Transcending and Ascending with Dana Dentata
Today, Dana Dentata announces her signing with Roadrunner Records, becoming the first female solo artist signed to the label. Her upcoming album, Pantychrist, is set for release in 2021. Next week on October 8th, she will release a single, "Do U Like Me Now?"
The LA based artist’s ascension has only just begun. Read our conversation below.
Where are you from?
I’m from Toronto, Canada.
What led you to do music? And what led you to performing/stripping?
Music? I always wanted to do music, like, wanted to be Britney Spears when I was little. But there was a really good music scene in Toronto, like, there were a lot of really good bands at the time. I don’t know how it is now, but there were sick bands and good musicians. Everyone was such a good musician, and I wanted to be in a band so bad, and all these dudes were such sick musicians… It kinda made me… it sharpened my teeth because I wanted to be as good as these guys were. So, I had a band. Do you know about my band, Dentata?
Yeah, I do.
So that’s how it started for me, I was doing that band. I was dating a guy in a band and he had a bass player, a girl, and she was sick, and I stole her. And started my band.
What about performing? How did that come to be?
That’s all I wanted to do when I was in school. I actually just found this out because I have so much trauma, that I black out a lot of memories: I talked to this girl I was friends with in kindergarten to grade 4, before I moved, and I remembered that we would do bingo nights and at recess we would perform as Spice Girls or, like, S Club 7, and we would do choreography. I was like, “Yeah, ‘member we used to do that?” She was like, “Yeah, you made us all do that and taught us all the choreography, and we only did it because you liked it so much” I did not remember that at all, I thought we all wanted to do it, but I guess I was just like, “We’re gonna have a girl group.”
That’s funny. What are some of your earliest music memories?
Seeing Britney Spears live. My mom took me to see her twice. So I saw the Baby, One More Time! tour. I forget what the other tour was, but it was fucking crazy; the production was insane. She was doing all this shit with these mirrors and everything. Even in the Baby, One More Time! Tour, she had a whole, like, skit that played out before, which… I appreciate that sort of stuff. It was so sick to see because I felt so intense before she came on, and I always held onto that because that’s such an amazing feeling, you know?
Yeah, and then like, the albums I remember: I remember my mom buying my Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water album by Limp Bizkit at Costco, and then I remember there was a guy selling bootleg CD’s out of a van, and my mom bought me Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by 50 Cent.
Hell yeah.
And those were my favorites.
Is Dana Dentata an alter ego?
Yeah, it is, it’s funny you ask that, because I always knew it was and didn’t really understand it. I just figured I was an artist and became somebody else when I was on stage, and that girl’s not me, and it never was me. I think I created somebody because in my real life, the real me, was like going through a lot of trauma, and so I think I created her to be my sort of protector. To be something I wasn’t. Like, no one rapes the girl with a pussy with teeth.
Sort of escapist but also someone to be inspired by?
Totally, she became what I actually wanted to be. That’s what’s so crazy about where I’m at in my life right now, is that I’m actually becoming her, now. It makes me emotional ‘cause I didn’t know what that alter ego was, and then recently in the last six months, I’ve been in therapy pretty heavy the last year. Really staying on top of learning myself and everything, and I actually have Dissociative Identity Disorder, where you have multiple alter egos, and since I’ve been diagnosed with that and working with my therapist with that, now I’m understanding all the different ones, all their names, what they’re like, and how to nurture them and use them to my advantage.
Wow, that’s dope.
It’s been really powerful.
Is the demon that appears in your videos, is he another part of you, or he is more so representing “Man”?
I think it’s both. I think that I’ve experienced trauma in my life, but from men, I’ve experienced sexual abuse from men since the age of sixteen, and it’s been consistent, ‘cause you know once it happens, it’s all you know, and it’s all I ever knew. All I ever knew were demons, and that’s the men that are around me, and definitely every mother fucker in my life, except for the last four months ‘cause I’m good now… All those demons are all I know and it was a part of me.
I’ve seen shamans and all kinds of healers and stuff. This 80-year-old man shaman dude said that I invite the darkness in, and I fully agree with that. The demons—I was trying to show everyone what I was going through, but I wasn’t fully admitting to myself what it really was and what I was reenacting, like, I couldn’t even admit to myself. And once I knew, it taught me so much, because I’m like, Wow, I am inviting in all this darkness. Art imitated life. The demons, the music behind the demons is a fuckin’ nightmare, yo. The people that do that… crazy. It brought in all kinds of darkness in my life, and shitty people, and yeah, I’ve learned a lot about manifestation for sure.
I definitely feel like people’s energies are so powerful, and if you’re not in the best place, it’s harder to invite positivity in… So, how was Dana Dentata born, and when?
The thing was, I never was like, “I’m gonna be Dana Dentata,'" I just wanted my band to be called Dentata. ‘Cause I thought, like, Dentata sounds like Nirvana, plus it has the perfect meaning. We got together and started writing songs, and they were all just like bad boy and shitting on men, like every song, and then the band was Dentata. Then I guess ‘cause my name is Dana, people would just call me Dana Dentata. I was definitely her, but I was still kind of going by my real name. I was her when I was on stage, but I didn’t fully understand her. That was just trauma enactment and me wanting to do music so fucking bad, but being scared to sing and be vulnerable, so I had my hair in my face, and guitar, and I’m like BLEHHH! But I wanted to be there, but I don’t know, I wasn’t whole. I was a little baby, like 18, and 19, I look at videos of myself like that and I’m like, This little child, you know? Like, Go to bed, before 12.
But now I feel… 2018 I got out of this three year super abusive relationship. He made me into this robot stepford wife person, I was unrecognizable. I’d always wanted a mullet, and he would be like, You’d look so fucking ugly with a mullet, I’d leave you. So I was like, I’m not gonna do dat. When it was over between us, I needed to do that for myself. Get a mullet. I was modeling since I was 14 and they made me cut all my hair off, shaved head like a boy, basically, and I would wear a hood all through high school. My hair is a thing for me, I think. Then, I grew it SUPER long. And it’s been emotional. So I cut my hair in a mullet. I got home, and it was the weirdest experience. I thought that the hairdresser hated me and wanted me to look ugly, and actually gave me the ugliest haircut in the world, and I was the ugliest human being in the fucking world. And I was like crying. I was staying with this couple, these two women who have been in my life since I was 19—I call them my earth mothers, because they’re my moms on earth… I was crying to them, She hates me! Crying, crying, crying. At one point I looked in the mirror and I snapped, and then I realized that I had been looking at myself through that man’s eyes and not looking at myself as me. All of a sudden it shifted back and I saw myself as me for the first time in years. And I was like, damn, I look sick, this is tight. And then I was like, oh shit, wait, I’m cool, that guy’s a loser.
I resonate with that.
You got a haircut?
When you’re in something abusive, when it’s over, you have to take yourself back in these small ways—doing what you want with your hair, body hair, whatever. It takes a while to stop seeing yourself through their eyes.
So you know what I mean!! All you see is hatred for yourself, basically.
And that shit lasts. The processing of it all takes years.
Yeah, I thought I was all good, but it comes back.
Especially since quarantine, you’re forced to really think about shit and deal with it, when it was much easier to distract oneself before.
The last couple months, you’ve really had to look at your own shit.
So you’re releasing a conceptual performance piece this fall: The Resurrection of Dana Dentata. Will you discuss this a bit?
Yeah, it’s… oh my god… It’s what we were talking about before, like, I had this intention to do this because… May 4th, I had a spiritual awakening. May 6th, I was supposed to shoot that resurrection. It was all set to go, everyone’s ready, the whole team, it’s all booked, everything. Sometimes before I do a show, like with the demon, the last time I did it, I didn’t sleep for five days before. I’m not on drugs, I’m not tired, I’m just so fuckin’ on, I’m so manic, I just wanna listen to music and get stoked on everything and talk to someone all night. I thought that was just me on my Kanye genius shit. So that happened, I stayed up for 5 days and then I did an amazing show that I was proud of. Anyway, I started to feel it happening again when I was getting ready to do this resurrection. The resurrection… I really wanted to have the final sacrifice of the demon and murder him and end this narrative in my art. I understand how much darkness it’s brought in. The last two years I’ve lived in LA have been full of demons and absolutely horrible for me—the real me. Dana Dentata’s great, but the real me… she has had a very hard time out here with people being shitty and deceptive. Yeah, so I wanted to kill the demons. Demons, demons, demons, I’m so done with that, I’ve shown my point, I want the darkness out of my life. I don’t want any more shitty people, shitty guys. Maybe if I start manifesting better things and get rid of the darkness, then better things will start to happen.
This whole performance is set up... There’s the two angels that come and save me, because the last time I did it he destroyed my wings as rape simulation, and I died, so this time I wanted him to fucking die. So I can come back to life. Two days before it’s set to go, I didn’t eat or sleep or drink water for seven days. The manic thing was happening again. I was telling my therapist, something’s happening again… I couldn’t even get her on the phone because I was so crazy I couldn’t even work my phone. I thought I was on my genius artist shit, but that’s really sick and unhealthy and I was really sad and lost and confused. Didn’t understand what was happening to me.
One night, I had a very insane spiritual awakening. I have a connection to spirits, and my mom who passed away when I was 14, I have a very strong bond with her, spiritually, and her presence is around me. And other presences come around me, too. But I wasn’t in that headspace to even think about anything like that, ‘cause I was like, I’m fucking spiraling, I’m gonna do a show, and then some crazy shit happened. I saw things and felt things… I left my body, and two angels came and took me up into the universe and showed me the earth and the world. I could zoom like Google Maps onto my house where all the bad things happened to me as a kid.
I got to watch all the things that even after seven months in therapy, going to the police about somebody, details that I left out because I blacked it out so hard my whole life… Even when I’d go to the police I’d leave out parts because that’s part of the dissociation disorder. It’s buried so deep that I didn’t know a lot of things, there were a lot of dots I couldn’t connect. Things I didn’t understand about why I wasn’t getting better, even though I was doing a lot in therapy. I saw it all, and I got shown all this information. Afterwards, ever since, I’ve been able to diagnose myself and get insane treatment. I did a four hour sexual trauma healing with a body healer woman two weeks ago. I have a vocal trauma empowerment coach because you store trauma in your vocal chords and it fucks up your chakras and your breathing. I’ve been understanding the weight of what I went through now that I know.
I could put a demon on a mattress for everyone to see, but I couldn’t understand what I was actually reenacting. My art made my trauma come out in a way where I’ve been able to completely change my life in every aspect. I’ve focused on… And thank god for Corona for me, with the timing, because I’ve never had time to focus on therapy and healing, and calming my central nervous system, all these things that we don’t think about because we’re on the go ‘cause we’re all just trying to survive.
Wow. The arc of Dana Dentata really does mirror your own arc then; she’s about to be reborn, and you’ve had a kind of rebirth as of late. How does your upcoming album, Pantychrist, differ from your past work?
Just to say, Pantychrist is not anti-Christ. It's being the Christ of your womb, it's actually pro Christ. But, well, every song I’ve ever made has been grasping at straws to get music out ‘cause I’ve just been like, I need it now, I’m late, no one gets me, blah blah blah, all the stems are always mixing… My shit’s a mess. I perform with fucking mp3’s because everyone’s always lost my shit. It’s mishandled, people make music with me, not with the intention of making music with me, but the intention of having a form of control with me after. That’s happened a lot. With Pantychrist, I’ve had this title for over a year now because I didn’t really know what it meant, but I knew I wanted to manifest that the album would be me being the complete, fulfilled, whole, invincible, superhero version of myself. And that’s what Pantychrist would be. This indestructible person that you can’t kill because you’ve already killed me and I came back. I said that out loud, wanted it and everything. But now, it’s like, I’m well into it now. I’ve been working on it for a while. Ever since I’ve been able to have that shift of consciousness for myself, ever since I asked to have angels around me, everyone in my life right now is a fucking angel. Like angels are just coming in. I’m working on my album with this artist named King Woman, her name is Kris, and my engineer, and it’s like, I don’t know, they are helping me… She was like, let’s get a really nice place and focus on it and record and treat it like it’s important. I’ve never had anything like that, I’ve never had support around me, I’ve never had anyone I could trust ever, I’m always just like a lone wolf, going from studio to studio hoping I don’t get sexually assaulted. Pretty much… that’s been like the last ten years of making music for me. Like, Maybe I’ll get a song, and maybe they won’t use it to manipulate me after! With Pantychrist, I also just feel like I created my own safe space within Pantychrist. I have a safe space home now; I didn’t have a safe space to live before this year. Now I do, now I’m healing. I only let people in that care whether I live or die. That’s the only people I want in my life.
I feel like I created that safe space to let a lot of things come out. It’s the first time I’m writing music not dissociated. I would write songs on acoustic guitar as a teenage girl and not realize that that’s how I would talk about my trauma. And I didn’t know. Now that I’ve flipped out of it since May, I can look back at my “discography” that no one’s heard except me, it’s like the most morbid shit where I’m like, Woah, I didn’t even notice this, I had no idea what I was doing, and now I know absolutely what I’m doing, and I’m doing everything with intent as my fully healed self, as the real me, and I’m manifesting things, in the songs, for this album, not for just me but for all of us who are wounded and want redemption. I want that for all of us, and I feel like I’m doing a good job so far.
That’s great to hear. If your narrative with the demon is coming to an end, do you know what direction you’re moving towards with Dana Dentata?
I don’t know, I feel like it’s happening, the transformation is happening. My life is really changing in a lot of ways right now, there’s a lot going on, and things are happening that I never thought would happen in my life. I’m kind of enjoying every day that I’m feeling safe, ‘cause I’ve never felt safe. I think it’s gonna come out whatever it is, but whatever it is, is going to be looking toward and reaching toward the light always. And angel energy… because I have played with darkness for a very long time, and I don’t wanna do that anymore. I’m done.
