When it comes to being a professional musician, there are plenty of challenges, especially when it comes to marriage.
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And, especially when one of you works a standard 9-to-5 job and the other is constantly touring.
"It's hard. But going into this field you kind of have an idea that it comes with the territory, so you know you have to make time for each other," said singer-songwriter Danielia Cotton, speaking from her home in New York City June 25.
Luckily, she said, her husband, Sam Roberts, is creative as well, and even helps her co-write some of her lyrics. "He's incredibly smart. He was a lit major at Princeton, and was inspired to go to law school after serving on a jury," she said. "Today he's an attorney working in legal aid, and even though the scheduling is tough … I touch my foot back home with him whenever I can."
Danielia Cotton, along with Toronto's The Free Press, Brooklyn's FL Jones plus nine other bands and more than 30 artists, will be performing at this year's seventh-annual Freedom Fest in downtown Lancaster, a daylong music and arts festival sponsored by 88.5 WXPN, Lancaster Arts and the Mayor's Office of Special Events, to name just a few.
The event begins at 3 p.m. Saturday, July 4, and runs until midnight. Admission is $10.
Fighting for every part: Growing up in rural Hopewell, N.J. — located along the Delaware River in Mercer County in western New Jersey — Danielia Cotton was one of only a handful of African-American kids in her junior high school, influenced both by what her neighbors and friends were listening to (bands like AC/DC and The Rolling Stones), as well as by the jazz standards favored by her mother, from singers like Etta James and Mavis Staples.
"I never met my father. My mom is a jazz singer who met my dad in the service, and after she got out she decided to come back to Hopewell, where she was raised," Cotton said. "Growing up in Hopewell, I didn't fit in. I was black and Hispanic and not like the other kids … it was a different time then, I guess, so I don't know if it would be the same way now, but it made me what I am."
After graduating from high school, Cotton went off to Bennington College in Vermont where she majored — not in music — but in theatre, with aspirations to be an actress. From there, she said, she was able to land an agent who helped her to score a small part in the 1994 Samuel L. Jackson urban crime drama, "Fresh," about a 12-year-old drug-dealing street hood who is also a chess prodigy.
"I played a Puerto Rican drug addict, and I didn't enjoy being a professional actress in the way that I thought I would. I'd always loved music, and as soon as I started acting for real it made me realize that music was my true home," Cotton said.
Nowadays, she said, she realizes how right her decision was to leave acting behind. "If I had continued down that path, I think I would have had a terrible time being cast. Because I'm not distinctly black or distinctly Hispanic, I think …I would have had to fight for every part," she said.
The No. 1 perk: Moving to New York City with her husband — who at that time was a restaurateur — Cotton eventually settled in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea and began honing her skills as a singer-songwriter, occasionally working as a bartender.
Eventually, she said, her hard work at small, local clubs in New York City paid off when she began receiving invites to open for Southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Black Crowes.
In 2005 she released her first album, "Small White Town" to rave reviews in the independent music press, which led to her equally well-received 2008 follow-up "Rare Child".
In the press, Cotton's music is sometimes described as being "Southern-influenced," even though she has few connections to Dixie and grew up in rural New Jersey's Delaware Valley. "I think what they're talking about is that sound, that '70s Southern rock sound, because I was certainly influenced by people like, for example, Gregg Allman [singer from the 1970s supergroup The Allman Brothers Band]," she said.
"So it's no surprise that I lean toward that hard-rockin' sound," she said, "at least from time to time."
Currently, Cotton said, she's hard at work trying to "increase her visibility". In July she said she's planning on releasing a live EP titled "Live Child," featuring seven tracks from her album "Rare Child." Then she said, she hopes to start recording her next full-length album in the fall.
Finding her place in the music business, she said, hasn't been easy. "My mom is a jazz singer and my niece has done commercials, so I was definitely born with the bug. But music makes me what I am," she said.
"This is what I was born to do," she said, "and the No. 1 perk is that I get to make serious, heartfelt soulful music."
Danielia Cotton will join bands like Barrel of Wolves and Dan Kauffman & The Educated Mess at the seventh annual Freedom Fest, being held at Marion Court Room, 7 Marion Court, in downtown Lancaster. To learn more, call 399-1970 or visit http://www.myspace.com/freedomfestpa.
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