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with an all-new backing band (drummer
Jason Ganberg, bassist Eliot Lorango, and
guitarists Nick Maybury and Leroy
Wolfmeier). A group more in the classic
mode of Robbie Robertson’s The Band,
circa The Last Waltz, a DVD of which
Martin was obsessed with on the tour bus.
It’s a perfect match. Rockisdead was awash
in steely power-chord anthems like
“Missile,” “Raise Hell,” “Medicine Man,”
and the stomping scorcher “Gun in My
Hand.” The album packs just as much
oomph but is couched in a more cosmic,
Laurel Canyon sensibility, from the open-
ing jangler “Flawless” (with the frank
admission “You said you loved me but you
threw me out in the garbage/Now I’m Like most recovering alcoholics, the
Budapest-born, San Diego-raised rocker
has broken down her addiction into inter-
locking parts. If she even has a single
Corona, it could easily lead to pill-pop-
ping, arguments with friends, even fist-
fights. She isn’t joking – she’s a scrapper. In
fact, she’s surprised she never wound up
in jail. “So I don’t miss the hangovers,” she
chuckles. “And I don’t miss waking up
and thinking, ‘What did I say last night?”
Or ‘Who did I fuck?’ That feeling is so dis-
empowering and dark and gross. That’s
like your own personal hell, and I didn’t
need to live there anymore. So I found a
solution, and I kind of want to stay close to
the light now.” The word ‘church’ pops up
starting to stink, but everybody thinks I’m
flawless”), through the Eagles-ish “Pretty
When You’re High,” the Gospel-crescen-
doed “Mountain,” a neo-psychedelic
“White Butterfly,” the blues growler “On
My Knees,” and the coliseum-rock anthem
“We Are STAARS.” There might be a cer-
tain subtle restraint tempering the coarser
cuts, like the howling “Who Do You Love.”
But they still rock with venomous convic-
tion.
“It took a minute for me to figure things
out,” admits Martin. “Everyone in the
group had gone their separate ways, and
you’ve got to understand – it was time for
another album a full year before we started
doing one. It was time a long time ago. But
everything happens for a reason, and the
timing was perfect. When Linda and I got
in touch, she had wrapped up some stuff,
and she had free time.” The time was right
to give up drinking, as well. “I had wanted
to quit for a long time, so eventually I did,
and now I feel great,” she says. “But that
doesn’t mean that it’s easy. I have days that
are very difficult because I wasn’t dealing
with my emotions for years. And when
you put a band-aid on a forest fire, you feel
these things that are just catastrophic.” here and there on 28 Days, and there’s
almost sacred reverence to some of the
reflective, lived-to-tell lyrics. “And I have
visited churches – they are a place of peace
and quiet for me,” she cedes. “And I’m not
religious, actually, but I’m very spiritual, in
that I believe in a power greater than
myself. And I’m always asking for guid-
ance and trying to live my life in a better
way. I think I had it backwards before. But
it’s okay because I wouldn’t have found
these topics to speak on had I not gone
through these things.”
Perry urged Martin not just to acknowl-
edge her own pain and vulnerability, but to
own it and turn it into alchemical song. As
28 Days got under way, Dorothy marked
time with a 2017 standalone single “Down
to the Bottom,” which straddled both
worlds; One version boasted the original
Dorothy lineup, while a second was
tracked live in Perry’s studio with the new
band. “I wanted to keep putting music out,
and I wanted to remind people that I’m
still out here,” she says. “So I wanted to
give them a good rock song that would
segue into the new album.” Listening back
to 28 Days now, she finds it startling how
many co-writes with Perry – while seem-
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24 illinoisentertainer.com may 2018