Danielia Cotton

By TAMMY PAOLINO
Courier-Post Staff
HADDON HEIGHTS

Music fans attending WXPN's All About the Music Festival last month in Camden got a special treat when Jersey's own Danielia Cotton took the stage.

Cotton's Saturday afternoon performance was a highlight of the three-day music festival. And if fans took delight in her rock-fueled, blues-soaked set, Cotton was equally gratified by the response of the crowd.

"It's like candy," she said of playing for an appreciative audience. "It's so amazing, so amazing, audiences like that. It's all about what they give you. I'm still paying my dues, and it's really about trying to hit it every time, and giving it your all."

The Hopewell, Mercer County, native didn't wait long to return to South Jersey. She performs for free at 7:30 tonight at the McLaughlin-Norcross Memorial Dell in Haddon Heights, as part of the Camden County Park's Sundown Music Series.

Cotton will perform songs off her upcoming debut CD, Small White Town, as well as some newer tunes and a cover or two.

Speaking of covers, if Wiggins Park had a roof, Cotton, who also plays a mean electric guitar, would have raised it with her raucous rendition of AC/DC's "Back in Black."

Asked about this perhaps surprising choice of covers, Cotton sounded downright gleeful: "I just loved AC/DC growing up. . . . I worked really hard to get the vocal quality right. If you're going to do a cover, you have to make it your own."

Her version of the song becomes a testament to her trailblazing as a blackwoman making a name for herself in the mostly white world of rock.

"Nobody expects this little black chick to come out and cover AC/DC," she said.

It's nonetheless a natural progression for the singer-songwriter, whose
mother, a jazz vocalist, raised her in the nearly all-white town of
Hopewell, in the center of the Jersey suburbs. It was there Cotton
developed a lust for rock, which she says gives her a place to "recycle my
pain."

"Rock 'n' roll is so expressive, an outlet for when you're angry at the
world," she said.

These days, Cotton makes her home in New York City, but she speaks fondly
of her "Jersey Girl" upbringing (her aunts had a turn serving as backup singers for the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny). And South Jersey and Philadelphia are fast becoming a home-away-from-home for Cotton, whose singles ("Shame" and "It's Only Life") get regular airplay on WXPN 88.5 FM.

It's the latter song from which Small White Town draws its name, but Cotton doesn't dwell too long on her upbringing or that she now often finds herself playing to a predominantly white audience.

"The color of your skin does not define who you are, or lock you into anything," she said. "If my fan base is particularly one persuasion, I'm just glad they are standing out there. And I think that my black audience is growing all the time. It's just about getting it out there."

For Further Information, Interviews or CDs, Contact:
Vermillion Media • www.vermillionmediagroup.com
Official Website • www.danielia.com