Exploring 'Intoxicating Dreaminess' In New Songs & Covers with Dana Gavanski

Dana Gavanski has recently released her first LP, Yesterday is Gone, but she’s also been releasing singles that cover some of her favorite bands, and will release a collection of those covers soon, too, in August.

She joined our Tower Livestream show on Instagram to talk with Whitney Moore about how she’s been holding up during quarantine and where her music is headed.

Gavanski is currently in London, and she called us from her studio. In the UK, things regarding quarantine are “confusing”, Gavanski said, since things have been “hazy” with the government itself not following the rules. She, personally, tries to take precautions, but the rules often seem “arbitrary”, she said.

Gavanski said that she’s picked up both good habits and bad habits during quarantine, since she’s been “stuck” in the same space all the time, and it makes her feel like she’s in her own face about how she spends her time.

Moore reflected that this pressure to be productive neglects the fact that things are also ‘traumatic’ for people right now. Things that bring Gavanski joy are being with her partner, who is also a musician, and the fact that they understand the ups and downs of being musicians and can support each other. Since the beginning of this time, she’s been taking lots of walks and exercising more, taking advantage of open spaces nearby. It works better than “sitting all day, worrying”.

Gavanski showed us an instrument she borrowed from a friend, an old violin bass from Bulgaria, from the 1960s, with a hooked top. She likes it because it’s “quite loud even without amplification”. She’s having fun learning bass, finding it to be a “groovy, intuitive instrument”.

Moore said that Gavanski seems to be someone who likes to grow as an artist and learn new things and asked about her huge productivity this year. Talking about Yesterday is Gone, Gavanski said that it was released during the worst week of pandemic, so that was complicated. Not being able to get out and play the songs to “experience the album fully” was challenging, but reception has been “really great” despite that. It wasn’t a great time to release it, but she’s happy they decided to.

Gavanski said that playing live is a very different experience, and she has a good band to work with. Though she got to play some of these songs on tour last autumn, there was supposed to be a bigger focus on them on the new tour. The idea of waiting a year later, since her tour has been rescheduled for next March, is definitely weird. She’s aware that she’s already exploring different sounds and directions, so there might be a strange contrast there. But she feels she can’t “let go” of the new songs until she plays them live next year.

Gavanski’s next tour will include France, Germany, and possibly a US and Canada tour. She is excited to travel when it comes up. She’d love to travel the USA, mostly for the experience of driving all over. She likes that idea and has always wanted to drive the USA and stop to look at the landscape.

Her cover album, Windsongs, is coming up, with “I Talk to the Wind” already released. The album “materialized” for Gavanski after she started playing this King Crimson cover in her set in the autumn. The reception was great and got her thinking about how much she loves covers. She likes seeing how people “recreate covers in their own atmosphere”. It was an opportunity for her to “reconnect” to music. Taking a moment to think about sonic directions helped her discover new sounds through covers. Because they weren’t her own songs, she was able to accept the fact that those songs were good, without having to critique whether the song was good or not like she would with her own work.

Gavanski said she’d definitely down to “scream” and try out heavier sounds, when a fan asked if she’d ever cover a Heavy Metal song.

Gavanski mainly listened to music from the 70s until she was about 25 years old, aside from listening to the radio as a kid. From her late teens to mid 20s, she mainly listened to 70s Folk and Rock. She learned to play the guitar through an obsession with Joni Mitchell. She loved Mitchell’s approach to the guitar and would spend hours trying to learn to play her songs.

Talking about the video for “Yesterday is Gone”, Gavanski said that they needed to figure out something that didn’t involve booking a space or a large budget. They looked at what excited them about Montreal, and the director put together a great concept. They filmed it “gorilla style” in the metro, before and after busy periods. There’s something there that “felt a little illegal” since they weren’t really supposed to film with a tripod, Gavanski said.

Gavanski wants to make a video next that’s even more stylized and even more “acted out” in a way. Moore pointed out that Gavanski has made a video where she’s feeding cats raw meat, and she said that one was a “last minute” kind of video shot on an iPhone. She wants to explore “shapes and colors and choreography” more. It’s something that’s “building up” in her mind like a “database of energy”.

Gavanski’s work “putting together a band” as a solo artist has been something that is shifting, but she tends to meet people who want to play music and are “open and curious”. She feels really lucky to have found her current group. It’s a relationship you have with individuals on a personal level, she feels, and it’s something that’s “new” to her. Previously, she played solo, and sometimes with a bass player. When she recorded “Yesterday is Gone”, it was the first time she ever played alongside drums.

Does Gavanski pick up instruments easily? She said that she definitely doesn’t “master” them, but everything is happening “step by step” for her. Picking up this bass is a new thing she’s trying, and she tries to keep an open mind. It’s hard work, but enjoyable, and she feels like it’s taught her things about herself. She tries not to “stress to much about technicalities” when she’s doing that.

Is there anyone she’d like to collaborate with, in her own band, or another? Gavanski said there are “so many”. Right now, she and her partner are working on creating on a collaborative project, and he’s in a band called Blue House as well as working on solo stuff. His way of creating music is quite different than how she would create on her own. Even singing takes a different approach, she finds. So she’d love to continue with that and with other collaborations.

She’d feel “weird” being hired to play the guitar, bass, or keyboard in another band. She could probably be a backup singer, and maybe bass, once she gets a “handle on it”.

Has anything been keeping her creative juices flowing in terms of music? Gavanski feels like she’s “constantly taking things in”, whether reading books or going for walks. Just listening to music, and hearing new music, inspires her. It’s mostly looking at how to approach songwriting in maybe a “slightly different way” and trying to decide how she wants to create on stage.

David Bowie has been on her mind a lot in recent months, including his performances, including the “power of his lyrics”. She’d like to use her body more on stage rather than being “stuck” singing and playing the guitar. She wants to “engage” with herself on stage more and not “hide behind the music” as much. She wants to get the best performance out of herself.

What has changed about the way that Gavanski approaches songwriting, Moore wondered?

For her, music has always come first, and the lyrics then come in and “propel” the progression of the music. She then tries to make some sense out of the combination. A friend of Gavanski’s says that she works on “progression” first, then figures out what she wants to sing about, and then works on that afterwards, which is a little different.

Gavanski often felt that she wasn’t “saying things too clearly” in the past in her music, which might be too limiting, and couldn’t reflect the “plurality” of her mind. Now she’s trying to address that.

Asked about her Serbian roots and whether that connects with her music, Gavansky said that Serbian music has been in the “background” of her life, but she didn’t really listen on her own growing up. Only when she started getting into Appalachian Folk music, like Jean Ritchie, and then British Folk, like Shirley Williams, did she start realizing some Balkan music was really beautiful and she didn’t know enough about it. It’s actually really hard to find online, she commented.

She doesn’t have the desire to play and make traditional Serbian Folk music, but she loves the vocal style, which is similar to Bulgarian Folk, and took some lessons when she was in Belgrade visiting. She’s not sure what her relationship is to that music, but she enjoys listening to and singing those songs.

Moore applauded Gavanski’s “student’s mentality” and the fact that she is “learning-focused” in music.

Does Gavanski have a genre of movie or show that she’d like to make music for? She hadn’t previously thought about that question, but what would “naturally” fit for her would be something “Lynchian”. She finds that “dreaminess intoxicating”. Even though it’s not her favorite genre, necessarily, her music would fit.

Moore is watching Twin Peaks right now, and Gavanski rewatched all the first and second season with her partner, who has never seen it before. Most women that Moore knows are very interested in characters and the “weirdness of the world” and less action-focused, which all fits with Lynch’s approach, too.

Asked about Tower Records’ motto, No Music, No Life, Gavanski, said that music is something that really makes her happy. She’s felt her happiest listening to music, finding “solace, and sadness, and joy” in the experience of listening. She was not an “extremely social” kid growing up and she’d turn to musicians she loved to “engage with her mind”. She used to listen to Leonard Cohen for “hours and hours” back them. It’s hard to describe how “profound” music is, but “You can’t ignore it.”

Asked if she listens to music to change her mood or affirm it, Gavanski said that she affirms her mood, “defining melancholy” sometimes.

Is there anything that she’d like to say to fans? Gavanski says she’s very grateful for the platform to speak with the “bizarre attention” that she’s given as a musician. She thinks, “This is a hard time for this all, but we’re all trying to figure it out together.”