Dynamite NYC house and disco diva, Amy Douglas, has a new record out on Brooklyn’s Razor-N-Tape – a bijou boutique 45, entitled, Freak At Night – giving The Insider the perfect excuse to catch up with the crazily driven clubland singer-songwriter. With a 10 year-plus recording career that takes in a long list of cracking collaborations – with folks such as Craig Bratley, Crooked Man, Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, Horse Meat Disco, The Juan McLean, Michael The Lion, Roisin Murphy, and Luke Solomon – and in her own words, fueled by sex and rage, Amy has a whole lot to talk about. 

Interview conducted by our favourite four-to-the-floor expert, The Insider.

Thanks for talking to us Amy. Where are you at the moment and how are you spending the day?

Greetings and salutations! I’m actually where I am most days, my home studio right here in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I’m spending the day currently working on fantastic, and sadly overdue, session work! (laughs)

I guess that Brooklyn summertime is in full swing. How’s it looking?

Thus far? The weather has actually been pretty wet and wild! The weather is a cheap, horrible, but wonderfully amusing make-up brand from yesteryear – Hot with lots of rain. Quite steamy!! Just the way I like it!

Were you born in New York? Is it running through your veins?

I am a fourth generation native New Yorker. I was born in Queens, and raised on Long Island. The city is so much a part of me. It’s like a body part. Sadly, I had to live away from this part of my body for eight years, when I lived in the Boston area, and it was next to dying every day. My soul was broken. I don’t know how I did that shit. If not for the incredible people that I met in the Boston music scene, ain’t noooo tellin`.

Can you paint us a picture of where you lived as a kid and what it was like?

Long Island really was every single stereotype that you can think of, from the mall to the Amy Fischer story. Boys with cars were everything. In my particular instance, I kind of felt like a fish out of water most of the time, but that tends to be the narrative of much of my life. Across-the-board, I knew right away I was going back to New York City and staying put. 

I read somewhere that you wrote your first song when you were 8. 

(Laughs) This is absolutely true, and I have a really strong feeling that anybody from way back when, should they read this, is already singing the song in question, which is called Never Again. As with all things “girl” this song was about “boy.” Of course when I was eight the boy in question was 10, and it was quite overwrought at that! Needless to say, the lyrics kept changing, year-by-year until the final rendition, when I was roughly 14 or 15 and had definitely got my heart broken for the first time.

As you became a teen, what was your relationship with music?

It became, as it is now, THE thing. Everything else fell away. I wasn’t looking for a steady boyfriend. I wasn’t looking for a prom date, I had my eyes set so firmly on the ultimate prize, that everything else in my teenage years felt, no offense meant, but so…temporary to me, and I lived with the constant awareness of it being so. The mantra for me was “This is not the end of your story.” I know that sounds horrifically cynical, but I was a verrrrrrry cynical teenager.

When did you first perform? Can you remember what it was like?

The very first time I ever performed on stage was for a talent show at my elementary school. I can’t remember what I sang, but it was probably something very inappropriate! The very first time I ever sang out loud, ironically, I sang Dim All The Lights by Donna Summer! By the time I was six, in my mind, I was already an adult, wanting to do very adult things, and feeling like I was being shut out of a world that I really wanted to occupy. It was received, as most things were received, when I was a very young girl, and beginning to sing, it was received with positivity, but also a sense of shock. 

Has writing and singing always gone hand-in-hand for you?

Yes. It’s likely because so many of my heroes are superheroes at doing both – Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Prince,… also I am such a song, focused artist. The song is God for me. Nothing replaces it, all things serve it, including artistry. “The Artist” is never greater than “The Song”. I hate music genres so much, because I am in fact dedicated to the pursuit of perfect songwriting, and the minute I was introduced to music I knew I wanted to be a part of the big story. 

Were you involved in the club scene of New York in your twenties? 

Well, to be honest, looooong before I was supposed to be there, I was involved in the New York club scene. From the time I was a underage tadpole I was wearing make-up to make myself look older!!! This, of course, was the dream I wanted to make real. I wanted to be close to that world, which seemed like it was right under my nose, because it was, but it was in fact, an hour, a driver’s license, and many years of hell away. It was everything was to get THERE. It would become “Home”. I needed to replace what was taken from me when we moved out of my grandparents’ place in Queens. The rush, the excitement, there is nothing like New York City. It really is the world end. It really is my world. It’s a character I carry with me every day of my life. As soon as possible I wanted to get through those doors and back into that world! 

During most of the really formative years of my 20s I was very fortunate to be part of the Squeezebox house band at Don Hills. This was a weekly party that became so popular, a documentary was made about it, and the Broadway musical, Hedwig And The Angry Inch evolved out of it. I had a regular gig at the hottest party in town, where they were trying to re-create the Max’s Kansas City back-room vibe once a week. Drag queens, and rock stars. My biggest misfortune was not singing in a rock band at this particular time, and somebody should’ve probably beaten me with a shoe and told me to do something along those lines. Ironically, this was around the time that I started getting offers to sing on dance records, and at THAT time? Nothin doin. 

Who did you run around with at that time? Are you still friends with them now?

A few, yes! Sadly, they’re kind of scattered around the globe now. I ran around with a lot of very different people in those days, but they were all either connected to music and / or art and / or film. The people in my life were always connected to art, or it was strictly for sex (laughs). Lots and lots of skinny rocker boys, and also aspiring B-boys, devoted to either MC aspirations or turntablists from my old stomping ground or East Flatbush. The latter took me to King Addies Soundsystem and it…..chaaaaaanged me. The one thing that I will say, is that every single human being from my past informed what I do now, be it the Queens at Squeezebox, my comrades in bands, everyone and everything around me taught me something that I definitely deploy in one way or another today, be it from how I make my art, to having my eyes open all round me ALL the time. 

We know you for your house and disco recordings,  but who were your idols and role models when you were seriously into rock & roll?

(Deep Breath) I was very much inspired by the juggernaut bands of the 1970s, who had tons of muscle, almost too much talent for one band, and generally speaking a wild and flamboyant lead singer. I very much aspired to that tradition. Even though I had fuck tons of female rockstar superheroes that inspired me to no end, it just seemed to me that, by and large, what you still had were girls in dresses with guitars, or standing there singing, and the vibe was very feminine upfront, even if the power in the back was more amplitude driven, I did not see a female Freddie Mercury. Lady Gaga is awesome, but that’s not what I was going for. She took his energy full bore in a pop direction. I did not see a female Robert Plant. I did not see a female Steven Tyler, and this is what I aspired to be. Basically, I wanted to be in a band that was something like a hybrid of Elton John meeting Led Zeppelin and Queen. Ironically, punk rock by contrast also plays a huge role for me. Ironically, since I wanted to sing in something, akin to a stadium band. I was into punk rock like religion. To be perfectly honest with you I was just into every corner of the rock scene. My heroes range from Bowie to The Stones, to Lou Reed to Iggy Pop, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Diamanda Galas, Pat Benatar, Ann Wilson of Heart, and this is just my rock heroes. We would need a way bigger boat to discuss them all. We would be here for the rest of time… don’t even get me started on jazz or soul, or funk, or reggae records. When it comes to rock, however, you could argue that I’m a pan-rock-influenced artist. There is something from every aspect of that world that touched me deeply and influenced my life.

You’ve sung with bands, and been a session singer. Can you please tell us a little about that?

I’ve done every single front person job that you can think of, from band leader, to jazz combos. I’ve done it all, and I know that it probably made me the artist that you see today, who keeps a finger in every arena. I know what it means to do everything that you do when you are the leader, and how being the main source causes you to take on more responsibility – from the actual music to how it’s made, towards sustaining the engine that can make it. It teaches you discipline and focus.

Amy you are a fire starter. Where does the strength in you come from, what is the root of that power?

Sex and RAGE. I definitely have issues with anger, and I’m working them out. I’m not going to get into the backstory as to why, but anger is a BIG part of that source; angry for the things that were done to me, that happened to me, angry for the way women are still treated, angry about the world. As for my own sex power energy? I’m not really sure where that came from. It’s just in my blood. I firmly believe that all women are born with sex power magic, and then the world does it’s best to turn out that light. Overtly proudly sexual women are still maligned by society. Over the years, as disasters found me, and I had to constantly come back from them, most notably, my nearly dying five years ago, it was this raw pool of energy that I swam in. I turned to my own sexual power, and my rage as a form of weaponry, and protection, through the worst times in my life, for better or worse. If you’re an astrology person, apparently it’s all right all in my chart (laughs). My Mars is in Aries – which is basically to say its own ruling planet, and I am a Taurus Rising. Fuck, or fight. Pleasure and quality control driven!!! (laughs)!

That same strength makes for a passionate and hardworking individual. You have a pretty strong work ethic right?

I do. I would love to tell you that this is driven by something other than madness, and I need to output or I feel like somehow I’m being suffocated by life but, I can’t. It’s not like, if I don’t make something every day, I’m lost. I do also have equally strong moments where I spend my days sitting around in my underwear, drooling, and watching cartoons. There are those days. I need those days to serve as balance.

You’ve have talked in interviews about ‘gatekeepers’ within music. Can you talk a little about this, who they are they, generally speaking, and what challenges there have been there for you when you have been trying to push forward in your career.

We’re in a very interesting time right now, where I’ve never seen so much negative gatekeeping, and positive gates, coming down simultaneously. The gatekeepers are the same bad animals that have always existed to keep people apart. These are the sexist, racist, homophobic bodies of influence, either individuals, or the corporations that they create. The corporations they create rely on horrible narratives to survive, worse now than ever, and the current situation with music-streaming – where do music-makers, songwriters, people who are not necessarily entertainers fit into this new world? It’s horrible. What’s worse is that everything is being made to look inclusive and progressive, but it’s the same tropes as always to ensure that someone profits off of the same gross grease that turns the wheel. It’s just all super magnified now, what with the Internet and social media. 

All anybody cares about is your numbers – your art is incidental. Everything is about the audience you have already courted and earned. There is no such thing as artist development at record labels any longer. It is disheartening to know that major corporations would rather put their money, even temporarily, behind people who have no real discernible talent, and who are nothing more than well-crafted personalities that will have a Warhol 15 minutes, all so that they can continue to merely… exist. The music industry, which used to be filled with only misogynist, racist, horrible gatekeepers, who would make sure that there was only ever room for so many women on their roster. This is now amplified, times 10, and what it’s also creating is, in fact, a lack of artistry, a lack of individuality, and a cookie-cutter culture, wherein you see artists essentially all copying each other. It is also creating a vacuum for women that is self-harmful because the only language they hear around them is “keep up with the Joneses”  – language, generally speaking, this means body modification, and image rendering, that goes to the point of self-harm.

This is why I think influencer culture ultimately is, such bullshit -nobody is really buying YOU per se. They are buying into the culture of your minions, that you worked hard to build. I think I said something earlier about the delineation between the music business and the entertainment industry? There is no music business independent of the entertainment industry any longer at all. This, of course, has been happening ever since the introduction of music videos but now? You don’t even have to be talented at all. All you have to do is be savvy enough to have figured out how to do your own marketing, so expertly that a parent corporation will look at what you’ve done, realize how many budgetary things they can cut, and just sign you for your numbers on social media. I cannot even begin to tell you how dismaying this really is. There is, however, a silver lining one. Where there is conflict, there is always uprising.

I believe that the re-interest in vinyl is a great sign of this not only in DJ Culture, but now across the board with all music lovers. I also believe that you will have an underground that will try to resume, something of the old system, which will force people to have to pay for music again. The problem is that this will be very small in comparison to what is now our mainstream, and it will also take years to really build up enough muscle to compete against it as an alternative… and it might never ever get there. The other silver lining is that while this could not possibly be a more confusing and potentially dark, harmful time to be a woman, there are incredible groundbreaking moments happening with women in music, most notably in hip-hop and R&B. The big festivals are hosting female headline dominated bills for the first time. Where for years you only ever had one female artist to something like four male artists, we are now seeing a shift, where female artistry has actually carved the path for a complete 180 here, and to see SZA, Lizzo, Ice Spice, etc., at the top of the bills – that is incredible. This is more of what I hope to see in the future.

When did music really become a major force in your life?

Ohhhhh my. The elusive question that all artists are asked. Music found me when I was a very little girl. It was like it was talking to me directly through the speakers. You couldn’t even talk to me when certain records were on in the house. I was completely spellbound. Nothing else had my attention. It did not make me very popular with other children! One day I had a moment where a letter had come home to my parents from my elementary school music teacher – no surprise that music class was my favourite time of day. She wrote a very intense letter wherein she basically said to my mother that she felt I was a musical genius and that I needed to sing for her, and did my family know anything about what was going on inside of me? The answer, of course, being no. My mom greeted me at the door one day, and I thought, “Am I in trouble for something again?”, and she asked me to sing, and I did and that was it.

Does writing and singing come easy or is it sometimes hard?

I’d like to answer that by saying that it’s always hard, it’s just sometimes, the hard can come faster than other times (laughs). I’ve had songs that felt very completely written to me in a matter of seconds, and I still have songs that I’ve not completed. Some thatare already over 10 years old and remain unfinished. 

Prior to your records on DFA, had you released any other music?

The answer to this is going to be about Parrot, Mr. Richard Barratt. This would be a really good time for me to say that if not for him, and his alias The Crooked Man, you would not know who I am. My gratitude to Richard is overwhelming. I miss him. I really miss being pen pals, and I’m now reminded to go pick that back up again. One of the more important releases that I had, prior to Never Saw It Coming, was a song called Happiness, which concluded The Crooked Man’s debut DFA LP. While I’d worked with Juan MacLean, and while some of our work as Peach Melba is celebrated, it’s really this moment which fostered my relationship with DFA Records. The song in question had been hanging around for a very long time. They had given it to other singers, but nobody was happy. I was contacted by Jonathan Galkin, then the head of the label, to take a crack at it, and what began was one of the greatest gifts of the last 10 years of my life – and it has been a very dark hard 10 years. 

Another single I’d like to highlight is Get It On. This was one of the moments that kind of solidified my work with Michael the Lion, which would only burgeon, and become stronger.

Can you tell us a bit more about Never Saw it Coming? Please tell us a little bit about the birth of that song?

Well, I’ve talked about Parrot. I have not yet had the pleasure of putting my arms around him and giving him a hug, but I promise you that will be remedied ASAP. We really just got along so well. He’s such an immensely brilliant visionary, and he’s also incredibly funny. He’s very pointed, and I love that about him.  So much of the time, when we were not making music together, we were actually talking about politics, or other extraneous matters, and seeing things through a very similar lens. Incidentally, we have a side project with tons of songs that remain unreleased and it’s my hope that you’ll hear them soon!

You`ve collaborated with some pretty significant artists, like Horse Meat Disco. How did y’all first get together? I’ll bet that initial meeting was wild.

Oh, yes! The relationship was fostered by Luke Solomon, who I was working with at the time. They are wild, and they are wonderful.

You worked with 2Bears and Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard as Hard Feelings. How much do you love Joe, and is it true that the Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours, inspired your work together?

Joe is immensely talented. The Fleetwood Mac Rumours thing came from me, so YES!! When we were trying to cobble together a concept for the project, for whatever reason, his tracks were causing me to write some pretty sad mournful music, so we thought it best to try to find a masterwork as a barometer, and I brought up that one.

The video for Dangerous is super cool and the aesthetic is so strong. Are the ideas in the video from you?

Everything that you see with regard to Hard Feelings, visually with the exception of some of the ideas Joe and I came up with together, are mine. 

It’s very now, with its theme about artificial intelligence taking over the world! Do you think we are under threat from AI, while we’re on that subject?

This would take me too long to tell you all of my feelings about it. All I am going say is, YES. Does it invite a creepy, dystopian chill in my body, YES. Does it feel Orwellian, mildly Aldous Huxley, even more Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, what with the destruction of texts – YES. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that absolutely everything that humankind can make can be completely warped, distorted, destroyed, and we can be made obsolete. Already on Manhattan Avenue around the corner for me, there is a thing called BotBar. It’s a fucking robot, operated coffee, barista. I flip the bird every time I walk by.

Talking of aesthetics, you are prolific on instagram. Talk to us a little about your posts, the theme, and your commitment to promoting body positivity.

The first thing that I wanna say is that while somewhere deep down inside, I am always trying to promote an atmosphere and an image that will empower and inspire, I did not set out to do anything aligned with the body positivity movement. Also, I really hate the term body positivity. Body inclusiveness is a far better wording and viewpoint. 

In my particular case, I was coming out of the darkest tunnel of my life, and I needed something to make me feel strong. I hate social media. I think it’s disgusting, and yet I was basically told that this was something I had to make friends with, so I decided right away that I was going to use every single counterculture reference that inspired me from zine culture. I try to make my social media read something like a Frankenzine – it’s part men’s magazine of yesteryear. It’s part counterculture magazine, things like MAD magazine, and the National Lampoon, and it’s obviously part music magazine. It’s a place for me to advertise what I have going on, and it’s a place where I can build a fantasy world in which I am a constant narrative filtering what’s important to me… and what’s important to me is rockstar glory!!!! 

Honestly, I didn’t start parading around the way I do because I wanted to show my body, so much as I wanted to show my fearlessness, and the taking off of shackles. I knew that if I could stand in the firing line as a woman who is not 20, who is not tall, who is definitely thick – despite recent celebrations of this I promise you my growing up had no such celebrations – and emulate the culture which inspired me, from `70s and `80s poster girls, to rockstars and other decadent figures. As somebody who spent the majority of her life being completely picked apart by her own people and the world at large, I would make the account something to be proud of. So, I started to do it, and it started to immediately court attention (laughs). At first it was definitely a sausage fest, but after a while it began to galvanize women who also wanted to feel strong, and because of this, I’m absolutely overjoyed that I made the decision to be brazen. 

I will also say that as a person who did not start really embracing this image until very late in her life, it made me something of a social experiment. As a woman who entered the game a little bit later, I can honestly tell you, that it shows you things from the best and the worst of everything. It also makes me that much more convinced that we need to completely shoot all of the gatekeepers, because my audience by and large does not match my peer group, and that is another thing I am grateful for.

Someone else with a strong aesthetic is Roisin Murphy. You have probably talked about it a thousand times, but it is Roisin Murphy, so I gotta ask about the song you wrote for her.

Well, the first and foremost thing that I want to say about Roisin is that I was such a fan of hers, from as far back as Moloko, so when she contacted me, you have to understand what an incredible shock it was. When you’re contacted by people that influenced your life directly, it’s  always something of a smack in the face, and in this case what a smack!! 

Roisin, generally speaking, with all of her collaborations, is always involved in the writing, so when she asked me to write something for her, I was so shocked and so floored by that. I started working on it mentally, probably, that night, and I was done, at least melodically speaking, by the time I got off the plane back in Brooklyn. Something More will always stand as a great moment in time for me. It’s wonderful that the song resonates with so many people, and how wonderful that we were able to make the whole thing a beautiful family affair, what with Parrot at the controls again! The whole thing felt so complete. Is it any wonder that whenever she sings that song live you can hear people singing along with her? I also must tell you that there’s no greater feeling in the entire universe, as a songwriter, than hearing somebody else sing your song – whether it’s a patron, or in this case a goddess.

Your new release is coming up on Razor-N-Tape. Are you friends with the RNT boys from Brooklyn? How did you hook up?

I am! Most notably I have a nice relationship with the gent with whom I wrote the music, Sir J. Kriv! He really is such an outstanding musician, and writer. He really has such a great grasp of disco music. ALL music actually! He’s one of the very few people within the dance music community, other than Tommie Sunshine, with whom I can discuss Kiss passionately!! (laughs) Be them jazz records or metal albums, he is the guy to go to! It’s very hard not to be inspired by him, and the other members of the label, and the label itself. Right now, it’s a little disheartening that the epicentre of dance recording culture is not New York City. It needs to return to its rightful home, and I believe that a label like Razor-N-Tape, is a huge part of this happening. They are definitely galvanizing the culture here in Brooklyn, and to be a part of this is deeply moving for me, and incredibly satisfying. I love knowing that I’m doing things that matter for the home team.

There’s a cool group of people in Brooklyn, RNT, Soul Calp, Wolf + Lamb, Underground System, No Regular Play, 79.5. Do you all know each other and is there some bar where you all hang out in Brooklyn?

We do know each other. Even if we don’t necessarily know each other intimately, we all have a great awareness of each other. I’m friendly with the girls from 79.5 for example, and of course their incredible bass God  – who’s also bass player for Midnight Magic – Andrew Raposo. This is actually one of the things that I love about the scene here in Brooklyn, even if you don’t really know somebody very intimately they are probably aware of you if you’ve done anything of merit here, and it makes reaching out a lot easier.

Greg Paulus just told me about a speakeasy / Mescal bar behind the freezer door of a Mexican deli. Do you know this joint?

You are referring to Mescaleria La Milagrosa! That place is the truth! I live there. Too much!

Mescaleria La Milagrosa

The best disco records are always about empowerment right? Talk us through the story of Freak At Night. Is it about you becoming crazy when the night draws in? What’s it all about?

Freak At Night, lyrically anyway, came from a joke going around about me. For a while there I was going out so much that it definitely flew in the face of me being a married lady (laughs). I always think to myself, because I never take my ring off, not even in the raciest of my photos, that this is something inherently people know, but hey, people are really STUPID. Anyway, I was going out and cavorting around, and, of course, the new image, all lead to many people being mystified when I let them know that I’m married. My husband is an amazing artist by the way. He plays lead guitar like a motherfucker, and we have a hard rock band together called FEINTS. The joke was that “by day she’s a hard-working, disciplined, worked ethic, driven taskmaster, but she’s a freak at night!

How would you describe yourself, in 5 words?

Passionate, Zany, Loving, Ambitious and Fiery.

How do you handle difficulties in life. Are you a fighter or a flyer away?

I’m the fighter who wishes she could fly away.

Underneath your wild and fiery demeanour, is there an Amy that likes to chill? When you need that down time, what do you do to kick back?

Absolutely. I have to chill out every now and then because I burn hot by nature and when I don’t chill out very bad things happen!!  When I wanna kick back and stop the world, the only thing that really ever seems to be able to absorb all of my attention these days are the great films, so I have movie nights.

If you had the power to change something in America today, what one thing would you change?

Mitch McConnell would not exist, nor anything like him.

If you had the power to change one thing in you, what would it be?

To learn patience, and to learn to be confident in yourself enough to be quiet sometimes. It’s been hard, but I’m teaching myself to learn how not to give everything away, because I am an explosive and expulsion person by nature.

Can you tell us something about you that we would never know?

I’m one of the best cooks you’ll ever encounter.

Thigh high boots or sneakers?

Both!!!!!

Sequins or leather?

Both!!!! Although to be fair, even though you’re talking about two of my favorite materials, I’m definitely more pro leather head-to-toe whenever possible.

Hot Red or Pretty Pink?

Hot Red.

What else do you have cooking that you can share?

Arguably the greatest disco vocal of my entire career, and one of my best penned moments on an upcoming single package with the lovely Sophie Lloyd coming out on Classic, the release of the aforementioned hard rock band FEINTS with its debut LP, and MORE!

Thank you for your valuable time Amy.

Amy Douglas’ Freak At Night is released / unleashed this Friday on Razor-N-Tape.