Featured Artist

Nanyana Summer - singer-songwriter
Jason “JJ Boogie“ Reichert - electric guitar
Dean Coppolino - guitar
Richard “Thunder“ Jones - drums/percussion
Adam Maurasse - bass guitar

Interview with Nanyana of the Nanyana Summer Band
by Sarah Powell

With a melding of raw, earthy tones with her aggressive, rock style, Nanyana Summer (pronounced NAHN-yah-nah) enthralls her listeners with every beat of her music.

In 2008, Jason “JJ Boogie“ Reichert on electric guitar, Dean Coppolino on guitar, Richard “Thunder“ Jones on drums, and Adam Maurasse on bass guitar came together to form Nanyana’s band after several years of friendship. Nanyana tells how they came together. “I love my band. It’s so hard to find compatible people that you like being around. They are really good guys. It didn’t take long for the band to get together which is really fascinating. Years ago, I was playing at coffeehouses everywhere trying to get all my material together. My bass player Adam and the other guitarist Dean, we go to church together, and they play in the church band so it was pretty easy.“ At one of her husband’s gigs for Arrested Development, Nanyana met Richard who was playing percussion for the opening band. She was hanging out backstage when she approached him about playing with her band as she always wanted to add a percussion sound. After the previous drummer left the band, Richard later became the drummer for Nanyana’s band.

Nanyana performs all original music, which is based on her experiences and her vision. She shares what it takes to create her music and expresses her appreciation for her band that supports her. “As far as the music goes, it is my project. This is all my material that I’ve written over the course of twenty years. I wrote the lyrics, the melodies, and the acoustic parts. The band adds the bass line and drum parts to it. They write the song to make it sound cohesive. There are even times when the guys are just jamming and they come up with a part that we record... My CD ’My Rock Your World’ is my material, my experience, my vision. I’m very grateful for my band and the time and energy they put into it. I take it very personal because it’s my baby. They are making me sound so good. I value them. They are very important to me. I look forward to the day that I can compensate them for their loyalty and thank them for their time. I would be very generous about it.“

As an independent musician, Nanyana is responsible for all that goes into marketing her music from booking her gigs to sending out emails and updating her websites. In March 2010, she and Eddie’s Attic were even featured in an article with CNN called “Artists and music venues adapt to changing industry.“ But how did she get her start? Nanyana shares her story. “It was so long ago... I’ve always loved music as a child. I remember being a very young child singing and provoking tears. It’s been so powerful for me. I’ve always enjoyed it. When I turned eleven, we moved to Georgia. I’d sing with my neighborhood girlfriends. We decided to put a girl group together and that’s when we started writing songs. It was never ’Oh, I want to be a singer’. It was just ’Let’s write songs together.’ It was something to do besides playing with Barbies. We started writing songs and we were like ’We could be a band. We could be famous.’ As a troubled teen and having a dysfunctional family, I got put on restriction all the time so I’d get locked up in my room all the time with nothing but my radio and notebooks so I would just write. I wouldn’t even know what I was writing. I would just write. I still have those books today. It was a release for me to write. I later noticed a guitar that we had in the house. My dad bought my mom a guitar. She took a couple lessons and then it just became an ornament moved from house to house. At this point it only had three strings on it. I picked it up and began tinkering with it. I played it for weeks with three strings out of tune and later put some new strings on it.... At fifteen, my first job was at iHop. Eventually I saved up enough money to buy my very first electric guitar and a little speaker amp. I would have to plug in earphones because I would turn the distortion up so high that my mom would go crazy. I think that’s where it all began. At fifteen, you’re so full of angst. You’re so full of rebellion. I was just so aggressive and so full of myself. I just decided in my mind that I was going to be a rock star. ’I can sing. I can write. I’m cool. I’m hip. I’m gonna be a rock star.’ So at fifteen, it really solidified into a goal. I thought by the time I was nineteen that I’d be touring around the world.“

“I moved to Atlanta on my tenth birthday. My dad was in the Army so we traveled from Germany to Louisiana to Kentucky to Tennessee to New Jersey to Georgia. My parents got a divorce at that point and I stayed with my mom in Georgia. I love Georgia. Georgia is my home. I have family here. I have other family in Tennessee which is so close.“ As Georgia is her home, Nanyana has primarily focused her gigs in Atlanta, Georgia but has in the past year begun branching off into the southeast - Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Nanyana states “It is my dream ultimately to travel the world. I want to tour. I want to go to all these different states and different countries. I just think it would be fascinating to be able to go to these different places to get paid to sing.“

In order the create a diverse, raw sound, Nanyana decided to take Indian voice lessons. She describes how she came to take the voice lessons and how she incorporates her experience into her music. “I’ve always loved world music“ At first, her guru, Mr. Teevee Barbella, was hesitant on teaching her due to the difficulty. “He was just so blown away that I had the talent to be able to swell the notes and I could put some mood into it. You could tell he was just so excited about teaching me. He loved teaching me. I’ve never been a really good freestyle singer like pop singers are. It’s just not me but I noticed that whenever I took Indian voice lessons, I was able to navigate different scales a lot easier. So I think it was the actual experience incorporated into my music that made me be able to do more with the notes of the scale with more confidence. Some of my music tends to have a world flare anyway. There’s a couple of new songs that I have written that have kind of a worldly taste to it... I think someday down the road I will create a song with what I learned to honor my lessons. I’ve already started some ideas... It would be something very poetic and very earthy to give it a very old song, old world feel. Then it would also be very simple, very haunting. I kind of have a song like that on my ’My Rock Your World’ CD called ’Free Me’. It’s an a cappela song that I have on the CD.“

“’Free Me’ is a totally a cappela song. I started writing it when I was sixteen years old - the first verse and the chorus. I wrote it just so long ago. I had a friend [Alex Spitzer of www.spitzerdancecompany.org] who was actually a dancer. He’s in a wheelchair and he has a degree in dancing. It’s really crazy. He did a show and he wanted to incorporate my music into his performance. He wanted to do something like an a cappela song, something beautiful and slow so I finished writing the second verse ten years later. It’s doesn’t have any instruments at all... It is about not waiting on people to make my life better but making my own decisions and taking my own chances in my own life and not relying on other people to make me happy... When I recorded it, I wanted it to be organic and earthy. I wanted it to be very raw. Sometimes I’ll even sing it at church too.“

Nanyana also created acoustic videos of “Release Me“ and “You Make Me Feel“ that are available on YouTube. Speaking of acoustic, Nanyana shares about the prospect of her creating an acoustic CD in response to her fans’ demands. “I have a bunch of fans who are asking me to do an acoustic album so they can really hear my voice. I will do it one day but I’m so a rock chick though. My whole life has been rock music. My first concert was Biohazard. Pantera was like the coolest band in my teenage years. I’ve always loved heavy, aggressive music. I’m a rocker chick. I want people to appreciate my rockness first.“ Nanyana laughs. Nanyana is full of surprises. We look forward to the recording projects she has coming up next.

Keep on rockin’, Nanyana.

Check out Nanyana at her upcoming gigs.

A message to Nanyana’s fans...

If there’s anything you’ve wanted to do, just do it. I learned in my mid-twenties how much it enriches a person. It gives you stories to tell and a legacy to leave your grandchildren.