Party with Dana: an Interview with Dana from Sir Chloe
Photo taken by Jennifer Medina
[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell us about yourself.
[DANA:] I'm Dana. I sing and I write for Sir Chloe.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When did you start making music?
[DANA:] I started writing music in my junior year of high school. I have been playing music since I was a pretty little kid. I started in band, I played flute and trumpet and stuck with it for a couple of years.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When did you decide to start making music as a job?
[DANA:] I'm not sure if it was a conscious decision. It was just the thing that I enjoy doing the most. So I was trying to do it all the time and that turned into a job.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How did the band originally form?
[DANA:] It was formed as my senior project in college – I studied music and instead of writing a thesis, music students put on concerts. I put the band together to put on my senior concert.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How does it feel to release your first album?
[DANA:] Great, I'm really excited to have a body of work. It feels very professional.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell us about your album and the meaning behind it.
[DANA:] I wouldn't say there's one singular meaning behind the album. The idea of it was to culminate all of the work we've done so far into one body. It's two batches of songs. It's the original four songs we put out which are Animal, Walk You Home, Michelle, and Too Close. Then about a year after we recorded those songs, we recorded the new ones which are Easy On You, Squaring Up, July, Untie You, and Sedona. We wanted to put those together and create a body of work. I think there's a lot of different meanings but overall it was just a way to have all of our work in one place, develop our sound, and start to build a story around the music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How would you describe the genre of music you make?
[DANA:] There’s a lot of different places that we pull from. I would say it's somewhere around alternative garage rock – I've heard people say dark pop before.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you guys take any inspiration from other artists with a similar genre?
[DANA:] Yeah, there's a ton of artists that we take inspiration from. My favorites are The Velvet Underground, Pixies, Mitski, Courtney Barnett, Alvvays. There's really an endless list of people that we all listen to and take from.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What's the story behind the band name?
[DANA:] The band name came from a conversation I had with my friend, Marina who goes by the stage name Ms. White and I really liked her stage name. It just sounds so proper and it's a really elegant name. We were brainstorming because I wanted something that made me feel the way that I felt when I heard her stage name. We landed on Sir Chloe because Chloe was going to be my name before with Dana and I also love the song Chloe in the Afternoon by St. Vincent.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you guys have a specific process or way you guys produced this album?
[DANA:] Since we first began, the first four songs I had completely written before bringing into the band. I had a fairly clear idea of how I wanted the songs to be arranged. With the six new songs, it's been more collaborative between me and Teddy – Teddy O'Mara – who produces Sir Chloe with me. I would write a song with just me and my guitar and then send it to him. He would loosely arrange it and maybe change some of the chords to make the progression a little bit more intriguing. We would just send it back and forth until the song was finished. It's been really great to have a partner to write with because he has added a lot of great ideas.
[UNPUBLISHED:] If you could describe your album in three words, what would they be and why?
[DANA:] Guitar based music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you have a favorite song on the album?
[DANA:] Right now my favorite song is Wrath because it's the most fun to play live.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Where do you find inspiration for your music?
[DANA:] Everywhere, I've been in my hometown for a few months so I've been writing a little bit about old memories. When I was living in LA, I was writing about my friend's dog a lot, and when I was living in Brooklyn last year, I was writing a lot about living alone. It’s usually just pretty reflective of wherever I am and what I'm doing around that time.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How and when did you guys get signed to your record label?
[DANA:] We got signed three months ago. We signed with them because my manager is Ethan Silverman, he's one of my managers and he owns Terrible records. I've been a fan of the label for a while and he's been managing me for a few months before we decided to sign. I was really excited to work with him and my other manager Zach. We actually met Ethan at a party and then we officially got put in touch by my lawyer and then we started hanging out with Zach. Then a couple of months in he floated the idea and I thought it was a great idea.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What demographic of people would you say you make music for?
[DANA:] I would say the music is for everyone. It's really just for whoever likes it. The analytics on our pages say between 18 and 24 is our main audience but I know we've got some people on the younger end of the spectrum and some people on the older end. It's always great to see anybody listening to our music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How has the success of Michelle and Animal affected your career?
[DANA:] We've gotten more opportunities to play shows and we've gotten quite a few new fans which we've been so lucky to experience. We've been able to focus on the music a lot more and stop worrying so much about how are we going to get people to listen because people are listening now. It's definitely a privilege.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How has the pandemic affected the way you make music?
[DANA:] It hasn't affected the way we make music because Teddy and I have written remotely since before the pandemic, so that wasn't an issue. The only thing that it has complicated is band practice but we find ways around that.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you remember the moments when you found out that Michelle and Animal had blown up basically and gone viral?
[DANA:] I remember the Animal one. Michelle – I don't really remember because it happened slowly, and then we were just watching it grow. Then one day, we were like, “Oh, wow, it's gotten very large over a period of time”. Last year when Animal got a little bit of attention on the platform there was an E-boy, he was like the head pretty boy on TikTok, and he made a video to the song. This was before any videos have really been made and I remember checking the sound and seeing that he had posted it 20 minutes ago and it already had something insane like 500 views. We were just kind of watching the numbers grow that night.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Have you guys had an overall positive experience with TikTok?
[DANA:] I don't have a personal presence on TikTok, it's all music. I think that acts as a little bit of a shield. I'm aware that people can be pretty harsh on the platform, but we've gotten nothing but positivity on all platforms. We've been very fortunate to have amazing people listen to some music and everyone's been overwhelmingly positive. We're very grateful for that.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Where do you hope to see yourself in five years?
[DANA:] I'd like to keep putting out music and hopefully in the next year or two, we'll be able to tour. I just hope we're playing shows and that we can continue to make music as a band because that's what we're all here for.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What kind of music do you want to make in the future?
[DANA:] Probably something similar to what we've been making. We've been writing and we're really excited about the new material. We're looking to start recording the album in January. It'll be a little bit more mature than what we've put out and we'll keep evolving.
[UNPUBLISHED:] If you could give your younger self a piece of advice, what would you say to yourself?
[DANA:] I would say start doing research on gears and pedals and amps. You want to know a ton of information.
