I chatted with Ana Popovic about her new music and challenging moments in her career.
What drew you to the guitar originally and what keeps you inspired today?
Everything keeps me inspired. It’s a blessing. It’s delightful to say that it keeps going. Different cities inspire me; new types of music; a sentence I hear can be a part of a song. There could be a message I hear and I want to amplify it out to my audience.
Originally I started with my dad. He had a lot of jam sessions at home. It was love at first sight. This was in Serbia. It was hard to see any female guitarists out there; let alone in Serbia or Europe. It’s all I wanted to do. Every record has a new theme. “Dance To The Rhythm” has a lot of funk, gospel, and dance. I love dancing and going to techno-parties, but I never see a guitar. So I wanted to merge the two.
What was it like filming the video for “Dance To The Rhythm?”
It was SO much fun. My daughter is in the video as well. She’s a great dancer. One of her tutors is a professional dancer from UCLA. They came up with a dance on Sunday and we filmed on Monday. I had to take my daughter out of school, which was not a good thing ::laughs:: We had a BLAST. I always get ideas for my music videos as the song evolves.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
Oh my goodness. I would make all homeless people have a home. Or all the hungry children would have food. That would be nice.
Did you have any challenging moments early in your career?
Yeah of course. I came from Serbia and I’m a woman and it was a male dominated world so they would tell you what to do. It’s hard sometimes to really know for yourself “Should I listen to them?” I always had a very strong vision where I wanted to go musically. I would bypass a lot of those guys who thought they knew better. I would record in New Orleans, Nashville, and Memphis. Each place would have a distinct way of recording music.
How has touring internationally shaped you as musician?
Every audience is different. One day you’re in Paris, and the next you wake up in Australia. You approach each audience differently, especially the first time around. I think that’s a beautiful part of my job because every night is different. It’s full of surprises and it’s very refreshing. You can always start again and feed them the new music and see how they react. I’ve always had tours in different continents; Spain is one big party filled with young people who want to listen to Blues. They don’t even start their shows until 11:30 or midnight. While here in the states, everyone is sitting down. I love both because it pulls out a different aspect of my show. We can cover it all. We can party hard or have them sit down and really listen to what we have to say.
Are you excited about your show here in Annapolis?
I love coming back to that venue. It’s a great example of a place where they have really great acts come through night after night. They always inspire us to put our A game on. They’re a great listening audience but they can switch into party mode real fast!
Ana headlines Rams Head Annapolis on Sunday, January 11th! Buy tix