About Me

Dana writes songs and sings her ass off fronting the soulful, rocking Dana Fuchs Band, based in NYC. Dana and her band are currently on tour all over Europe and the USA in support of her new critically acclaimed album, "Broken Down Acoustic Sessions." Dana also stars as the rock singer "Sadie" in Julie Taymor's film "Across The Universe."

Friday, October 02, 2015

Dana Fuchs "Broken Down" Tour Important Announcement!

I am so very sorry to say that I have to end the European tour early with the last show being on October 20.

As many of you know, my family and I have been through a lot of tragic loss very recently and now I need to take some time off to deal with some pressing matters of heart and health.  

Please know that it PAINS me to cancel.  I have pushed through each loss and continued touring each time, but this time I truly cannot.  I'm so sorry.

When the dates are rescheduled, you all will be the first to know.  Meanwhile, I do hope to see many of you on the tour now in Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and at my last two German shows (for a while.) 

Please join me on October 19th in Aschaffenburg, DE at Colos-Saal and October 20th in Bensheim, DE at Musiktheater Rex to continue to celebrate our very precious human lives together and end the year stompin' and sweating in our Church of Love and Music!
On what may seem to be a separate note, but I assure you is not, after I say a heartfelt thank you to all of you for getting me through such dark days and continuing to celebrate life with me these past few years, I also feel tremendously compelled to say thank you to author Katherine Boo, for her doctrine into a realm of human suffering I have been only loftily aware of, and for the most part shielded from, which is so starkly depicted in her beautiful and tragic book, "Behind The Beautiful Forevers".
I discovered this book 2 years ago thanks to a woman who reads this blog, in particular an entry I wrote about my week in Mumbai and my 5 days visiting the Annawadi Slum that Katherine Boo writes about.  A slum only minutes from my luxury hotel.  A hotel that so many of the slum dwellers only dream of being given, at best, the opportunity to fold napkins and steal garbage from the many dumpsters.  
The lessons from that trip were just a small whetting of my appetite to "know sufferings," yet I've still found myself feeling a seemingly fortunate sense of separation from what such a hell realm must really feel like.  

Katherine Boo so generously and dutifully covers this particular slum without even changing the names of her precious characters, like Asha, Adbul and Sunil, and I keep peeling back more layers of the indelible mark it has left on me and the ways in which it manifests that force me, at least for a fraction of a second, to recognize the preciousness of my own human life.  

Starting with the smallest things, like not wanting to just "toss" the extra condiments or utensils from my take out supper, because I know now that little Sunil, the 12 yr old malnourished orphan whose biggest hope is to grow a few inches taller and stay alive by scavenging this "trash" from treacherously death-defying and revolting places so he can sell it for maybe 50¢ a day to those only marginally more fortunate, would simply never have the luxury of such carelessness.  One person's trash is indeed another person's treasure.

I am now taking a series of flights and long drives on a tour that I've had to almost cut in half and I'm feeling the pressure of disappointed agents and promoters, the financial loss that impacts mostly me and my band and to all of you who have faithfully bought tickets and told your friends to come and planned for the dates!  I'm so sorry.  
All of this is reeling through my head as I sit stuffed in a tiny narrow coach class seat, poor me because I didn't get my upgrade, while under-appreciating the vegetarian pasta that I would normally call "pathetic" but now have the almost inconvenient awareness of how Sunil would likely give his life to have just one "rich person experience," as the slum kids call flying and this meal would be a FEAST for him and his entire family, so I stop my mind from going to this selfish luxury of dissatisfaction.  

Ok I know, we have all heard and rolled our eyes over the whole, "eat all of your dinner because children are starving in Africa" speech.  But the fact is, by now we all know that humans and animals ARE starving and suffering grave conditions everywhere. 
What if we stopped to contemplate this in a way that takes it from "an old cliche" that we've heard again and again and instead begin to check in with ourselves to see if it has really sufficiently moved our heart in a way that evokes and inspires change?  Small change, like asking the restaurant to hold the condiments and utensils.  Wasting less and appreciating more.  Patiently accepting life's "curve balls" knowing that for many of us, they are almost always "luxury problems."  
Can we make room in our hearts, not by dismissing our own suffering, but rather through our own suffering, can we contemplate ways to find empathy for everyone's suffering?

I can't help but wonder what impact this would have if we all just tried a tiny bit more to be conscious of that for all living beings.  

"Behind the Beautiful Forevers" keeps reminding me of just how much truth there is in the phrase, "a little goes a long way."

Anyway, as I am forced to cancel the last few weeks of this tour in order to be present for the "suffering" of others, my heart is moved with gratitude that I have the blessing of choice.

Lastly, I have released a new album.  Advance copies are available at my online store by clicking here.
The title says it all, "Broken Down". It is not only reflective of how the songs are recorded but also speaks to the heartache and perseverance of the last two decades of my music career. 

A career that thanks to you all, has steadily built over these recent years of touring non-stop and gives me a place to let it all out!  The album has been officially dedicated to my late family members and to all of you who celebrate life with me at every show.

Thank you all for not only being a part of my story but helping me to create it and for
 your unending love and support.  

I look forward to continuing to celebrate life, love, pain and joy with you.

Love,
Dana




Thursday, September 03, 2015

I’M BROKEN DOWN & ABOUT TO EXPLODE! (Help me go out with a bang y’all!)




As another year slowly begins to wind down, I reflect on the lessons learned.  Loss of a father and another brother took me to a deeper place of reflection than I've ever ventured before.  It took me closer to the people I love most and closer to the friends I’ve made all over the world, in large part thanks to music.  Friends who've shared my tears night after night, show after show.  Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have had this opportunity to share both the burden of grief and the joy of life with so many of you.  Our collective tears make an ocean of nectar which we can dive right into and explore, or upon which we can float peacefully, as we ride the waves both gentle and thrashing.  Thank you.

Now it’s time to go out in an achingly scorching blaze of fury and glory with a bang that’s been a brewin’ in me all year.  In other words, LET’S ROCK!  Here’s what’s going down...
For starts, I welcome to the band one of my first friends in NYC, the amazing Craig Dreyer on organ, piano and tenor sax. Craig is a NYC legend who has played with Greg Allman, Warren Haynes, Joan Osborne, Dispatch, to name just a few! 

Here’s what one critic wrote, "Craig Dreyer brings his heavy, blues-rock organ, barrelhouse piano and howling tenor sax to the Dana Fuchs Band's already big, powerful sound – and the result is pure excitement."  

After blowing away all of our audiences in the states since January of this year, I decided it was time to make it official and add Craig to the band.  I feel such a magical, musical and soulful connection with him, and on stage he makes me feel like a kid on playground again.   You’ll simply have to see for yourselves. 
And for some more exciting news… I’M BREAKING DOWN, after years of your requests, we are finally releasing our first acoustic CD, “Broken Down". Some of you have seen the acoustic show over the years and it’s YOU who planted this seed.

"Broken Down" is a compilation of stripped down versions of previously released and never before released songs.  It started with me and Jon Diamond going through our vast number of demos.  A couple of the tunes on "Broken Down" are the very first demo we created before going into the studio with the band.  For instance,   "Keepsake", "So Hard to Move", "Baby Loves The Life", "Misery", and others were demos of songs for producers and potential studio albums that still haven’t seen the light of day.  Plus, there is a healthy exploration of me creating new music with some different songwriting partners, such as, Ricky Ross (Deacon Blue), Jack O'Hara and Jon's brother, Pete Diamond.  We ice the cake with a cover version of "Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City" made famous by Bobby Bland!  

While this body of material has been “in the can” I just wanted the time to be right to release it.
Dad, Don, Donna and Dan
As I was going through the songs I kept staring at this photo of my late father, my late sister Donna, my late brother Don and my late brother Dan.  It became so clear to me that this body of work truly represents the span of my music career which I only seriously began after the suicide of my big sister Donna.  

The title says it all,  "Broken Down".  It is not only reflective of how the songs are recorded but also speaks to the heartache and perseverance of the last two decades of my music career.  
A career that thanks to you all, has steadily built over these recent years of touring non-stop and gives me a place to let it all out! The album has been officially dedicated to my late family members and to all of you who celebrate life with me at every show.
That’s why, starting September 4th in Erfurt Germany, "Broken Down Acoustic Sessions" will be sold EXCLUSIVELY from the stage so  all of you, who essentially made this album with me, can have it first before the actual release date of November 9th.   

And if you can’t make a show, fear not, just check the Dana Fuchs Store for details on how to get it.

I hope you’ll come celebrate life with me one last time before the year ends.  

AS ALWAYS, I thank you with all my heart and soul and love and tears and joy!
Love, Dana

Click here to see where I’ll be and to get your tickets: TOUR DATES





Saturday, June 06, 2015

SUMMER MADNESS!

It's gonna be a wild ride from the Royal Albert Hall to Rochester International Jazz Fest to Montreal Jazz Fest to Norway, Switzerland, France, USA and Ireland! 

Looking over all the upcoming summer tour dates and reflecting on this past winter/spring tour, I get a shocking reminder of how quickly life passes us by.  

It seems unfathomable that I was just wearing a winter coat and getting pummeled by snow in January and February during a Northeast tour! 
 Then without really coming up for air it was off to the Pacific Northwest and West Coast for most of March!
Now just barely back for a week from a gorgeous & rocking spring April/May run of Denmark, Norway, UK, France and Netherlands, here I am home for a minute making my "to do" list for the upcoming summer madness of bouncing back and forth between the two continents for festival season.
I am beyond excited to kick it all off next week in the UK at The Royal Albert Hall Lead Belly Fest for a very special show paying tribute to the legendary, blues, folk, soul artist Lead Belly.  I'll be sharing the stage with some pretty iconic artists that night including; Van Morrison, Eric Burdon and Paul Jones to name only a few! *Spoiler Alert*  I'll also be singing one of my favorite Led Zeppelin tunes, "Gallows Pole" (written of course by Lead Belly) with Ruf Records label mate, Laurence Jones.
Then it's back to the US and Canada where I'm thrilled to be playing festivals such as, Rochester International Jazz, (with Diana Krall, Jennifer Hudson, Gary Clark Junior and more,) Montreal Jazz Festival  (with Lucinda Williams, Beth Hart, Joss Stone and more) and then I'm finally returning to the amazing city of Pittsburgh for the Annual Pittsburgh Blues Festival (with Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Duke Robillard and more.)  

AND...AS IF ALL THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH...

Next, I'm returning to play at one of my favorite fests in the world, Notodden Blues Festival in Norway.  Robert Plant is headlining this year! Wow!
After that, it's back to one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, for the Magic Blues Festival in Vallemaggia, Switzerland, which is in the Italian part of the Swiss Alps where I swam in my very first waterfall! 
Summer Festival season will end for me in Ireland where I'll play for my very first time at The Harvest Time Blues Festival in Monaghan.  I'm a bit more than half Irish so I'm delighted to finally see my ancestor's gorgeous homeland!

Fall Tour Dates will be announced very soon and before we know it the season will change again.  But for now, I look forward to being in THIS moment with all of you. 

As always, thank you all for you continued support on every level.  I truly wouldn't exist without you.  

Much, Much, Love and Gratitude, Dana



Monday, March 02, 2015

TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST...AGAIN.



Most of us are quick to agree that it’s “better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all.” While I know deep down it’s got to be true, I can’t help but question that now after the loss of 3 siblings and my father - all far too young and unexpected.

Dad, Don, Donna and Dan
I know there are countless beings in this world suffering the grief of loss as I type, and that my situation is far from unique.  In fact, it’s just one of life’s promises - impermanence.  I try with each loss to find meaning and I keep coming back to the same answer,  this word that I have such resistance towards - impermanence.  I know that death is something none of us really want to think about, yet so many of us get these unfriendly reminders. Saturday, February 21st, 6 months to the day of my father’s death, my beloved brother Dan gave me another one of those reminders.

Dan was the 3rd child among 6;  Don, Donna, Dan, David, Doug, Dana.  Over the years I have loved joking about this “D.A.F.” initial phenomenon that my father (Donald Allen Fuchs) created and how my sweet, tiny, quiet mother (Sandra Marie Fuchs) accepted with good humor her exclusion from this club.   Now with my father, Don, Donna and Dan all gone, the rest of us are left behind swirling in the painful haze of losing most of our family and that joke feels so far away from passing my lips again.  Maybe in time…(Impermanence.)

After the loss of my father last July, Dan became my mother’s faithful companion and chauffeur (sharing that honor with my brother Doug, his 17 year business partner who lives a bit further away.) Dan living so close to my mother was such a healing factor for her as a recent widow.  In fact, Dan texted me Friday night at 7:20pm all excited about the meal he was planning to make for her on Saturday.  (Dan was a bonafide “foodie” and an absolute master on the grill.)   He had already bought the rump roast from Winn Dixie, which he planned to put in the slow cooker the very morning he left us.  

My mother went to wake him for their shopping date Saturday morning and he was gone.  Peacefully and quietly in his sleep.  Remarkably, late that Friday night before, Dan suddenly decided he wanted to go to my mother’s house to sleep.  He phoned her to make sure she was awake and they spent the evening watching Jimmy Fallon and talking until almost 2am.   Somehow, I think he knew where he wanted to just “let go." He knew where he was most safe and loved, in the house where he grew up, in his first childhood bedroom, with his mother just down the hall.

I have had the great good fortune of sharing a special bond with each of my siblings.  Dan was the only one of the six of us who didn’t play an instrument or sing - but he LOVED music.  He made me appreciate Metallica years ago and I got him absolutely hooked on Tom Waits.   He also convinced me to watch Dexter, Shameless and Californication and I turned him on to the poet and author, Charles Bukowski, which seemed to spark the writer in him that none of us knew.  Only a few years ago and totally out of the blue, Dan he emailed me his first short story, “Sunday Morning Paper."  It was Bukowski, Waits AND Dan all rolled into one!  I was blown away.  His sense of humor was so devastatingly and hysterically dark and his writing so authentic and raw.  Just like him.

While working long hours as a contractor, baking in the hot Florida sun to provide for his wife and 2 boys, Dan began to put himself through college online and recently got his bachelors degree in criminal psychology (boy did that influence his comedically dark writing!)  He was the only one of us all to actually finish school.  He was so proud of that.  As were the rest of us.  Dan and I loved talking politics and shared pretty much the same ideals (albeit he a little more radical with his conspiracy theories!) Of the six kids he and I were the tallest and by far the loudest!  Think “Foghorn Leghorn” and you get the idea of Dan.  ;-)  

Throughout most of our childhood, I only called him “Daniel-son” a play on "Daniel-san" from the film “Karate Kid.” As we got older, I affectionately shortened that to just “Son” which is the only name I called him for more than 20 years.  (Often greeting him singing “Son Son Son Here We Come” to that infectious Beatles melody.)  ;-)

Dan was an avid yankee fan and I had the great joy of being able to take him and his wife Patty to Yankee Stadium just a few years ago.  

Dan loved NYC and Mexico City, where his wife Patty is from and where they travelled together several times.   

Dan was my first real fan, coming to all of my local Holiday Inn shows on weekends where I played with my first professional band at 16 years old.  I was so grateful for his company because the band members and audience were all triple my age and none of my friends were old enough to get in!   He wasn’t so into the music but he had a crush on a gal who was coming around. ;-)  In fact,  it was one of those shows where Dan met the sister of his bride-to-be who shortly thereafter introduced him to Patty.   Once they decided (via a Spanish/English translator) to get married I nominated myself as the wedding translator since I was just beginning to learn Spanish.  I butchered the language but at least got some laughs and props for my inflection.  


Dan loved cooking and he loved good wine.  He loved being with family and commanding the room with his loud colorful stories.  He loved impersonating people and had mad talents in that department.  He loved life, even when it “sucked."


When his boys were younger Dan devoted his much limited time to voluntarily coaching their little league teams.  Before that he was part of Habitat for Humanity where he voluntarily helped build homes for the poor and needy.   Before that he was on the volunteer fire department.  Over the years, he rescued dogs and took his 4th stray (JoJo) in just months ago.  He had a big, generous heart and it just gave out on him. 

"JoJo"
Even in death his generosity carried on as within a day, my mother received a call from the Lyon’s Eye Institute, letting her know with gratitude that Dan’s corneas would be giving sight to a blind person.  Dan was an organ donor.  Of course.

54 people signed the guest book at Dan’s last minute service held in our mother’s home on Wednesday - and there were even more in attendance.  Some I knew, some I didn’t.  ALL had the same thing to say about how Dan:  “he was always there for them”.  So many stories of Dan helping people through hard times.  
Stories I never knew and he never bragged about.  

My last days of hanging out with Dan were over the Christmas holiday in Florida, cooking every night at my mom’s with the family, laughing, playing black jack and reminiscing.  FINALLY without tragedy being the all-too-frequent impetus that brought us together.   

That’s when we made a pact to get together more than just once or twice a year and not just for the ongoing tragedies that kept forcing us to drop our busy lives and show up for each other.  

However, time does not wait for us to make time for what really matters.  


So I ask myself,  if it really is better to have loved and lost - knowing we eventually have to lose those we love - then what do we want our memories with them to be?  Filled with regret for not seeing them more?  An argument we never settled?  “Sorry, I can’t talk now?”  Time doesn’t wait.  

Impermanence is the one true promise of this life.  And yes that means nothing stays, but fortunately this includes the pain and sorrow as well.

For all of you who have loved and lost - my heart aches and celebrates with you.  May we continue to celebrate this life right now in this very moment.  I think I’ve decided that death is actually a friend for reminding us to do so.

So goodbye - just for now,  “Daniel My Brother… You’ll be the clouds in my eyes.”  

See you in the next life, Brother...

I will see the rest of you on the road that keeps bringing us together.

Love,
Dana






Wednesday, January 14, 2015

2015 US Tour Kicks Off This 3 Day Weekend!

I'm getting ready to start my US Tour this weekend!  It's the first 3 day weekend of 2015 and I have packed it with shows!  Join me for one, two or all three this weekend.  I have a kick ass band and I am ready to rock this new year. Remember, this is only the start and I have many more dates and hopefully will be coming to a town near you!  See you soon! Love, Dana

"It's the voice that grabs you first. That big, whiskey-flavored tonsil showdown that can kick your butt one minute and soothe your ills the next.

- Glide Magazine


“Imagine a sultry, more emotive Janis Joplin backed by a higher-energy version of the late-’60s Rolling Stones…Rock’n'roll doesn’t get any better.”  
-Stereophile Magazine


   FOLLOW THE DANA FUCHS 2015 US TOUR HERE!