Roxanne Fontana

Early life

Fontana was born in Brooklyn, New York in the United States. Her parents were working class Italian-Americans from Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant slums. Fontana spent her childhood in the 1960s a few blocks from the childhood home of writer Arthur Miller, in the predominantly Italian and Jewish neighbourhood of the part of Brooklyn bordering Midwood and Bensonhurst. It was here in 1968 that she developed an interest in fashion design after a child modelling try-out in a Lexington Avenue agency in New York City. Fontana developed her songwriting, guitar playing, singing and journal writing, living in Elmont, Long Island, US, during the 1970s. An avid music fanatic, Fontana ran an international fan club for Rolling Stone Brian Jones, which was officially recognized by the Rolling Stones, in the mid- to late 1970s.

Music

Fontana has over 80 compositions registered with the United States Copyright Office, authoring both lyrics and music.

Fontana began her music career at New York City nightclubs during the 1980s. This included multiple performances at CBGB, The Bitter End, and Webster Hall, among many others. Fontana’s bands The Blue Way, Kid Blue, and Ruzenka and the Big Dream, were male rock groups that Fontana dominated by writing all of the material, and fronting. She also performed under her name Roseann Fontana for a number of shows, from acoustic shows to fronting bands as a solo artist. Fontana recorded unreleased material until her first release in 1999. The unreleased material included a popular Fontana song called, “Lifetrap” which was mixed by Ivan Kral during Iggy Pop recording Sessions for the album Party. Kral also added synthesizer and keyboards to the track.

In the early 1980s Fontana relocated to Los Angeles, which she has made her home at various times in her life since. Roxanne played the club circuit of Los Angeles in the early 1980s. In the mid-1980s Fontana travelled on her own to Europe and lived two summers in the Netherlands, recording with a local rock band in Arnhem on the border of northern Germany. Fontana returned home seeking to release the recorded music, which went unreleased for decades.

Fontana took up residence again in New York and shortly thereafter appeared on the cover of the East Village’s local newspaper Downtown where she was labelled, “The Hippest Lady In New York”. Fontana soon after left for Los Angeles again before returning to New York in the mid-1990s to form the psychedelic group Ruzenka and the Big Dream with drummer Rich Teeter from New York punk rock group the Dictators. That group lasted several years, playing residencies at the Bitter End, and recording at Electric Lady Studios. In 1993, Andy Warhol assistant, poet, and photographer Gerard Malanga wrote of Fontana during that time. He predicted Fontana as “the voice reaching the millennium.” Rock writer and musician Lenny Kaye referred to her music as "shimmering nighttime pop."

Fontana was known as Ruzenka after her band from the mid-1990s. Upon its disbanding she legally changed her name to Roxanne Fontana. Fontana states this was the name her mother wanted to name her in 1959. Roxanne did the college circuit of the New York City area fronting a country rock band and drawing from her songwriting catalogue for her country-influenced songs.

In the spring of 1999 in New York City, Fontana hooked up with legendary drummer Dino Danelli of the hit 1960s rock group The Rascals, after specifically seeking him out to play drums on one of her songs. Danelli wanted to produce Fontana for a full album, and did so at Bomb Shelter Studios in New York City. His electronic dance ideas were imposed upon the folk-rock Fontana. Fontana would record her songs in the studio and come back days later to do vocals to backing tracks created by Danelli and guitarist and engineer Eddie Fritz. Atlantic Records rejected the album, which included musical contributions from Marty Willson-Piper from the Australian rock band the Church, and Benjy King, formerly of the new wave group Scandal. Fontana decided to start her own label in New York City and, against Danelli’s wishes, released the record. AllMusic called the record "Mysterious and inviting stuff."

The next year Fontana followed up with a folk-rock CD which was more in line with her preferred style of music, the orchestrated folk-rock of the mid-1960s. Gordon Raphael, producer of the Strokes, recorded the album for her at his Transporterraum Studios in New York City’s East Village and played on every track on the record. The album also once again featured Marty Willson-Piper. Critic Joe Viglione said of the album, "Fontana does a fine job producing herself, and the record is a departure from the sound forged on the debut disc."

A review by Joseph Tortelli of Goldmine Magazine revealed Fontana to possess an "innocent-yet-world-weary voice." Contrasting the two releases' styles, Tortelli stated, "Title these CDs 'a tale of two pop sounds': one electronic and percussive; the other haunting folk-rock."

Fontana put her music career on hold in 2001 when she married and moved to Los Angeles with Montreal guitarist singer 20 years her junior, Mat Treiber. She co-wrote many songs that Treiber would perform in Los Angeles night clubs including “Je Ne Peus Pas Voler,” “Go All Around the World,” She’s Got It Good,” and many more. Fontana managed husband Treiber at the beginning of their marriage.

The couple moved to England to be near Treiber’s chosen musicians and band. They have lived there since 2006. Since that time Fontana has released some recordings from her unreleased catalogue starting with a song entitled “Green,” recorded with her band Ruzenka and the Big Dream at Electric Ladyland Studios in New York City in the mid-1990s. She also released a number of tracks recorded in the Netherlands entitled, The Best of the 80s. She continues to record sporadically: “Another Place”, a song by Françoise Hardy; “The Fields of St. Etienne”, a song by Gallagher and Lyle. In 2013 in Brighton, England, Fontana recorded originals “New Moon Child” and “Passing Bye”, produced by Russell C. Brennan. Fontana and husband Mat Treiber enjoy making Scopitone-style videos to Fontana’s released material. Fontana’s record sales and the interest in her music have grown year after year into an international cult status in the truest indie-artist manner. Fontana has played occasional acoustic shows in New York City, Prague and London in the 2010s.

In August 2015 Fontana went into the studio in New York with producer Jack Douglas to record the song “Time Won’t Wait”. Speaking with DJ Steve Dima (formerly DJ Pledge of East Village Radio) on Little Water Radio in New York the following week, Fontana stated that she had written the song the night of 8 December 1980, shortly before the death of John Lennon. It had always been her goal to record the song with Douglas, Lennon’s producer, who had been working with Lennon on his final recordings, including on the night he was assassinated. The song will be released worldwide on 8 December 2015, the 35th Anniversary of both the song’s conception and Lennon’s murder.

Albums

EPs

Singles

Film

Published work

American Girl is the memoir penned by Roxanne Fontana about her life up to and including the recording of her Love Is Blue album. The book specifically ends when she meets her husband Mat Treiber, and includes the story of Fontana’s fascinating life as a single woman getting discovered in the music business, her spiritual journeys, childhood street fights, and many travels and love affairs. Fontana also chronicled her lifestyle as a marijuana dealer to support her artistic ventures in the 1990s. Fontana is planning “Part Deux” in the future to share her adventures since the ending of the last book. American Girl has been met with rave reviews in its ebook form since its release in 2012 and is planning a re-release in print new edit for 2015. Reviewer Keri English remarked about the book, "I found myself unable to stop reading at points [...] Even as she discovers horrible things about the men she chooses to let in her life, she overcomes a great deal. In matters of faith, life and love, hope is never quite lost."

“America – Whore of Babylon –Mars Mars Mars” is a poem written by Fontana in Italy, immediately after becoming an ex-pat of the US in 2006. It was published in the poetry compilation, Ava Gardner – Touches of Venus in 2007, alongside pieces by Margaret Atwood and Robert Graves, after the editor discovered her poem on her website. Critic James Srodes said of the book, "To read through this book is to realize that more than the saccharine lyrics sung to Marilyn, Ava was both a frame of reference and an inspiration for young women and young men both in their lives and in their muse. How she would have laughed."

Fashion

During Fontana’s pregnancy in Los Angeles she started her own jewellery design company “Chanson de Tangier,” which consisted solely of men’s and women’s beaded chokers. The designs were influenced by the style of her favourite fashion icon and musician, Brian Jones. The pieces were constructed of antique and vintage beads. Fontana would combine trade beads from Italy from the 1700s with sterling and African beads, some over 1,000 years old. The pieces were sold at top Los Angeles boutiques, including Lorenzo’s on Sunset Plaza Drive, the trendy Kitson on Robertson Boulevard, and many more shops from West Hollywood to Venice. Before her expat status she began creating art nouveau influenced pendants using black Czech Glass and Miriam Haskell beads from the 1920s.

In the summer of 2013 Fontana opened up her boutique Atelier VivaFontana1959, which featured her art: her CDs, jewelry and clothing. The tiny shop up an alley way in the ancient market town of Ledbury, England, featured Fontana’s original and labelled designs, which consisted mainly of lingerie-weight summer tops designed of French fabrics bought on shopping trips to Paris, and Italian mesh fabrics. Fontana acquired colourful printed fabric of Florentine designers Save the Queen, which she used for her own designs. Other clothing designed and hand-made by Fontana and featured in the shop were crushed velvet hot pants, baby-doll dresses, and her signature “Little Queenie” velvet hat, shaped like a baker’s beret, lined in satin, with couture grosgrain, some feathered, some featuring antique glass buttons.

Personal life

Fontana's music and poetry has often been a public reflection of a deeply personal spiritual journey. A Christian mystic, the Roman-Catholic-born Fontana has studied the esoteric sciences and abandoned 11 years of Occultism in 1991, while living in the New York City apartment of a recently deceased Rosicrucian. 'Remedy of Days,' a single from the Souvenirs d'Amour album, reflects the importance of spirituality in her life, as does her composition 'All That Isn't Seen: The Ballad of Jan Hus.' A keen astrologer and practitioner of the natural healing arts, Fontana states that her relationship with the cosmos and God is her first and foremost relationship from which everything about her, her art, her love life, her relationship with the human race, extends.

In January 2001, at age 41, Fontana married 21-year-old Montreal-born guitarist singer-songwriter Mat Treiber, at the Neighborhood Church on Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. Roxanne gave birth to a daughter at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills, California, on December 24, 2002. The family left the US for Italy in 2006, and have made their home in England for many years.