Q&A With Dawn Riding
By Christopher Treacy & Dawn Riding
“9 Lives,” the first single off the forthcoming Dawn Riding album, ‘You’re Still Here’, recounts a series of seemingly high impact moments told as quick vignettes. There’s an edginess to them and a sense of danger permeates the song. But simultaneously, the narrator survives and moves on, chalking it up to experience as she acknowledges, “That was one of my nine lives, he nearly took me out/But I moved on down the line and now it’s just a thing to sing about.”
As Dawn Riding’s Sarah Rose Janko explains to us below, the song is really more about the wealth of time and chances we get to live our lives, not the preciousness of them (as it might initially seem). And she makes good sense: what seems treacherous in the moment often turns out to be not much more than a stepping stone along the way of life. We survive, we endure. It’s all about perspective, which is bound to shift as we grow older.
As the character in the song moves through the years and recounts the various “close calls” eroding at the nine lives, it sounds like a callusing has developed. “Now it’s just something to sing about,” but close calls are double-edged, making us stronger and weakening us in other ways. Can you talk a little about this dichotomy?
I think close calls in life affect us in such complicated ways, it’s very hard to parse out what’s made us stronger or weaker and both have their benefits. Weaker is also softer, more sensitive…. Really the song is about living through times you think have ;ruined you’ or made you think your life is over and you feel hopeless but then time just kind of marches on and there you are. The thing has lost its power. The singer, me in this case, is looking back and telling the story of a romance in a relatively detached way: how they met, who he was, where they were in their lives at the time. She’s not sharing any stories about them hurting each other and the idea is that she’s going over this experience that at one time “almost took me out” and suddenly it’s not this overwhelming pain memory, it’s just a story, just a song…. TIME HEALS I guess is the overall message. Therapy is a big part of that too but it doesn’t rhyme with anything.
The concept of nine lives is figurative, but I wonder: as we realize we’ve begun running low (only a few left!), does that impact our choices?
The concept of nine lives is an abundance—more chances than we thought. It isn’t meant to be about time running out… People are always saying ‘life is short’ but so many have these huge transformations and distinct eras in their lives. People serve 30 year sentences, or change careers, or get divorced, my best friend’s parent just came out as trans at 65 years old …. You know? Life is actually very long. My life revolved around riding freight trains for a while and sleeping outside and now I like to drink cocktails and I don’t let my dog up on the couch. Time keeps moving, you have more life, more lives. One time I was hitchhiking in Texas with my friend Soup and we got picked up by this totally spun out lunatic who took the first exit off the highway and was driving crazy all over Ft. Worth yelling, “…this is the last ride you’re ever going to take!” Eventually he pulled up at some apartment and we jumped out. We went and hid out in a Denny’s and Soup drew a heart and 9 hash marks on a napkin and gave it to me. I still have it. I guess that’s where the original concept came from.
This album was written in pandemic times… and we’ll be parsing out the impact of the last few years forever, I think. Was the preciousness of life (or, conversely, its disposable nature) at the forefront of your mind as you wrote this song?
The writing was certainly affected by the pandemic and shelter in place. I was lucky to have space to work on my music at home and I went into a period of deep reflection. My focus was mostly on acceptance. You have to really balance these 2 ideas you mentioned to get there: life is precious / life is disposable… In reality, life just is and then it just isn’t. I’ve lost enough people to have to really sit with that. I don’t ascribe moral significance to it. I’m trying to just accept the realities of life and observe them. I do believe life is precious, or at least that if you’re born you have a right to live and live well. I think people have an obligation to guard that right for each other. But that wasn’t a focus of this song.
Is it a theme that pulses through the whole album?
Survival is definitely a theme. There’s a checker at the grocery store who every time I ask “how are you today?” she replies “I’m doing good, I woke up this morning.” That feeling and trying to get to that feeling—that’s a theme.
Do you feel that your bi/pan status impacts your viewpoint as a songwriter? How so?
I’d say it probably does… as much as being a bar owner’s daughter, as much as growing up in Grateful Dead country, and in proximity to excessive wealth, and the other things that have affected my worldview from a young age. Realizing you’re queer when you’re young, you sort of cross a threshold of deviance. The fabric of society becomes thin as you balance what you want to reveal and what you want to perform. You start to see that dance in other people. Since so much of my songwriting is about people and relationships, this all plays in. But the most clear impact of queerness on my songwriting has been the other queer musicians in my life. Specifically my friends Amelia Jackie and Alynda Segarra, who are both so brilliant. Also my long time collaborators Hall McCann and Jasmyn Wong. I don’t know what the difference would be exactly if these people were straight but since they are some of my biggest influences as a musician, and they happen to be queer, it seems like part of the answer.
What’s your favorite aspect of You’re Still Here?
I’m really in love with the instrumentation and range of approach thanks to Alicia Vanden Heuvel, the producer and engineer on this album. Alicia is totally masterly and she’s so good at explaining her ideas. The sound gets really really big and complicated in some places and so intimate in others. Every song was given it’s own special treatment. I just love that range.
Christopher Treacy has been writing about music and the music industry for 20 years. He’s contributed to The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Herald, Nashville Scene, and Berklee College of Music’s quarterly journal, as well as myriad LGBTQ+ outlets including the Edge Media Network, Between the Lines/Pride Source, Bay Windows and In Newsweekly. He lives in Waitsfield, VT.