Dana Glover |
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Wed. October 09.2002 5:22 PM EDT |
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Dana Glover: This Year's ModelSouthern belle faces the music on her debut. by Gil Kaufman |
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Dana Glover (VH1.com) |
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Like a lot of kids growing up in rural parts of the country, twentysomething
Southern belle Dana Glover had dreams of breaking out of her small town
(Rocky Mount, North Carolina) and moving to New York to take on the world --
which she did at
Now those music dreams didn’t seem so far away ... and luckily, Glover’s tunes didn’t sound anything like Naomi Campbell’s Baby Woman. In fact, Glover’s Testimony is more like a blend of Vanessa Carlton’s pop smarts and Aretha Franklin’s church chops. The singer spoke to VH1 about avoiding a designation as the "Anna Kournikova of pop," how the catwalk compares to the stage, and her big childhood break of playing "St. Elmo’s Fire" on the saxophone at a talent show. VH1: What was it like for a small town girl to move to New York at 16 to model? Dana Glover: I’d never been to New York before. I’m sure I’d been outside of my state, because I went to Disney World when I was five, but the New York trip may have been my first time on a big plane. It was an unbelievable, overwhelming change. VH1: You’d been discovered in North Carolina? Glover: I guess you could call it that. VH1: At the time did you think, "I’ll do this and it will help me break into music?" Or were you thinking you’d be a model as long as you could? Glover: I always knew that music was my first love. It was exciting when the modeling bit came about, because it’s a real girl thing to think that you can have a shot at something like that. I was trying to figure out how I would get from A to B. I knew that one way or another I would get to the music, but I didn’t know how. At 16, what are you thinking about anyway, except the day and month and year? The long-term plan is not intact. VH1: When did you decide you wanted to give the music a shot? Glover: I modeled for a good while. Along the way I met different people who encouraged me in different ways, like a guy who encouraged me to write. I didn’t take him seriously, but now that I look back I can’t believe I wasn’t thinking that way before. It took a while for the confidence and vision and direction to come together. VH1: I don’t know if you consider yourself a model-turned singer or singer who modeled, but the track record in this area is a bit spotty: Milla Jovovich, Naomi Campbell. How is the modeling world different from the music world? Glover: Truly, truly, truly, I do not consider myself a model-turned-singer. I feel so detached from that title of "model." You’re put under a microscope when you model and you can become self-conscious. It can be humiliating. It’s the same thing in music. Looks are definitely a factor in music. What thrills me the most is that in the places where my songs are being played, the feedback isn’t because people have seen a retouched picture of me. They’re reacting because the lyrics are reaching their circumstances. VH1: Are your looks ever a hindrance? Glover: With music, I just don’t worry about it. It is so [deep] in my heart that I figure, ‘What’s there to worry about?’ When a tennis player’s a great tennis player, if people find them good looking, then they’re a good-looking tennis player. But they can’t win unless they’re good. VH1: Are you trying to start a catfight with Anna Kournikova? Glover: [laughs] Yeah, let’s start it today! VH1: Is it true that you’re first big break was playing "St. Elmo’s Fire" on saxophone at a talent show in North Carolina? Glover: It was one of the highlights of my life, but I wouldn’t call it a big break. [laughs] VH1: Usually, when you think of Southern blue-eyed soul, rock bands like the Allman Brothers come to mind. What inspired you’re more gospel-influenced sound? Glover: I sometimes try to find a way around the truth [on this subject], but, honestly, I think most of it came from my mom playing piano in church. VH1: You say that like it’s a bad thing. Glover: I’m always proud of it, but when I say it, I feel like it limits the scope of what people think I drew from. I was drawing from a lot more than church. It was not necessarily "cool" church music. There was black gospel, but we didn’t go to a black church, it was mostly white. I loved Aretha Franklin when my friend would play her greatest hits because it was familiar to me from listening to black gospel singers growing up. VH1: If your services weren’t like that scene in The Blues Brothers, with the back flips and James Brown rockin’ the house, then what were they like? Glover: They were more upbeat than the conventional services most of America goes to, but it was far, far from snake handling. It’s not like every Sunday something out of the ordinary would happen. And it wasn’t like the music was so soulful all the time. A lot of times we thought that it was so uncool. My two brothers and I were always around before and after the service, playing an instrument and singing. It’s where we learned to harmonize. VH1: A lot of times, a debut is full of a lifetime of angst and tribulations, but you’re album is pretty up and positive. Glover: That’s funny, because I feel like a lot of the positive was pulled out of the negative. The first single, ["Thinking Over"] was a negative time for me because I was so terrified. I knew there was a fork in the road in this relationship and I knew that down either road I was in for some serious pain, but you can’t stand still. I comes off as positive in the song and I’m so glad, but it was a hard place for me to be in. There’s no resolve at the end of the song because there was none at the time. Yet, when people hear it, I don’t think anyone goes away depressed, they just say, ‘I can relate to that.’ VH1: "Rain" is not one of those up songs. In that song the singer really seems on the edge. Glover: It wasn’t my story, but I was in a funky state of mind at the time I wrote it, although it wasn’t as if I had one tennis shoe in midair and another on the ledge. I wrote it when my brothers and I were driving to L.A. We were in Arizona and it was raining in the distance. I was low and sometimes in your lows you relate to people’s pain more than you normally would. Because I was feeling heavy, I was able to create that story as if it were really true. [The singer] questions the existence of God. I don’t think that I’ve ever done that, but I can certainly understand how people do. To me, being in that mood would be an all time low. VH1: In a era when so much music is over the top, your stuff has a real subtle, orchestrated feel that is a throw-back to an earlier time in music. Was it a struggle for you to convince your label that you didn’t need be ‘Britney’-fied? Glover: Not sounding contemporary doesn’t worry me. I find that if people connect with my stuff when I play, they do so because they believe what I’m saying and they believe that it comes from my heart. That’s more fulfilling to me than any kind of modern sound that can be put on a track to make it sound more appealing. VH1: You’re not stepping into that catfight, are you? Glover: [laughs] Nope. |
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