Ana Popovic did not title her latest album Dance to the Rhythm randomly.
“I love to dance,” the Serbian-born guitarist, singer, bandleader, songwriter and producer tells us via Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “I think there should be more dance songs with guitar.”
That can be a tricky business, Popovic acknowledges. But on the new album she demonstrates her acumen for that particular fusion on tracks such as “Worked Up,” “Sho Nuf” and the title tune, working with regular cohort Corey LaDell “Buthel” Burns.
“There’s not a whole lot of it out there,” Popovic says, lamenting the lack of electric and acoustic guitar–based dance tracks. “It’s not something people like to mix. I love going to dance clubs all over the world, Ibiza or wherever, and there’s never a guitar. So I wanted to try to bring it together.”
How to do it in a manner that serves both the feet and the ears?
“You’ve got to showcase your guitar skills but interfere as little as possible with the song,” Popovic explains.
“On ‘Sho Nuf,’ for example, the solo kicks in at the very end, and by that time people are so hyped because they’ve been dancing, and you’re placing the solo on the right spot where it’s a great something new and it really helps the song. Because otherwise it’s the same old, same old, same old, right? So let’s put in some guitars. That’s my approach.
Her description, in fact, is akin to a DJ building the music to a frenzy, then landing the drop beat for additional impact.
“Exactly!” Popovic says. “I just wanted to try something new, really. And it is new. It’s something a lot of people don’t do, and why not? Prince was trying to have people dance and have some guitars woven into it. It’s just bringing something new to the table, and of course something the audience didn’t expect from me or saw coming.”
Popovic says some of her approach was inspired by Foggy, the new custom Stratocaster model — named after its fogged-mirror chrome color — she created with the Fender Custom Shop. While the 1964 Strat she bought in 2007 at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville is still her main axe, Popovic began working with Fender on Foggy during 2019 and throughout the lockdown and her battle with breast cancer, creating the unique color. It also has a C-profile neck with jumbo frets, and a combination of two ’60s-inspired Custom Shop single-coil pickups and a Seymour Duncan ’78 humbucking pickup in the bridge position.
“Foggy inspires that ‘other’ side of me that wants to break free from the old tradition,” Popovic explains. “It’s a modern tone, a little more modern than the ’64 Strat. It inspires the new approach and new grooves, so it can be put to work properly. The ’64 Strat is my main guitar, my road warrior and my right hand, but that’s why Foggy gets all the fun of exploring the unknown ground — new grooves, new styles.
“While in a lot of songs I combine the two guitars, they have distinctive differences as the ’64 is rooted in tradition and is very easy to manage. It plays like butter. It inspires me to get my best solos out, as it’s tested through time, and I know what to expect from it. Foggy needs time, and new sounds. It needs me to put in some time discovering the hidden, modern twist to my guitar playing that’s definitely in me.”
Nevertheless, Popovic adds, “I don’t think there’s a rule” to applying those touches to dance songs. “It’s whatever the song needs, wherever you want to take it,” she explains. “Of course playing guitar over tracks like that, you’ve got to be really in the pocket, and obviously I try to show off with licks and everything, but it’s still got to be heavily rooted in the pocket of the song.”
That, of course, goes for other tracks on Dance to the Rhythm — just out digitally, with physical formats coming October 30 — whether it’s the slower blues of “Dwell on the Feeling” or the sophisticated, sometimes jazz-flecked stylings on tracks such as “Soulution” and “California Chase.” (Popovic likens the former to Steely Dan).
Then there’s her rendition of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which Popovic infuses with Latin and jazz textures and adds a gospel-flavored backing vocal arrangement.
“It’s an incredible song, a phenomenal song — so what could we do with it? It’s so good as it is,” she notes. “I love songs with two different tempos, two different parts, two different anything. We kind of envisioned this… either funk or gospel. What if we turn that B part that’s kind of like ’70s hippie rock into gospel.
“We were in the studio and messing around with it, and we were like, ‘Well, let’s sing on this part. Let’s sing something that sounds a little bit churchy,’ and we built it from there. I think it’s a wonderful new way to play that song. I think it was a very successful way of keeping the actual character of the song but changing it, making something different and just refreshing it after all this time. It’s definitely added something.”
Simon himself hasn’t weighed in, but Popovic says his organization “started following me right away” after she posted a teaser of the track online.
“I hope he’s going to hear it,” she says. “I think we did it justice. I’m a huge fan, of course. I carefully pick my covers, and I haven’t done a Paul Simon song yet. This just screams for attention to me, of all his songs. They’re all great, but for this one I envisioned this as a great song for a bigger band… in a live situation. I just want to have songs like that.”
Popovic — who maintains bands that range from four to 11 members — will be in plenty of live situations in the near future. She’ll be taking her largest band on the upcoming Rhythm & Blues Cruise to Mexico and back during October, then heads to Europe in November and the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii during early December. More U.S. dates are already on tap for the new year as well.
“I think all of those new songs are gonna be fantastic live,” she says. “Some of these songs have been around for a long time; ‘Hardest Ticket in Town’ was the first song I wrote; this was years ago. ‘Hurts So Good’ had been floating around for three or four years, and I recorded multiple versions of it.
“I never give up on a song. At the same time I’m not gonna release it unless I’m 100 percent sure it’s reached its full potential. And then when it has, all I want to do is play it live.”
