By Kayla Chanthavong, Contributor
Photo by Tristan Weary, Contributor 

Q&A with vocalist and thereminist Madeline Jackson and guitarist Chris Lute of DANA.

Is this your first Lobsterfest?

Chris: Well, I’ve played it with other bands here. I also used to go to school here, like 10 years ago. But it is DANA’s first Lobsterfest!

What are DANA’s goals right now?

Chris: Global domination.

Madeline: Yeah, establish global dominance.

Chris: Really, we just want to put our records out there and make new ones, be able to tour and go to cool places and also play with cool bands we really love. We’re forward thinking!

Can you tell us some artists that influence your music?

Chris: We really like Brainiac, they’re a Dayton band from the ’90s. Some people say we sound like them, so I get really excited when I hear that.

Madeline: We’re influenced by a lot of weird Ohio bands. We started a DJ night in Columbus, and we invite all kinds of bands, multi-genre, past and present. There’s a lot of stuff to work with. I have a lot of Devo records, we’re influenced by them a lot as well.

Chris: There are so many good Ohio bands; they just end up being the ones that influence us the most.

Madeline: Someone asked me if my principle lyrical influence was Suburban Lawns. The reality of the situation is more like Lil Wayne.

Chris: “Goon To A Goblin”. It’s one of the best and most iconic.

Madeline: “6 Foot 7 Foot” is really the impetus for my whole career. In my car, I mostly listen to hip-hop and NPR. So somewhere in between those is who I am, essentially.

How did you guys start and how did you guys get together?

Madeline: In 2015, I decided I wanted to get back into the groove of things, wanted to start a band and got some friends together. I was working my way out of a major depressive episode. I was very lucky enough to have a very good group of musicians over and over again.

Chris: Yeah, the line up keeps changing. [Madeline] is the sole original member. She and I were in a band in Athens before she moved to Columbus and started a band. Eventually, I went up to Columbus and became a member when people started having kids, basically.

Any current projects?

Chris: We finished one a while ago. We have vinyl in the process, but it’s being delayed. It should come out in the next month or two. Hopefully, we will have it by then. We have tapes of the record out already, which we feel like we shouldn’t be giving out until the record is finished, but during shows, we’re just like, screw it.

Madeline: It’s like a bootleg of our own shit.

Chris: We’ve already sold like 150 tapes of music that hasn’t even been released yet. But yeah, we’re trying to write some new stuff.

Madeline: We kind of want to try dropping singles and change it up a bit. It’s all self-engineered anyway. Chris does everything.

Chris: Yeah, we record in our basement.

Madeline: We have the luxury of being able to have the engineering in the band to know how to make things work and sound how they’re supposed to. We can take our time and record things as they happen.

So you guys have some tours in the summer?

Chris: We’re going to Knoxville, and we’re also doing this thing called Punk Rock Flea on June 1 with Material Girls and others. Memphis and Georgia bands, mostly.

Madeline: Basically, a lot of my favorite contemporary bands.

Chris: We’re doing another week-long thing with Springsfest and a birthday thing in Chicago.

Madeline: We’re also going to try a little tour in Detroit and make little loops around there.

Chris: Once we have the record in hand, we’re gonna try to do a month long tour–maybe one month out west. We didn’t want to have an album release tour and not have our album. That’d suck, and it’d be a financial disaster.

Check out DANA’s latest single, “Cupid”, here.