Making it in the music business means surrounding yourself with a good team and a pocketful of good songs. Both surround Dana Ariel.
The local musician, a former festival kid reared on festival sounds while taking lessons from the professionals at various festival music camps, which ultimately led to studying music in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the Berklee School of Music’s International Network Program, is ripe for the soulful, singer-songwriter and festival-loving crowd. She’s a solid frontwoman and band leader whose sound dabbles with subtle twang and Americana while packed with a load of rhythm and soul. She dropped the wonderful release, “Wild Woman,” in 2022 (available on all streaming services and local, independent radio), and is currently leaking singles in advance of her next full-length release.
If you go
WHAT: Dana Ariel and The Coming Up Roses Single Release Show, opening is Elementum.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: The iNDIGO ROOM at iAM MUSIC, 1315 Main Ave. #207.
TICKETS: $15 online/$17 at door.
MORE INFORMATION: Call (970) 799-7450.
Dana Ariel and her band The Coming Up Roses will perform Saturday at The iNDIGO ROOM at iAM MUSIC, celebrating the release of her new single “Wishful Thinking.” It’s a cut that walks a line between Americana and rootsy soul, the kind of song that will find love on left of the dial radio and is deserving of national air play.
Recorded locally at Scooter’s Place, she quickly bonded with local sound engineer Scott “Scooter” Smith, who coproduced the single along with Ariel.
“Scooter just like really, really amazed me by how much he connected to the song. He was like, ‘OK, I clearly know what the song is about,’ and explained my song to me in a way that I hadn’t thought about it yet,” Ariel said. “But when it came to like what he really put into it, it was more to help me get the sound that I’ve been wanting. I love bluegrass. I love folk. I love Americana. And I have felt that my songwriting is very like singer songwriter when it comes to genre. And I’ve been wanting to achieve a more country Americana sound. So he was amazing, and really just helped me get the sound I wanted.”
It’s all about trusting your team, and Ariel has that trust in engineer/co-producer Smith, along with her band – drummer Cameron Wright, guitar player Alex Forsthoff, bass player Jerad Bussell and console steel player Jacob Nalle. They’re the ones giving this cut a full, rich sound, a crack-roots-rock band giving the soulful, country backing to Ariel’s rich croon. It’s that trust you put in your team that will bring out the best in the song.
“It’s very important as an artist to stay authentic to what is your truth,” Ariel said. “And I have to give so much credit to my band. This song has gone through so many transformations depending on who I’ve worked with. So I can’t really take credit there, when it comes to textures and all the layers, that was Scooter and all of my musicians.”
Ariel is a musician who puts a lot of her life, the good and bad, the ups and downs, into her songs. Unloading her life into song takes guts, but she says it’s also “connecting her to her art.” While Saturday night’s show will celebrate the release of one single, there’s plenty more songs to follow.
“We’re going to be releasing one more after this, to tie up the situation I’ve been in the last like three years of my life. And I think it’s because a lot of them draw from different parts of my life. So yeah, I have so many songs. The last three years of my life have been very fruitful and shown me a lot,” she said. “My therapy is writing about what I’m going through and what I’m learning.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
