Dilana on her time touring with Tracii Guns: “He asked me if I would pay for our hotel rooms on my credit card, which I did and he still hasn’t paid me back.”

Dilana on her time touring with Tracii Guns: “He asked me if I would pay for our hotel rooms on my credit card, which I did and he still hasn’t paid me back.”
By Todd Newton

Big Music Geek – Throughout my often adventure-filled career as a music and ‘entertainment’ journalist, I have been blessed with a veritable wealth of opportunities to work with artists and groups that the public at large (i.e. you, the increasingly faithful reader) are more than likely unfamiliar with. As a result, I have frequently found myself wholeheartedly embracing an increasingly mind-boggling array of artists and groups that–in my ever so humble opinion, at least–are deserving of your attention. A prime example of such an artist is Johannesburg, South Africa-born singer/songwriter Dilana Robichaux. Having already released pair of well-received solo efforts (most notably the Mick Mars-fueled Inside Out) and finishing second behind The Halo Method frontman Lukas Rossi on Rockstar: Supernova, Robichaux wasted little time unveiling the oft-stunning gem Beautiful Monster…

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Dilana Robichaux and Tracii Guns

Todd: In hindsight, could you have recorded Beautiful Monster (2013) without the financial help of Kickstarter? 

Dilana: “Most likely, yes. But, not at the time. I probably would have had to save for a few more years, then do it myself. So it’s not ruled out, but, at that exact time, no. It wouldn’t have been released at that particular time. …It’s very, very frustrating most of the time. But, I think that’s part of the beauty of being an independent artist. We really struggle, but at the end of the day the reward is so amazing that it’s worth the struggle. I’m just one of those individuals who believes that without crawling and without pain and suffering, I’m not going to really enjoy my rewards at the end of the day. …Even if all of it does end up sounding a bit like self-mutilation.”

Todd: How has becoming a mother impacted your career? Speaking as a parent, I would assume that adding a child to the proverbial ‘touring artist’ equations would most certainly pose an extraordinarily serious challenge…

Dilana: “I’ve spent at least twenty-five years building this career of mine, but there’s nothing that compares to being a mother.  It’s almost like all those years were in vain, in a way, because once you have a child, nothing else matters anymore. It’s really hard to describe unless you’ve had a kid yourself. I’ve so often heard other mothers say this, and I’ve always thought ‘Whatever’, but, now that I’ve had a baby, everything else seems very insignificant. But, at the same time, it’s also more clear what my future path needs to be. In the past, it was more like I wanted to do it because I love it. And I still do, but now it’s more of a need. I need to do this because this is my income, my livelihood and how I can take care of my daughter. So now it’s more of a pressure job for me than purely just for the love. When I was by myself, I didn’t have to worry if a show got canceled or if I didn’t  have enough money in a particular month. Now, it’s just that I have to make sure that I play a lot and I really have to fight for the highest price and guarantee. There are a lot more conflicts now. The days of walking through an airport with just my bag and my guitar are history. Now, it’s me walking through the airport with a car seat, a stroller, a baby in my arms, my suitcase and a baby bag. It’s much, much tougher now for me, really.”

Todd: Do you feel as if the birth of your child had an ‘impact’ on your songwriting? Did it negatively affect you?

Dilana: “Absolutely not. The physical wounds of child birth can heal, but becoming a mom just leaves me with an emotional wound so raw that I’ll be forever vulnerable. I don’t look at a single newspaper anymore without thinking ‘What if that were my child?’. I don’t look at a starving child without asking myself ‘What does their mother feel? What would it feel like to see your own child die of hunger?’. Disasters like fires and plane crashes… You just look at everything differently than you used to. …I don’t look at anything the same way now.”

Todd: Were you surprised that you didn’t win Rockstar: Supernova? We really thought you were going to win…

Dilana: “Everyone did. And so did the audience, because I got the highest vote at the end of the show. But the male ego kicked in and decided that a female wasn’t what they wanted. So they chose Lukas, which is absolutely fine by me because, there was no way in hell I could sell their material. I didn’t believe in it. For me, the most important thing as an artist is to believe in your songs, believe in your lyrics and the emotion you’re trying to put out there. If I don’t believe it, I can’t sell it. I really could not connect with their songs. I honestly tried the best I could, but I just couldn’t, so it was a big relief for me. I felt like it was all I needed as a stepping stone. I got all the exposure I needed and it was perfect. At the end of the day, it’s all TV. It’s all TV glam and nothing really happened to any one of us after that show. No twinkie labels came running to sign us. …I just got exposure, mostly with some industry people, but for the bigger part with the TV viewers. …Those are the people that recognize me at the airports and everyplace else. …But it’s not like I became an overnight superstar.”

Todd: Overall, do you feel performing on Rockstar: Supernova ultimately had a positive impact on your career? 

Dilana: “As far as exposure, yes. I definitely think it gave me a boost. When I released Beautiful Monster, I had a lot of people online and say ‘I remember you from that show. I’m definitely getting your record’, so from that perspective, yes, it gave me a boost. But that’s about it. I also didn’t expect anything major to happen and I still don’t. It makes things a little easier when I name drop the show, which I hate doing because I’m trying to build my brand as Dilana. But at the end of the day, whenever I go ‘I was on that show Rock Star: Supernova, the light goes on and then they say ‘Wow, I remember you’. It has given me a real boost with the recognition factor.”

Dilana with baby on board on tour back in 2013

Todd: Care to offer some insight regarding your tenure in L.A. Guns? Very little has been officially said. When I initially heard that you had become a member, I was very, very excited by the thought of ‘what could have been’.  

Dilana: “I thought it was going to be pretty cool. I have to say, it’s one of the best bands I ever played in. Musically, it was fantastic. I think Tracii Guns is one of the most amazing guitarists out there. I really enjoyed singing their songs although when I first heard them, I was like ‘Oh, my god. This is awful. I can’t stand these songs. They’re real icky’. But that gave me a challenge. I wanted to improve on the songs. I wanted to make them better. I wanted to own them and that’s what I did. I loved singing them and I love rocking out. Everything was cool onstage. It was the minute we got offstage that Tracii and I bumped heads severely. We’re both alpha humans. Onstage, I don’t have a problem with him. I’ll be the first person to stand back because I just think my voice does the talking. I don’t have to stand in the spotlight, I just have to open my mouth. That’s the way I feel about my voice. He loved me up front, so that wasn’t a problem. It was just behind the scenes. I’m a very organized person. I love a tour schedule. I love to know where I’m going each day, what times I’ll be going, how long the drive is and where we’re going to be staying. I like to know the sound check and loading times and I like having a routine when I’m on the road because it’s the only way I can survive it, especially if I’m the only chick in a smelly van. Even then, I didn’t bitch about it. …But most days, we missed the sound checks. The van was always being towed or we had to get rides with fans because the van was just a complete mess. Tracii wouldn’t get it fixed. I’d say ‘Get the battery fixed. Just replace it’. Then, we’d have ten days off and I’m thinking ‘In the ten days, he’s going to clean the van and fix the van’, but when I’d get back for the second leg of the tour, he wouldn’t have touched it. He wouldn’t have cleaned it and it would have been sitting in the sun for days with smelly shoes, dirty sheets and pillows from the bed in back. …It was so disgusting and I refused to deal with it.”

Todd: What was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back? Was there a particularly awful gig or incident?

Dilana: “It was stuff like that, ya know? That and not getting paid. I still haven’t been paid. He asked me if I would pay for our hotel rooms on my credit card, which I did and he still hasn’t paid me back. I’ve never shared this before. This is truth. People keep asking and I’ve never told anyone because I don’t want to badmouth anybody. But these are the facts and this is the truth. …Those are the main reasons I could not stay in LA Guns.”

Todd: For the sake of professionalism, I won’t ‘name any names’, but your definitely not the first musician I’ve heard speak disparagingly of his business practices. It seem as if the way he operates isn’t some well-kept secret.

Dilana: “Everyone knows it. He’ll pay you with old amps or old guitars. He left two crappy amps at my old manager’s place in Texas while we were on tour. When I quit the band, I asked for my money and he said ‘Oh, you can keep the amps’. Well, we put them on eBay and I didn’t even get one single hit on them because nobody wants those crappy old amps anyway. Everywhere I go around L.A., if I talk about it, somebody will go ‘Oh, yeah. He came and rehearsed at my rehearsal studio, didn’t pay, and said he left an old guitar there I could have’. So he leaves old gear behind and thinks that’s the way he’s going to pay people. There are tons of people walking around with Tracii’s old shitty gear. That’s really funny. Looking at that now, I can laugh about it, but at the time, it was very, very hurtful. I felt like I gave my everything and he basically treated me like a piece of crap. At the end of the day, Tracii and I have a very deep musical love for one another and I know this. He recently posted one of our videos on Twitter and said ‘Wow. I’ve never even seen this. It was so amazing’. I know that he still respects me as an artist and I respect him as a musician, but it’ll never work out for us. Never.”

Todd: In retrospect, how did you become involved with the group? To me, it always seemed like an unlikely pairing. Being from South Africa, I can’t imagine you had been exposed to their prior works on a regular basis…

Dilana: “I had never even heard of L.A. Guns. I didn’t grow up here. When Tracii called me the first time, I didn’t even know who he was. We met at a Starbucks and he gave me two CDs. He said ‘Listen to the material’. One was live and acoustic. I remember when I was driving home, I popped the CD in my CD player and I literally pulled off on the side of the road because I started laughing so hard. I called him and said ‘Okay, dude. I get the joke. Where’s the real CD? This is funny. Where’s the real stuff?’ and he goes ‘What are you talking about?’ and I said ‘I’m listening to the acoustic CD. It’s so bad that I know you guys did this on purpose, right? This is a joke’. And it wasn’t. It was their real, live acoustic CD they had released. I thought it was so bad. I thought it was a joke. Tracii even tells this story about the first time I called him after listening to the stuff. I was like ‘No way. This is just terrible’. I didn’t know the songs at all. Not a single song had I known or heard before. There were a few songs I refused to play because I just couldn’t connect with them. There’s a song called “Bitch Is Back” (from L.A. Guns, 1988) that I refused to do. I just thought it was a silly song. …Of course now I’ve listened to it again and I kind of get it. It’s the whole songwriting style from the 80’s that’s very simple and very literal that’s hard for me to do because I’m a very metaphorical and deep writer. I guess it’s just a slip of the mind that I do those songs, but when I did, I really enjoyed them. I really got into them. They’re really power songs, ya know? I leveled the guitar riffs in them and I kicked them all in the original keys, which was really fun for me because a lot of my songs are more mid-to-low range and these are all upper range. I loved singing them. At first, I thought ‘Oh, crap. This is going to be challenging. I’m probably going to lose my voice after two or three because they’re all so high’, but, that didn’t happen once. I didn’t have any vocal problems. It was a nice learning curve for me because I realized I could sing much higher and with endurance and not have any issues.”
To read the full interview go to Big Music Geek

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