probably fits. If I’m talking about all the head shit, my migraines and going crazy, metal probably fits. That’s my creative process and then the album ends up putting itself together in whatever way it puts itself together. So I think it’s going to be a cool one. I love this album. I think I like it a little bit more than Sticks & Stones, which is crazy because I love that album. But this one feels like my baby, for sure. I’m excited to get it out there.

PopHorror: You’ve released some singles. I particularly love the Buckcherry “Crazy Bitch” cover, it’s so fun. Will they all be on the new album?

Annie Davis: “Crazy Bitch” won’t be on the next one. It was a little bonus track that we decided to release because it was timely with Buckcherry going back out on the road. It’s just such a fun tune that is so ridiculously misogynistic. I was like, “How do we take this thing and turn it on its head as a female?” It was a really fun cut to do. But everything else, the other singles we’ve released, will be on there for sure.

We’ve got “Some Strange,” which was a co-write with Thommy Price, who has been Joan Jett’s drummer for 40 years. We actually just lost him a week and a half ago. He passed away and was an awesome friend of mine. It’s been a hard week. We’ve actually got an album that we were half done with that I’ll finish myself as a tribute to him. But I’m so happy that song is on there because it’s such a special thing to get Thommy’s name on that album. He was such a legend.

Then I did a cover of [Paul Simon’s] “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” that’s a punk version which will be on there. Then we just did two more releases — “Big Red Bow,” which has got a little hip hop to it, and then “JAKE,” which is a fun little tune. Those are all on the album and then we’ve got a whole bunch more. There’s 12 songs on this one.

The Trashy Annie Concert Experience

PopHorror: You played a bunch of shows in October and have an album release show as well. What’s it like for you to play a live show? What can audiences expect?

Annie Davis: Oh man, they’re fun. Obviously I think they’re fun because it’s my band and I have a good time no matter what. But from a fan and audience perspective, we just have a good time together. It’s glitter, rock ‘n roll, sweat and high energy. And like I said before, it’s all these people arm in arm that maybe wouldn’t end up in the same room together in the normal world. I think that’s one of my favorite things, when you got some guy that looks like a big, burly Harley rider showing up in a tutu and glitter because he was like, “Yeah, I can be myself in this room.” The shows are very much like that.

We had a show in Portland last night and people came decked out in their sequins, tie dye, glitter, cat ears and all the things. It’s just so fun. It feels to me like a miniature version of a Mardi Gras vibe where adults just go and open up their toy boxes of floofy dress-up clothes and pick out whatever they can.

PopHorror: Have you gotten any feedback from other women who, because of you, feel empowered to dress how they want, dye their hair after maybe feeling like they couldn’t?

Annie Davis: I get that all the time and, to me, that feels like the reason to be here — to make other people feel like they’re okay. I feel like that’s why I’m on this earth. That feels like a kind of martyr statement, which is ridiculous. I’m not here to show the world they can have pink hair, but I kind of am in a way. I feel so strongly that we should all be able to lean into who we are and chase whatever dream we have for ourselves. So when I get those messages from people who say, “You made me feel like I can do this. I’m 65 and I just picked up the drums,” it gives me the tingles to think about that kind of stuff.

Women my age and older is a huge population of who I feel like I resonate with, but I also got an awesome message regarding Survivor from the parent of a little girl named Aurora who’s 5. She was holding up her little sign saying, “Annie, you’re the best,” and, “Kele tribe,” with a little picture of me with pigtails and pink hair. The message was something along the lines of, “My daughter picked you in our family Survivor fantasy draft and you have shown her that it’s okay to be yourself and fight for the people that are okay in their own skin.” It was such a cool thing. Not only can I hopefully inspire people my age to be themselves, maybe we can get them earlier. Maybe we can teach little girls that they don’t have to listen to all of this crazy stuff the world is saying about them on social media, the mean girl high school group. Just be yourself and be okay with that because you’re great just how you are.

PopHorror: We need more cool female icons to look up to!

Annie Davis: It’s hard to find role models as a 50-year-old woman. There’s a handful you can look up to, the Joan Jetts and the Dolly Partons, and be like, “Holy crap, you ladies knew how to do this.” But there’s not many of us, especially not many in rock ‘n roll. It feels like it’s a little bit of a sausage fest out here, so I’m trying to do my part for the ladies in this industry.

Survivor and the lessons learned

PopHorror: I’d love to pivot into your Survivor experience. I’m so sorry your time was cut short! What inspired you to go from the stage to the islands of Fiji? Was this something you’ve been wanting to do for a while?

Annie Davis: I wouldn’t consider myself a superfan because I can’t even tell you who won last season, but I have always respected the show. I’ve always loved it. I’ve watched every season in some capacity with my family. It’s a big thing that we do during dinner — we watch that and The Amazing Race. I love both of them. I had always thought about The Amazing Race because that one feels more my jam. I’m not good at knowing when people are lying to me and I’m not good at lying to other people. I knew the social component was going to be such a challenge, but that’s why I wanted to do it. I wanted to see how I’d do in something like this. I’ve done lots of physical challenges, I’ve done Iron Mans, I’ve climbed mountains, started companies, have done mental stuff, but the social stuff is a whole different world. I’m used to just being a lone wolf, putting stuff on my back and doing it. So as it turns out, I’m not good at it. [laughs] That’s what I learned on the island.

But I did love the adventure and I applied because I wanted to challenge myself. When I got the call, I thought it was spam. I said, “There’s no way that they’re actually calling me back to be on this show.” So when it actually happened, it was such an honor and such a cool thing to be part of. Yes, I would have also liked to last longer, but I had a great time every step of the way. It was cool to be a part of it no matter what.

And really, the Survivor community, they don’t care where you place. It’s not about that. It’s about, wow, we had this shared experience and all of a sudden are friends and part of this cool club of people who’ve done this crazy thing, from Season 49 all the way back to 1. [Season 43 contestant] Mike Gabler was at my show last night and I was like, “Oh, my God, you’re awesome. Everybody loves you.” So many people have shown up at shows. That’s part of the exciting thing about being in this community.

PopHorror: Was there any challenge or specific aspect of the game that you didn’t get to experience that you wish you did?

Annie Davis: It would have been really nice to have fire! I would have loved to take a crack at starting fire, maybe eat anything besides a coconut. I really wanted to try fishing. I wanted to pull some stuff out of the sea and try cooking it with the fire that we created. But none of that came to fruition, unfortunately, because we never got fire with the Kele tribe and I got out too early. I didn’t even get to hold an immunity idol because we also never won anything. But you know what? I got to check tree mail. I got my little tree mail necklace, so that was cool. But there were some experiences I would have definitely liked to have…probably a lot of them actually.

PopHorror: That tribe was cursed. I felt so bad! There’s always one tribe that just can’t seem to win and loses all its members.

Annie Davis: I will say, one of my beefs with the current new era Survivor, I don’t like the three tribe thing. I think that it is too hard to come back from a loss. If you lose the maroon challenge and then also the fight for supplies, you are all of a sudden very quickly at a disadvantage when it comes to the next challenge. And every season has their challenges, but our season was so depleting because it was so hot. The fact that we couldn’t eat anything every single challenge became that much more of a mental struggle because we were just so out of it and loopy. The puzzles were a disaster for us. I think some of that was just because we weren’t a good puzzle tribe in general, but I also think we were just so loopy. It was really hard to mentally put everything together.

PopHorror: How do you function on essentially no food for days on end? I’m the type who always has a snack bar or something in my purse.

Annie Davis: For me personally, that was one of my superpowers. I’m used to trekking around in a van, not knowing when I’m going to get to eat and eating super late after shows, if I get to eat at all, picking something up from a gas station when we have 10 extra minutes. I’m used to really dysfunctional eating, basically. And like I said, I’ve also done so many long races where you’re just out in the woods and you don’t have food for sometimes hours and hours. So I was used to that side of things. I’ve sort of trained my body to be able to struggle.

That was one of the bigger bummers about not lasting longer. I felt like as the conditions got harder, I’d actually do better. I’d be better than some of these other people because I know how to suffer through stuff like this, through not eating and sleeping in the elements. None of that stuff bugs me. I didn’t care about that. Though the coconut gets old after a while, but sometimes you’ve just got to force it down. Nobody likes the taste after five days, but it’s not about that — it’s about putting something in the body so we can try to win a challenge.

PopHorror: What was it like going home, transitioning from that experience and back into your daily life and musical world?

Annie Davis: That’s a really good question. Nobody’s asked me that yet. It was hard. It’s almost still hard in some ways. Mind you, I was only out there for probably five or six days for filming. The rest of the time, I was at a place where there’s food and everything else. But it messes with your head. It was probably two months after I got back, I was running down the beach and saw a little crab and was like, “I think I could eat that. Wait, no, don’t eat that thing. I can’t eat you.” You just go into this mindset of survival mode, like, “Oh, there’s a piece of bamboo that would make a good shelter roof. Oh, look at that palm frond.” You look at the world a little differently, even after a very short time on the island.

When you come back, you’ve been deprived of technology. You had no phone, even though that was really great in a lot of ways. We didn’t even know what time it was out there, from the time you set foot at Ponderosa to the time you leave. Even though I was on the show for only five or six days, I was probably out there for three weeks. You don’t have access to any of your loved ones, the Internet or anything. So you do a lot of thinking, a lot of introspection and a lot of worrying. Why did I do terribly in this game? Do people not like me? Do they not like me in the real world? Are these people lying to me in the game? Is this what people are like in life? You start to question everything.

It’s like a micro nano version of coming back from war in that I can’t explain what I’ve done to people who haven’t been there. Only the people that were there with you understand what it was like. I do think it messes with your head pretty bad when you come back and are trying to deal with people in the regular world, wondering if they’re all lying to you all the time. So that was hard. I’m back now to being fine and all of us, the cast, we came together after the whole thing was done to heal the wounds and apologize to each other for things we said. Jeremiah [Ing] was talking pretty mad shit about me and he was the first one to say, “Oh, my God, I love Annie. I was just mad that I was hangry and she was off building the shelter while I’m bitching about her.” Everybody repairs the wounds that were created on the show, it just takes a little bit of time to do so.

PopHorror: Do you think this experience and everything that you’ve learned about yourself will influence your music moving forward, maybe on the next album?

Annie Davis: Definitely. When I came back from the vote out, because I was blindsided and didn’t see it coming, I was questioning so many things about myself and my relationships with people, but I couldn’t call my loved ones. I had Nic [Mazullo] there because she’d been voted out before me, but we kind of only had each other. So I spent a lot of time writing. I got a lot of my feelings on paper in a way that felt like I could come back and put them into song form. I’ve probably got a whole album at this point. I’ve got some stuff here that talks about a lot of those feelings that I had about questioning what’s going on in the world around me, how much you have to rely on yourself and learning that I can lose because I don’t lose very often in life.

I don’t think any of us do that go on a show like this. We’re used to being able to go back, figure things out and give it a second go. And this is a one shot deal. It’s hard to come to grips with the fact that we can fail, be okay with ourselves and look at it as, just because you didn’t win the $1 million doesn’t make it a fail. We got on the show. That’s like saying a 30-year marriage that ends in divorce was a fail. Well, it wasn’t. You had 30 years of something. It’s all bout how you spin it. I’ve come full circle to grips with that and I’ve learned a lot about myself, which is a cool thing. But yeah, it’s going to influence some of the stuff in the next album for sure in a good way.

PopHorror: Is there anything else that you want the fans to know?

Annie Davis: We’ve got a lot of touring coming along, so go to the website for the tour dates. And we’re going to be joining a ton of [Survivor] watch parties with Bryce [Izyah] and Wendell [Holland] through the end of the year. They host those all over the country. They’re big parties and fun. But we’re excited to tour and hopefully people can get to live shows because that’s one of the things we struggle with as artists these days. People will stream the music and maybe they’ll buy an album, but getting them to live shows is hard. We’re a live show band. I want people to know, please come to a show and support your favorite bands just by buying a ticket. That’s how you can help live music stay alive.

Thanks for speaking with us, Annie! Keep up with Trashy Annie at trashyannie.com/.