Lucy Dacus is busy but in the best way possible. When I caught up with the 24-year-old Richmond, Virginia singer-songwriter she had taken advantage of her first day off from shows in a long stretch to sleep in until the early afternoon. Dacus and her band have been on the road for nearly two years straight in support of her second album, 2018’s fantastic “Historian,” and lately she has been playing some of the biggest venues of her career. And while this is all amazing, she can use all of the rest she can get.
“It has been incredible,” Dacus explains. “It’s kind of tiring. But, of course something like this would take work. It does take sacrifices and work but it’s really worth it I think.”
Such sacrifices include being on the road more often than not, and the pressures around playing to larger and larger audiences each night. During a recent appearance on the Talkhouse podcast, Dacus opened up during her conversation with Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Dave Depper about her sometimes crippling stage fright. In their conversation, the two musicians talked about the wonders of using beta blockers to help reduce their heart rates and let them be more in the moment instead of caught in the headlights. I ask Dacus if these feelings have subsided at all after touring so heavily in support of “Historian.”
“It has but it still happens,” she says. “Our last show was a couple of days ago in Mexico City. We had never played Mexico and I was walking out on stage it hit me. I was like, ‘Wow, I’m here. I never thought I would get here…’ and I got stricken with fear. The weight of the moment … I kind of got lifted from the situation and viewed it from above. That was a little bit dissociative. So I was a little freaked out and didn’t have time to take a beta blocker. I think knowing that I have them just puts me at ease.”
“It’s nice to just admit that everybody deals with stuff like this,” she adds. “It’s chemical. I think there’s a part of me that’s like, ‘No, I should be able to get over this myself. I should be able to have control over my brain and I should be stronger in some way.’ But, I think that that really keeps people from figuring out solutions for simple problems.”
While the venues have been getting much larger as Dacus and her band continue to tour, nothing has been quite as big as when she was asked personally by Lana Del Rey to open one of her “Norman F–king Rockwell” tour dates in Chicago. Dacus jumped at the opportunity and was even asked to perform her song “Night Shift” with Del Rey onstage.
“That was another wild one,” says Dacus of that surreal night. “She hit me up on Instagram three days before the show just to say, ‘Hey, I’m a fan and I was wondering if you would want to open any of the upcoming shows.’ I had to go to Mexico, like I said, so it was really only her Chicago show. She is so sweet. I’m a fan, especially of the new record. I think it’s her best. It was really nice to see someone at that level be so generous and open. To me, but also to her fans. Hours after the show was over, she went outside and people were waiting by her bus. She was like ‘Oh my gosh’ and hugged everyone and took photos with them. I told her, ‘I can’t believe you have so much energy for your fans,’ and she was like, ‘well, to have one fan is a miracle.’ I got choked up because that was so beautiful to hear from someone who has millions of fans. She knows the value of just one person having your side and being grateful for your work. I learned a lot from her in just two days.”
Aside from her own music, Dacus was also a part of one of 2018’s best musical surprises as one third of the indie-rock supergroup boygenius with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. The group released one fantastic EP last year to coincide with a month long tour the three young artists had previously booked before starting the project. While the formation of the group was born purely out of coincidence, it helped each of them to grow as artists and musicians.
“I think every one of us flexed different muscles and realized that we are more capable than we thought we were individually. Especially being the directors of our own projects, you kind of have to discover everything yourself. For this, we were helping each other discover our own abilities. Whenever I talk about boygenius, it sounds so corny. But honestly, it was! It was really corny. It was really sweet. We were loving each other all of the time,” says Dacus. “We only toured for that one month and haven’t since and have no plans to. I think we all regard that time as a bit of a miracle. Whatever it felt like in the crowd, I think it felt that way times ten for us.”
While boygenius is by no means dead and buried, the three songwriters are focusing their efforts on their own albums, including a release from Dacus sometime next year.
“I don’t have many details about the release, but a lot of the songs make my stomach hurt,” says Dacus of the material on her, as of now, untitled 2020 follow up to “Historian”.
“I feel like I’m being a bit bolder, probably because of by being emboldened by Phoebe and Julien,” she adds. “A lot of the songs have to do with early girlhood and friendship and family. More specific stories about my life. It feels way more bare than I’ve ever been. I’m glad to be working on it now so I don’t have time to get used to them. A lot of the songs are about specific people. So I feel like my job right now, more than thinking about making it and putting it out, is showing the songs to the people that they are about and getting blessings from them.”
This practice of confronting her past through her work was something that she had started to practice with her EP from this year, “2019”.
“Actually, ‘My Mother & I’ on this EP that came out this year is clearly about my mother. I have two, I’m adopted, my birth mother and my mom that raised me. I talked to each of them about what the song meant. It was very intense but super rewarding. I think that going well, it helped me to be okay with these songs because I have this tepid optimism with being brutally honest. Sometimes it can go badly but I just want to believe that it’s worth it. Hopefully it will be.”
