Dana Kletter

Currently: writing freelance for some respectable publications , working on new music, recording (in a loose, intermittent but nice fashion), a new story ("Night Song") out in the Michigan Quarterly Review October issue. Honorable mention in Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2008 for Eminence Grise: Joe Boyd Remembers, Remembering Joe Boyd .
"Disarmingly touching" Salon.com

"strange and wonderful" Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music
"Dana Kletter and her gorgeous voice" All Music Guide
"The one weird thing [about recording Live Through This] is that I had to blow my nose all the time when I sang. It must have been like mucus buildup from smoking or something. The only reason I know about it is I got this girl Dana [Kletter] to do the high vocals on it, and she went around and told this awful story about how there were bloody handkerchiefs -- which isn't true. I mean, I'm sure there were handkerchiefs." Courtney Love in Spin Magazine
"[S]he was hired as back-up singer to "sweeten" the vocals on Hole's 1994 landmark album, "Live Through This." Though significantly diffused, it's possible to hear Dana's voice supplementing Courtney Love's limited vocals on tracks like "Doll Parts" and "Violet." "I learned all the words in three days," Dana recalls. "I got there and we went over some pronunciation stuff, because the producers didn't want me to stand out too much. Then they showed me to the vocal booth, which was literally ankle deep in bloody, snotty tissues. It was Courtney's booth, full of her essence. I did my stuff, it took me three hours. Then I walked back through the trail of bloody, snotty tissues and went home." Eventually Dana received a gold (and later platinum) record for her work, "obviously the only one I'll ever have," she says. But right around the time her gold record arrived, the royalty payments stopped. "That really irked me. Even though the gold record is hanging in the kitchen and it's sort of amusing, it's not that amusing. I could've used the money." Dana Kletter in Salon
on Dear Enemy (Rykodisc) "Dana and Karen benefit from either a lot of very good training or an astonishing natural gift. At moments they remind me of both Tori Amos and Kate Bush, but more often my overriding impression is that this is what Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad might have sounded like if they'd grown up in a good, studious British convent run by nuns with the sense to keep them away from the bad elements like Benny and Bjorn. Their harmonies are simply flawless, or at least beyond my ability to critique." furia.com
On blackgirls (Mammoth Records) "in case most of you squints didn't know better, blackgirls were alternative when alternative wuddn't cool and it wuddn't yet wearing flannel. there was dana kletter (piano/guitar) and lee johnson (guitar) both writing and singing their own songs, with hollis brown's violin practically its own lyricist. lee johnson takes some getting used to, but scores points for singing her lyrics exactly as they demand to be sung. a little scary to some but sublime to those willing to meet her on her terms. dana kletter's songs contributions to procedure are, as observed, devastating. she writes as one who has come to terms with her own insecurities, and is removed enough from her ego to find her flaws a source of humor. her voice and melodies could melt glass.
realmenplaypinkdrums.com
In 1986, co-founder, singer, pianist, songwriter of blackgirls, mysteriously located by Fairport Convention/Nick Drake/Nico producer Joe Boyd , who signed us to his label and produced Procedure and Happy. Played around a lot on many strange bills (Alex Chilton, The Feelies, Hugo Largo, The Swans, Die Kreuzen, Buffalo Tom, 11 th Dream Day, Cowboy Junkies, Joan Jett, Trip Shakespeare, Dave Bromberg, Leon Redbone, the world was a different but not necessarily better place then).

Band collapsed/exploded/dismembered.

1986 Speechless (Tom Tom Records)
1990 Procedure (Mammoth Records/Hannibal Records)
1992 Happy (Mammoth Records/ Hannibal Records)

Started Dish with a bunch of my best friends from Raleigh, NC. Dish, released two CDs on Engine and Interscope Records. Trouser Press said 2 nd CD Boneyard Beach "offer[ed] elegant, haunting melodies with nary a hit of excess sugar. Kletter's passionate yet polished singing brings high drama to original tuneswith thrilling results, and compared the blending of voices (mine and guitarist Bo Taylor's) to John Doe and Exene Cervenka's chemistry in X.
1994 Mabel Sagitarius (Engine Records)
1995 Boneyard Beach (Interscope Records)

Back to Joe Boyd who, with John Wood, stepped in to record my twin sister and me singing folk songs from a country that we invented. The London Times named Dear Enemy "an early contender for record of the year." Jon Pareles in The New York Times wrote "the songs reveal a sensibility like nothing else in pop: private, dreamlike and heartfelt, as enigmatic and touching as Joseph Cornell's boxes." However, civil war ensued.

Set poems to music and recorded and produced a lullaby CD with my sister and many great musicians from Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill. London's Guardian called it "22 of the most beautiful lullabies ever."

2003 Mrs. Moon (Barefoot Books).

Was once vaguely famous for serving as backing vocalist/scullery maid on Courtney Love's Live Through This. Got a gold record. Met her once, a couple of years later. Sang backing vocals for Linda Thompson that almost made it onto her CD. Played piano with Mike Johnson of Dinosaur Jr. Was one of the “Celestials” on Michael Hurley's Sweet Korn. Sang the part of a murdered girl on Flare's last recording. Played piano on Damon and Naomi's , The Earth is Blue.