DANA FUCHS “BLISS AVENUE” Q&A

On the day after finishing mixing my new album, "Bliss Avenue," I was asked to sit down and answer some questions.  The following is what transpired.  

Enjoy and I can't wait for you to hear the new music!  

- Love, Dana

It’s been two years since the release of “Love To Beg,” what’s changed in your life?

The last two years of living on past the death of my brother has taught me so much and I imagine that is reflected in the new material. Living on the road is a hard life and often requires much personal sacrifice, including time with friends, family, relationships and so on. It’s hard to maintain personal relationships when you’re gone so often. They need nurturing and upkeep. When you’re gone most of the time you get home ready to connect - but things have changed. Friends have all started families, gotten married, etc. Romantic relationships really take a toll as well. You’re often leaving someone behind and lonely and that’s a lot to ask. While the road life looks glamorous to the un- indoctrinated, it’s often a very lonely existence. When the world is asleep and you are far from your corner of existence with no one to talk to or hold on to, it can be difficult. That’s what the song “Long, Long Game” is about. But when it’s in your blood as it is mine, you can’t walk away from it. It’s a life force that’s really hard to explain.

Catch us up on where you are now - musically, spiritually, artistically, personally, socially and professionally, etc.

Haha! In light of what I just said, I suppose it’s safe to assume that I’m really in a reflective and introspective place right now on all counts! When you have to spend so much time traveling and away from all of your comforts and relations, the only way to survive is to go inside, which is what I started doing a few years ago when I found meditation. For me, it became the only way to survive touring and now I realize it’s the only way to survive life! I’m trying to strike a balance in my personal and professional life. Sometimes it’s hard to relate to your social network when as a woman, all my friends are becoming mothers and I’m still living the life of a rock and roll vagabond. You start to gravitate more toward other vagabond souls along the way, as represented in the track, “Vagabond Wind.” All of this starts to culminate and you either evolve or die. So, I’m trying to evolve on this album of music and reflect the universal strife and struggle I see all around me as I travel much of the world. While the album content may seem dark, I’m not in a dark place at all, but rather a very hopeful place for music, spirituality and mankind. It often takes looking into the dark soul to see the light.

Last night marked the last day of tracking and mixing your new CD “Bliss Avenue” - describe what you are feeling today.

Well, I’m relieved to be done - but when you spend day after day in the bubble of the studio with the same group of people, you come out a bit dazed and wondering what’s next? Will it be any good? Is what I’m doing even making sense? You have to trust that there are people who want to hear your music and at the same time maintain faith that they will like it because it’s honest. And I can certainly say without question it is that!

What’s next as you prepare to have a new finished album on your hands?

Right now it’s all about setting up the tour and working out the marketing and release plan with our label. That’s the hardest part for me – devising a way to get your music heard by new people. Trying to get it played on radio and reviewed in the right publications and hope that the reviews are good. It can all be overwhelming and distracting from what’s at my core. Fortunately for me, it ultimately all comes down to playing live so that’s what I’m mostly focusing on personally. I’m excited to work the band into shape to be able to deliver this music the way I intended it! Then, I’d like to spend some more time in the US this year. The last two years have also taught me that the USA is a great country in which to tour! It’s just a bit more expensive to tour domestically but you have to get out there and bring the music to the people.

“Bliss Avenue” marks an inflection point in the evolution of Dana Fuchs as an artist in particular. It’s not a direction change but is it maybe a reinvestment of sorts in your musical and HUMAN roots. Can you describe that?

Beginning with the album title and title track “Bliss Avenue,” this album is a collection of songs based on the human condition of suffering as we are all struggling to find a bit of peace and our own little slice of happiness. However, we often try to find this relief in temporary fixes, like too much alcohol, drugs, food, attachment to other people, religious ideologies, addiction to technology and so on. None of these things from their own side are “bad” per se but when we believe they are a true source of happiness then we end up quite disappointed, to say the least and at times downright depressed or mentally ill. Hence the songs, “Living On Sunday,” & “Bliss Avenue,” “Rodents In The Attic,” “Handful Too Many,” How Did Things Get This Way,” “Keep on Walkin’,” actually pretty much every damn song on the CD!

Perhaps a distinction from “Love To Beg” which was a kind of musical mosaic, “Bliss Avenue” seems to charge forward lyrically determined to assemble tales of lives loaded with suffering but always with a hand on the relief valve at all times. The songs are all plump with imagery and the stories range from seemingly autobiographic screams from the balcony, to narrative point-of-view jilted lover satire, to picaresque novellas and even paranoid internal monologue rants! Talk about where these stories came from within you and if you can give a bit of perspective on why the album seems different, maybe more mature, than your past work?

I suppose the growth of my writing started with canceling a tour for the first time in my life to be at my dying brother’s bedside and holding his hand as he passed away. That’s what the song, “So Hard To Move” is about. Every song is about the experience of finding peace when you realize there is nothing externally that can bring you joy OR grief. For my brother, who was a tortured soul, it was not until he fell asleep for good that peace seemed to come. It’s really all in the mind. We have the power to change our entire world simply by changing our perception of it. Much easier said then done, but we won’t usually get there until we’ve exhausted all possibilities and learned for ourselves that comfort through escape using external means mentioned above, is not only fleeting, but almost always damaging. 

We all know that a couple glasses of wine are a good thing for health and relaxation but when taken too far to numb mental anguish, the headache is often worse than the heartache! For instance the song, “Nothing On My Mind” is about a girl who meets a guy and instantly falls in love thinking he will be the source of all her happiness. She falsely believes this new guy will fulfill all she is missing in her life and now she can finally be happy. It turns out he only wants sex, after she leads herself to believe otherwise and then she is left feeling lost and lonely. Next thing is the guy’s own karma ripens and when he falls in love with the girl he thinks is the answer to all his happiness, the same thing happens to him! This circle of suffering ought to be the way in which we learn and grow. If we don’t, we continue this down the futile path in pursuit of fleeting happiness “outside” the mind and for that, we continue to suffer.

“Love to Beg” made a similar statement lyrically, but it was coming from the angle of ‘how can we put ourselves in others’ shoes in any given situation and find compassion, thereby ridding ourselves of our own selfish pursuits through the realization that another person’s happiness is no more important to them than ours is to us!’ “Bliss Avenue” is the dark side of the existence of our self-grasping nature. Something we all do all the time and not because we are bad people but because we are human.

Talk about the album musically. How did you approach the songwriting on this album? Any co-writes?

I wrote all but two of the songs on “Bliss Avenue” with Jon Diamond. The songwriting approach varies, sometimes I’ll have all the words ready to go and will send them to him to put music to and other times Jon will record some riffs and/or a melody idea and it will spark something in me to write. Often times a mumble from Jon will evoke a word or a phrase and I’ll run with it!

Jon and I co-wrote “Handful Too Many” with another musician during a fun jam with lots of wine at my apartment. I had the lyrics typed up and they each came up with some interesting music and we put it down on an iPhone right there.

I started the lyrics to “Rodents in The Attic” after a phone call with someone very close to me who’s husband was drunk and ranting in the background after being on the wagon for a while. I asked what had sparked this recent binge and she said, “well, he heard rodents in the attic” and it was driving him insane. I hung up laughed, cried and wrote the chorus immediately. A very talented musician and writer friend of mine was here at the time and took the song lyrically and added some great dark verses. Literally moments later, another dear friend and brilliant guitarist/songwriter wrote me asking if I had any lyrics for her to put music to! So I sent them over and less than 2 hours later had a demo of the melody! One of the fastest most synchronous songs I’ve ever written. I’m very particular about who I’ll write with and I never usually co-write lyrics, but when you have the right people around you who really get where you’re coming from it works! I’ve had more than a few famous writers pitch songs to me that were so far away lyrically from anything I could get behind that I turned them down much to the dismay of record label people and managers. I have to stick to what I believe and believe what I’m saying or it’s not worth it!

You chose to self-produce this album in your hometown. What led you to arrive at that choice of direction?

After interviewing several producers, Jon and I decided our own vision for producing was going to give us a more sincere and authentic representation of our music.  It's a calculated risk that we had to take to stay true to ourselves and hopefully the listeners of this album will agree!  Much like the co-writing thing, you have to find someone who

really “gets” what you do and wants to help you achieve it and isn’t just looking for a paycheck.  This is hard to find and by the time we found a wonderful producer in Memphis, the timing just didn’t work

out. 

Personally, you took more of a leadership role in producing this album. Talk about how you have evolved as a producer, both Executive Producing, which you have always done, and musically, which is newer territory for you on this album.

I learned with my last CD “Love To Beg,” that if I write the songs, I sort of know how I want to deliver them. This means tempos, mood, vibe, etc. In the past, I always knew if something was right or not, but I didn’t quite know exactly what was making it work or not work and more importantly, how to communicate that. Working on the “Across The Universe” soundtrack was like getting a doctorate degree in studio recording and it really fortified my confidence. Now, I’m on the third studio album of my own and I’ve learned how to spot the issues much quicker and I know how to call out the solutions. Sometimes the tempo is 3 beats per minute too fast, or too slow, which makes a subtle but CRUCIAL difference. 

I have been dancing around on stage playing percussion while I sing long enough that I have become the tempo police when we record! When doing my vocals, I know to listen back and if there’s one line that sounds thrown away or dialed in, it has to be redone. Every word needs to express the emotion of the song otherwise no one will get it and it leaves me cold.

You’ve assembled a great cast of musicians to bring your songs to life. Who’s on the record and why?

I realized that you have to hire the best musicians (who are also experienced in the studio) to help you reach your vision. It’s such a collaborative effort. I’ve had many great players on all my CD’s but this time I went with studio veterans and it really added so much.

I’m proud so say I hand-picked these musicians and spent the time talking to them about the music and sending demos with my own notes of the visions I had. I’ve never done that before. It proved to be so helpful and empowering. 

The line up is:  Shawn Pelton on drums, Jack Daley on bass, Glenn Patscha on keys, of course Jon playing his ass off on guitar. We added Tabitha Fair and Nicki Richards on background vocals and we have Tim Hatfield engineering again and co-producing with me and Jon.

Do you feel more than ever that this album MUST BE HEARD? Describe that passion and how it fuels your intention.

I’m excited for people, especially those fans who have stuck so close with me, to hear “Bliss Avenue” because I really purged my soul in a starker more naked way, both lyrically and musically. I got so emotional (to the point of tears) singing several of these tunes that are so close to home like “So Hard to Move,” “Bliss Avenue,” Long, Long Game,” & “Vagabond Wind.”

What would you like to see happen with “Bliss Avenue?”

I’d like Bliss Avenue to reach people in a way that’s meant to be inclusive. Not like, ‘here’s my world and my story,’ but rather, here’s my story, can you relate? Can we all just agree that we’re in the same boat called life together and help each other find peace and happiness in our hearts and minds and not in the usual damaging roads (or “avenues”) we often travel? Talk amongst yourselves.

When audiences experience the upcoming “Bliss Avenue Tour” what’s in store for them?

I’m so raring to go for this tour! The band is tighter than ever and for most shows we’ll have the organ, which keeps the Rock & Roll Church alive!

Is the Church of Love located anywhere on “Bliss Avenue” or is that in a bygone town now?

“Bliss Avenue” is the road that leads right back to the Rock and Roll Church of Love! It’s both an extension of the Church of Love and a reminder of why we need to be there and stick together!

Your gratitude, Humanist message of unity and the authentic connection to audiences that you make sure to make, is a hallmark of a Dana Fuchs live show. What message and connection can we expect when we are on “Bliss Avenue” with you?

I’m ready to connect to every soul out there who wants to come on board! I’m ready to spill my guts and my sweat on them and cover myself in their guts and sweat. (eww) As always, I will give all my heart and soul to every show and hope the audience will continue to give me theirs.