We are in the studios with Danelia Cotton, who is in the studio, has made the trick to see us today.
How you doing, Dania?
I'm doing great.
It's an awesome drive getting here.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful part of the country.
Awesome to have you.
So if you want, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
I come from a small town in New Jersey called Hopewell.
I lived like in the Satterland Mountains, which, you know, it,
I think people think of New Jersey and they don't think country, but I grew up on Mountain Church Road.
There are still no streetlights on that road.
It's pretty dark and windy.
But I grew up there and ended up going to college in Vermont.
So I was always in a country-type area.
loved music.
I grew up singing with my mom and her six sisters.
She comes from a family of 10.
They had a gospel like acapella group.
That's where I first started to sing.
She gave me my first guitar when I was 12.
And I liked rock and roll because it sounded the way I felt being in a smart white town as the only black kid.
But as I, you know,
got into music.
I did sort of like an indie soul rock kind of thing.
But my grandmother owned a Charlie Pride album.
Well, we all thought it was my grandfather's and he hid it kind of under the bed because he was blacks back then.
It wasn't like big to be like in the country.
But she's like, it was my album.
She just died.
She was 105.
But I came across it and thought I would do a cool cover and call it like cover album and call it Charlie's Pride.
Because he was a lot like my grandfather.
They were both very similar colored and lived in an all-white area.
But never thought about color.
They just kind of raised their family and lived like Charlie Pride when you really look into the history of him.
He just went into the music, into that genre.
I don't think he was thinking anything racially.
He just liked the music and went in.
you know at a time really it was like right after the you know civil rights movement I mean he just it's pretty spectacular and what he did and who he was so I picked songs of his that I like like Kiss an Angel which I thought was kind of cool put my own spin on that and Snake's Crawl at Night I liked because my other half is a legal aid attorney and so
We're always talking about murder and cases in our house.
And Rollo, Mississippi, I loved.
And so I got into this, and then they were like, you're kind of good at this thing.
And I realized it was probably always a little country in some of my ballads.
And so I'm here.
And then I wrote Two Step and decided to actually do an album full of originals.
So this is the first one.
This is about just like putting your phone down because I'm older and I come from a generation that did not grow up on the social highway.
And I think it's important to stay rooted in the moment.
And, you know, if you learn the two-step, you'll be with people and it won't be about your phone.
You got to put your phone down to dance.
So I just kind of did a spin on that and like sort of commented on that whole.
the moment that we're in.
So that's really it.
And I guess it's kind of taken a little bit.
I think we're on deck.
And I don't know if we're in the top 80 this week, but we're close.
We were on deck last week.
Working on
it.
Yes.
All right.
Well, if we give it a spin here, it's bound to go number one on WRC.
Oh, Danila Coleman on WRC radio.
It's called Two Step.
Here
we go.
Cause I'm tired of dancing alone, tired of my lonely house Always sitting here on my phone, just teaching me the two-step Cause I need to get out so-
I just reached my phone there when I heard that ringing at the end.
Good stuff.
Yeah, that's got a good beat.
We can dance to it.
I can almost, I can only do about a one and a half step now these days, but good stuff.
So you've got the background you mentioned.
Charlie Pride, who I know a lot of our listeners love Charlie Pride, and you did your own spin on one of his most famous songs.
Yes.
Would you be so kind to play that live for us in the studio today?
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Whenever I chance to meet some old
They wonder how does a woman get to be this way?
Always got a smile in the face, in a town, in a place, and every time
People may try to guess the secret of happiness.
Some of them never learn, it's a simple thing.
The secret that I'm speaking of is a woman and a man in love.
Let him know you think about him when he's gone Kiss his angel, good morning Love him like the devil when you get
back home
That is amazing.
Just
a little different.
Yeah.
So, so you actually do kiss an angel.
Good morning then.
Your husband, right?
Yes.
Yes.
I was just talking to him.
He's, he's on call because he does the, you know, all of the attorneys when you, when you do legal aid and his specialty is he's on a murder unit.
You wait.
And I was like, did anybody die in the last few days?
Are you going to pick up?
He already has 13 cases.
Oh my goodness.
I know.
Yeah.
Wow.
Pretty
deep.
Yeah.
It's pretty interesting in our house, the conversation.
I bet.
You're both doing what you love doing, right?
Yeah.
No, he really does.
And I think now I have sympathy.
You just don't know a lot of these people had horrible, horrible upbringings.
Not to say that murder is right, but I don't know.
There's a lot that we don't know about things.
One should never assume.
anything when it comes to anything.
If you don't know the backstory,
that's
what I feel.
I agree.
So you're well-educated, you've had quite a background, you've been an actress for a while.
Yeah, I actually went to performing arts high school and my last year I went to Bennington College.
which was big for my family because I was in the third generation, and I was the first ever female in my family to go to college, and I got into Bennington, which at the time was the most expensive college in the nation, which was deep.
Because it was sort of, I went into another situation of an all-way college.
There was like 10 of us that were black, all female, and we were all on scholarship.
I think we...
But it was a great experience and these I spent my last year there at the Royal Academy of Dramatica Arts in London, which was just Deep to live there and I was there when the wall went down which totally tells my age which was an experience like no other like it just was I was really lucky really really lucky
and you had a chance to you were in at least one well-known movie, weren't you?
I was in fresh which back when there was like Cisco and Ebert
Two years ago.
Thumbs
up.
Thumbs up.
It was like one of the 10 best of that year and it was a young director, Yoaz Bakken.
It was his first film and it was good and you know Samuel Jackson's in every movie but it was really good and I played a Puerto Rican drug addict.
I had to curse so much.
I didn't know if my grandmother would go and like I was like just clover your ears.
But likewise, I mean, you kind of, you've set standards for yourself because I understand you turned down a role too along the way.
I mean, I, at the end of it, at the end of, at the end of all of it, I didn't want to go to school to be, to constantly play a hooker or a drug addict.
And at that time, there just wasn't a lot of roles for black females.
Now there's like,
Netflix, prime videos, there's HBO, and there's a ton of things, and we've become a more multi-racial world.
And so there's more roles.
So there's more out there for us.
But no, you don't ever want to study to always play a certain type if you definitely have fought your whole life to fight that stereotype.
You know, yeah.
And at the end of the day, I don't think my heart was in it the way it is when I sing or I play music.
So I think you end up being, you know, I ended up where I was supposed to be.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Yeah.
When you sang that last song too, I hear all kinds of influences.
I hear little Bonnie Rates.
Oh my God.
You know, maybe, you know, and some other artists, but who did you listen to?
My
mom listened to jazz.
So like, you know, at home, there was like Nancy Wilson and
Even like Chaka Khan and my mother actually did like Bonnie rate Jonathan Winters and Like there was just weird and my aunts were on the road with Southside Johnny.
They were
background singers and so
from New Jersey Yeah,
and you know my one aunt would play like Dan Fogelberg But then my brother was over you know our rooms were connected and he was playing the black crows You know Led Zeppelin Todd Rungren like it was just
I had everything, so I was not the average black kid listening to Michael Jackson.
I discovered him later.
She did have songs in the Key of Life, an album which completely affected me.
But when you have jazz downstairs, rock over here, and then there's Southern rock over there, it all kind of...
I don't know and I loved old movies.
So I would watch all those being Crosby movies and you know, so I liked being Crosby and Elvis Presley and There was all these hands Christian Anderson movies kind of things that were in the old I would my mother used to say like were you born like like 40 years later Or like earlier than you're supposed to I just what I you know, there's so at the end of the day I was just exposed to so much and it's just I think music isn't
It's not like one should stay within a genre.
It's just like whatever sounded good to me did, but I was really, really exposed to quite a diverse amount.
So it's just, I'm everywhere.
And then in Bennington, my teacher for music was a horn player.
And he made me study this John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman album.
And I just wondered why Johnny Hartman never was as big as Nat King Cole, but whatever.
But so I really got quite an education.
That's
interesting.
I
just read a biography on Prince and he was very, you know, he would listen to Fleetwood Mac, you know, which you wouldn't think that maybe that would be his genre.
He listened to everything as well.
And his dad was a musician.
No, they say I knew a guy that knew that whole circle.
They said, you know, when he was 15, like he kind of didn't have a place to stay.
And the guy would let him stay in a studio and he'd say, like, look, I'm gonna lock the door at night.
So you don't leave, you know, with whatever.
And he said it was staying in that studio.
That's how he learned like all he started learning all those and doing everything too.
But yeah, he clearly that's one of my total heroes.
Totally love him.
Love him.
Love him.
Love him.
Him and Sly.
you know Sly and Family Stone like I also think like Sly was the first prince like he's so brilliant and so but I like them they sort of definitely challenged sort of the lines of what black music was too yeah
and Sly Stone was a producer too before he became famous he did he did a lot of bands and things like that
So good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good stuff.
I love talking music.
I could do that all morning, but we'll come back and after the time out, we'll have more a little bit later on here as Danelia Coleman is.
I said a wrong last
name.
Cotton.
I said, what's your
shirt made
of?
Danelia Cotton, our guest here on WRC radio.
Great to have you along today.
Any thing that you would give like an aspiring artist out there, some things that you've learned through your time in music?
Um, you know, I would say, you know, I want to be an example for that there is no time limit for when you do this.
I always think like if I met Dolly Parton that she'd be like, I like you because literally I grew up, you know, I mean, and I'm not like 90.
I grew up with no running water.
So, I mean, I woke up to go to school, and I pump water, and I put it on a stove, and I heated it, and I washed it in a bit.
I come from that single mother for kids.
But there is no way to really succeed in this world without real discipline and putting it in the time.
And I know that there's a social highway, and that's a huge avenue for promotion.
stay rooted in the moment.
You can't write about life that you're not living.
That can be there, and I understand that that has to be a tool.
But there is a way to navigate in this world where you have time to study your craft and live your life.
And then you just check in.
It's sort of planning out one's day.
And I think a lot of these highways
They suck you in and you're like, you're in that for that moment.
But be in that because I believe art is about, music is about an escape.
It's five minutes to stop thinking about your life or today dream or just feel good.
And so to create that, you have to know what that is.
So you have to be rooted in.
what it is.
So my advice is, you know, study your craft.
You know, the people that make it, it's discipline.
Sometimes, you know, true geniuses are just a gift plus discipline.
That's it.
That's the equation or whatever.
But stay in the moment.
You know, give yourself time and enjoy what is out there to listen to other artists and go back a lot of there's a lot of people from my generation.
There's a lot of great like even I went back through old Dolly Parton stuff that I had never heard.
I mean, I was not necessarily a country artist.
For me, she was the Shania Twain of my generation.
She was a country artist who crossed over into popular music.
And she was beautiful, and she was an act.
I mean, she kind of even did more than Shania.
She was acting like the whole thing.
She really was.
That loss was like, ugh, to lose my grandmother of 105.
And her two like epic, extraordinary women, I was just like, God, what do we have?
So little girls out there, people out there, like to become that, you have to,
You have to live and do things and be rooted in what this is, life.
Don't forget life.
Huge component.
Yes.
No doubt.
Well said.
All right.
We have your guitar.
We're going to make you sing another song.
Welcome back to our studios.
Daniela Cotton, our guest on WRC Radio.
Great chatting with you here today, getting caught up and wishing you nothing but success.
Certainly as you go down the road, you have some goals.
You have some other projects in mind.
Yeah.
I'm going to try to get this
you know originals album out and it's been fun just writing the songs like I wrote one called can't drink because I don't drink but I did when I was young but there's you know in country it's like every other song is I tequila and I took a beer you know and it's okay
But what about the other half?
And there's actually, like, within our country, sobriety amongst the young kids is highly popular.
Like, it's like, for some reason, they're kind of coming out of it, because they're also, their anxiety levels are higher for some reason.
And so I wrote a song that jokes about, like, you know, I can't joke anymore, you know, it's just, and it's kind of funny, but it's real.
It's like,
you know, so I put, you know, I just sort of wrote because I think as a genre, countries still tell stories.
And that's what it's about.
And that it should be that.
And I like that.
And it's, you know, knock on wood.
It's that you guys have really maintained that.
And I hope that that stays.
It's kind of lost in a lot of other genres.
And I won't say what genres I think that happened to.
But
but I think that that's the purpose of kind of a song it's like you're compelled to or as they say you're given by the rock gods or the song gods a song I remember Michael Jackson saying I can't one of his songs he's like I guess it just came to me before Prince you know because sometimes they come to you so fast you can't write and it feels very inspired but it's stories it's a message it's something to lift the human spirit
Yeah and my knock on country these days is I think the the guys have to step it up a little bit because the girls are rocking it but the other thing is all the guys songs right now are mid-tempo like sad and depressing like you know I mean whatever happened to a happy song like way down yonder in the chat a hoochie or something like you know what I mean that's no
you right now you know with Ella Langley yes with Lainey Wilson I mean
Miranda, like you sort of have women running it.
I'm trying to get in there because you could use a black female, you know, and I'm a little older.
So, you know, I'm not going to take their little spots.
I'm like, yo,
yo,
I'm a good kid.
I mean, you have Britney Spencer too, but and you have some other, you know, black,
yes,
yes, I love her.
You know, so I think, you know,
They could use a little bit more there, but I think women are completely running the moment right now.
Yeah, they are like, they're whatever for whatever reason.
Go ahead girls and stay here because you know, they will not get down.
Why don't you play for us another song here?
This is an original.
Yeah.
So it's called bring out the country and me.
So I live in the city, but you know, no matter what I do, I can't help.
Being me and my other half grew up and it was born in Brad, New Yorker.
And I remember him saying like, you know, we don't look at each other walking down the street.
I was like, hi, you know, like they don't say hi, but I have all my doctor's numbers on my cell phone.
And he's like, how did you do that?
I was like, because where I come from, you have your doctor's number.
You know, you could call him.
So it's just if you're country, you country.
It never comes out of you.
It just is what you are.
So it's that that was it.
Yeah.
Sing it for us, Daniel.
Last stop to the city Guitar in my hand Got a suitcase full of dreams Ain't got no plans Too many places, too many faces Could almost lose who I am Everything's moving fast Right now I trade concrete for blue grass
Big city lights bring out the country in me Say hello and goodbye to everyone that I see When I close my eyes I see that old cherry Country life is still a part of me A country girl
Got a child, got a room, got a woke up template At the end of the day, it's worth the price, yeah When something goes wrong, I write a song in the world
Say hello and goodbye to everyone that I see When I close my eyes I see that blue cherry tree Culture life is still a part of me I see these big city lights bring out the country and they Say hello and goodbye to everyone that I see
The country life is still a part of me.
Oh, while a country girl is all I'll ever be.
Oh, Dan Neely of Cotton.
Nice job.
I like it.
I like it very much.
How can people get a hold of your music if they're
interested?
It's easy.
I made it very easy.
at denelia cotton so if you think of denelia just think of daniel in the bible d-a-n-i-e-l and just add a i-a and then put cotton like your shirt denelia at denelia cotton is pretty much everywhere tiktok instagram my website it's all at denelia cotton so come check me
out
awesome
You're doing any shows, any concerts?
Yes,
I have one coming up in October in Kansas at the Levitt Pavilion and that is October 10th.
I have some near my hometown October 1st and 10th at Needle Creek Brewery, which is an awesome
It's a Farmingtown.
He bought a whole bunch of stuff there.
And in October 31st, I'm doing a festival, which is an offshoot of what they call the Ladybug Festival, which will be in Wilmington, Delaware.
So that's what's coming up in October.
Wonderful.
So nice to meet you.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Keep up the good work.
Thank
you.
You bet.
Thank
you.
Daniela Cotton joining us this morning on WRCO Radio.