Bliss Avenue Dana Fuchs

• 1 Bliss Avenue 02:58
• 2 How Did Things Get This Way 03:25
• 3 Handful Too Many 04:29
• 4 Livin' On Sunday 03:24
• 5 So Hard To Move 05:05
• 6 Daddy's Little Girl 03:16
• 7 Rodents In The Attic 03:19
• 8 Baby Loves The Life 04:32
• 9 Nothin' On My Mind 03:17
• 10 Keep On Walkin' 04:10
• 11 Vagabond Wind 05:10
• 12 Long Long Game 04:54
• Total Runtime 47:59

Info for Bliss Avenue

All Dana Fuchs has to do is sing. All it takes is one note from those celebrated lips and clocks stop, crowds snap to attention, hearts beat like bass drums and neck-hair tingles. It’s often been said that the Florida-born frontwoman could sing the phone directory and still hold her listeners spellbound. True enough, but in 2013, when Dana applies that extraordinary voice to the classic songs from third album Bliss Avenue, you’ll realise that you’re in the presence of once-a-generation greatness.

'Bliss Avenue' is the most honest and unflinching studio album in Dana’s back catalogue. Once again co-written alongside her long-time wingman and guitarist Jon Diamond, these songs weren’t simply tracked in box-ticking fashion, but wrenched from the depths and laid down without gloss or polish. “If there’s one line that sounds thrown away or dialed in, it has to be redone,” says Dana. “Every word needs to express the emotion of the song or no one will get it and it leaves me cold.”

The resulting album is a window into the singer’s worldview, drawing on everything from the tragic loss of her beloved brother to the loneliness of life on the road. “I’m excited for people, especially those fans who have stuck so close with me, to hear Bliss Avenue,” says Dana, “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,” she admits, “singing several of these tunes that are so close to home, like So Hard to Move, Bliss Avenue, Long, Long Game and Vagabond Wind. I want this album 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…?”

Safe to say, you will. It’s impossible not to be reeled in, both by the songwriting and execution of Bliss Avenue. Led from the front by Dana’s smoke-and-honey battle cry, these twelve new cuts are also a canvass for some of the best musicians on the US scene, with Diamond’s powerhouse guitar offering intelligence and groove, Jack Daley delivering seismic bass, keys wizard Glenn Patscha working the Hammond, Wurlitzer and piano, drum god Shawn Pelton keeping the train on the track – plus atmospheric background vocals from Tabitha Fair and Nicki Richards.

Locking in with Dana and Jon’s self-production, this musical dream team flew across a tracklisting that takes in flavours including soul, roots, blues and southern rock. “I realised that you have to hire the best musicians to help you reach your vision,” she nods. “It’s such a collaborative effort.”

It’s been a long road to Bliss Avenue. The youngest of six children, Dana was raised in rural Florida in a family home that rang out with music. Back in those formative days, influences were around every corner, from the rumble of heavy rock played by her siblings in the garage, through the Ray Charles and Hank Williams platters on her parents’ turntable, to the strut of ’70s and ’80s funk that ruled the schoolyard. By 12, she’d added another ingredient to the melting-pot, joining the First Baptist Gospel Choir in a small black church on the outskirts of town to sing, shout and holler the Lord’s praises.

Even then, Dana’s musical appetite was insatiable, and when fronting a local band at a roadside Holiday Inn no longer scratched the itch, the singer informed family and friends in Florida of plans to become the latest aspirant star to take on New York. It was a brave move – and briefly seemed a foolish one, as 19-year-old Dana found herself scrapping for survival on Manhattan’s Lower East Side – but the tragedy of her older sister Donna’s suicide had a galvanising effect, and she duly hit the city’s blues-jam circuit like a train.

It was at one of these jam nights that fate smiled, instigating Dana’s first meeting with Diamond: an established NYC session ace who had already toured with the chart-topping Joan Osborne. Sensing musical sparks, they formed the Dana Fuchs Band, and quickly built a buzz, drawing punters to the Apple’s blues clubs and holding their own on bills that featured titans including John Popper, James Cotton and Taj Mahal. With the band rocking until 3am four nights a week, this was an apprenticeship at the sharp end, and it was here that Dana honed both her astonishing vocal power and built the loyal following who identified her nascent brilliance.

And yet, it wasn’t until two years later – when Jon and Dana extended their live chemistry to a fruitful writing partnership – that the band achieved true lift-off. Armed with a solid body of original material, they drew packed houses at hot-spots like Arlene’s Grocery, The Mercury Lounge, The Stephen Talkhouse and B.B. King’s Blues Club, while sharing bills with such national acts as Little Feat, Marianne Faithfull and Etta James.

Word of Dana’s talent even spread to Broadway, and when she was invited to audition by the producers of the 2001 hit Janis Joplin musical Love, Janis, a few bars of Piece Of My Heart, plus her industrial-strength charisma, confirmed they had their lead. Playing Joplin four nights a week proved an effective shop-window, catching the eye of renowned director Julie Taymor and leading to a subsequent turn as Sadie in Sony’s highly acclaimed Beatles movie, Across The Universe. With her vocals featured prominently on the platinum-selling soundtrack, this was a project that saw Dana Fuchs Band shows bolstered by a whole new audience, who duly left to spread the word.

Riding high, the band released its debut CD, Lonely For A Lifetime, in 2003, and found both press and fans receptive to a sound that drew on vibes from ’60s Stax/Volt R&B, Lucinda Williams and the Rolling Stones, while hinting at the lyrical eloquence of Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. She might have belted it out in a voice inspired by Etta James, Otis Redding, Bobby Bland, Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples, but on songs like Strung Out, Lonely For A Lifetime and Bible Baby, Dana was handling sensitive topics. “These tracks are about addiction and religious hypocrisy,” she noted, “and like all the tracks on the album, deal with subjects that I have a deep personal experience with.”

It was one hell of an opening gambit, but even Lonely For A Lifetime was topped by 2011’s Love To Beg. Tightening the songwriting and raising their performance through the roof, this second release from the Dana Fuchs Band made international waves, with the UK’s Classic Rock crowning it ‘Blues Album of the Month’, R2 magazine noting that she has “talent simmering towards detonation”, and global fans recognising that in a world of clinical TV talent shows and corporate pop, here was a band that meant every word.

So how do you follow that…? Quite simply, with Bliss Avenue: a third album that shoots for the stars, runs with fans’ expectations and channels the blues while simultaneously defying them. “While the album content may seem dark,” explains Dana, “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…”

Dana Fuchs, vocals
Jon Diamond, guitar
Glenn Patscha, piano, Hammond, Wurlitzer
Jack Daleys, bass
Shawn Pelton, drums
Tabitha Fair, background vocals
Nicki Richards, background vocals

Dana Fuchs
Hailed as the new Janis Joplin, even before she played the legendary rock icon in an off-Broadway musical, Dana Fuchs is a raspy-voiced blues-rock singer/songwriter whose versatile career has embraced music, theater, and film. Born in New Jersey in 1976, she later moved to the small rural town of Wildwood, Florida with her musically oriented family, where, at age 12, she began singing in the First Baptist Gospel Choir. Inspired by her parents' Ray Charles and Hank Williams record collection, she moved to New York to sing the blues after leaving high school, where she teamed up with Jon Diamond, a seasoned guitarist who had previously performed with Joan Osborne.

Together, they formed the Dana Fuchs Band, which built up a reputation as one of the best live acts on the city's blues circuit, leading to Fuchs landing the lead role in the Eric Nederlander production of Randall Myler's Janis Joplin musical, Love Janis.

In 2003, they released their first album, Lonely for a Lifetime, through Antler King Records, but Fuchs put the band on hold until 2008 in order to concentrate on other commitments. She starred as Sadie in Julie Taymor's 2007 Beatles-based musical romantic drama Across the Universe, singing two solos ("Helter Skelter" and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road"), made a brief cameo in the 2008 ensemble piece New York, I Love You, and wrote and performed on the soundtrack to the Maggie Gyllenhaal movie Sherrybaby.

After 2008's Live in NYC, recorded at B.B. King's, she toured with Ray Davies and Dickey Betts before releasing her second studio album, Love to Beg, via her own label in 2011.

Booklet for Bliss Avenue