BRIX SMITH – VALLEY GIRL – Post-Punk Music

BRIX SMITH – VALLEY GIRL

Following the dissolution of her last band The Extricated, the former Fall guitarist and songwriter releases her long awaited debut solo album, ‘Valley of The Dolls’, with a fresh, all-female touring band to accompany it. Ahead of its release, Brix Smith excitedly spoke to me about her struggles to get the finished product out amongst lockdown and Brexit chaos: from her spiritual amalgamation with producer Martin ‘Youth’ Glover who helped her find her feet, her coming-of-age journey spanning her exhilarating but often isolating Manchester days, her collaborative songwriting to fully fledged solo artist and her personal experiences along the way, from a childhood growing up in the California Valley, a recent health scare and finally owning her feminist punk rock attitude.

Why has it taken you so long to release your debut solo album?

The original idea to release it was back in 1982. When I first started writing songs, I was about 17/18 years old. I was excited when I formed a band and everyone in school was like, “What are you doing in school? You’re such a good songwriter. Just go out and do it for real.” So I took a term off, went to play in Chicago with my bandmate Lisa; [I] famously met Mark Smith, who heard those songs that I’d been writing, wanted me to come to England so that he could produce me and buy me a record deal, and I would do a solo album. But they ended up using those songs for The Fall and I joined. [The album] should have been all that time ago. Of course, it’s not the same songs anymore and a lifetime has passed, because I was so young, I was too insecure to stand up under my own name, so I put it under the guise of another band. It was kind of cool to be secret.

I did The Fall famously for a couple of stints, then played with lots of different people and for The Extricated a few years ago with some of the ex-members of The Fall, which I fully enjoyed doing – it really got me back in the saddle. But again, although it was my name in the title, it wasn’t me making the decisions. I was writing all the lyrics and all the melodies, but it was collaborative, as The Fall was as well. Before lockdown came, Nadine Shah, a really good friend of mine, just sat me down one day and, in her own brutal way, said you need to be celebrated for you. “This is not really working for you. I think you need a proper manager. I think you need a whole new team around you.” She said, “You’re fucking Brix Smith.” I started crying: although it was a little bit upsetting to hear and I was having a great time with The Extricated, I knew that she was right. And I knew that the time was now.

So she put me together with her manager, who also managed Youth, and suggested, “Why don’t you write with Youth for other people, just see what happens? It’s all about the music at the end of the day.” At this point, I just thought of myself as a songwriter. I could do lots of things but songwriting is a really important and interesting craft, which I have honed my whole life. I’ve been writing, lyrics and poetry, since a child and music. So Youth and I were meant to get together but then lockdown happened. We couldn’t meet: he was in Spain and I was here; we were stuck apart. The Extricated naturally evaporated: everyone was in Manchester and couldn’t carry on. Some of them have young families; everything was fucked up. So Youth and I had a discussion on FaceTime – we’ve never met in real life after all those years of being in bands that were just crossing paths. We talked about what music I loved, what were my early inspirations and had some fucking deep magical connection from the beginning. He sent me some backing tracks he thought might be right, and they were…my mind flew, and I taught myself how to record at home, set up a studio during lockdown, engineered my vocals, wrote the thing and we started to swap files back and forth.

“She said, “You’re fucking Brix Smith.” I started crying: although it was a little bit upsetting to hear and I was having a great time with The Extricated, I knew that she was right.”

After about the first or second song he just said, “Oh my God! This is amazing; this needs to be your solo album. You need to do this – this is your Marianne Faithful broken English moment. This is this is your moment.” I just needed to be completely competent, comfortable, fully, fully own my power and talent and stand up there and actually not give a fuck what anyone else thought; make the music that was literally the music I always wanted to make without anybody else having an input. Youth and I played everything on the whole thing; it’s just me and him, except there’s a drummer who did the drums. But really it’s just Youth and I so it’s a solo album. When I go on tour now with my girls – like Deb Goodge from My Bloody Valentine – they’re my touring band. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen in the future when I start writing again; probably because I love playing with them so much they’ll be on the next one, but it will still be under my name.

The reason my album took so long to get out was because, during lockdown, so many people were supposed to have albums out and they couldn’t tour, so they backlogged, backlogged and then when touring started everyone started to release at once; mine was pretty much ready but not 100%. Look, there’s no pressure: I don’t have a record deal yet, whenever it comes out, it’ll be the right moment; the universal will see to it blah, blah, blah. I had to get everything going in terms of building the team of people around me that I really loved, trusted and have fun working with. Never again am I going to work with people that are horrendously challenging. It’s just got to be a great flow, otherwise what’s the point? Then there was a backlog from Brexit: we could not get any cardboard to print the sleeves. And there was a backlog at the pressing plant of six months, because everyone needed to get their records pressed and cut, and there’s only so many places now in the UK and Europe that do it – it’s a dying art. So it just got put back, put back and then another bout of covid…it took ages.

Are you Brix Smith now as opposed to Brix Smith-Start?

I’ve always been Brix Smith. Smith is my last name on my passport; Start is my married name and I used that for a while, although I’ve never changed it so it’s not my legal name. When Phillip [Start] and I opened the shop, I had a breakdown and stopped writing music for 15 years because I just felt so brutalised and kicked to the curb. There was a very dark patch in my life where, after the second stint in The Fall, I broke apart and I needed to pivot, so I started doing fashion which is a passion for me and a skill set that I didn’t realise I had, but I loved it. Philip and I started these shops called ‘Start’, which was his last name, so I became Brix Smith-Start to associate myself with the fashion work. When I went back into music again my manager said, “Just go back to Brix Smith. Everyone knows you as that; Brix Smith-Start is a mouthful.” It isn’t even my legal name, although I’m still happily married to Philip Start. So I am Brix Smith – that is who I am.

How did your collaboration with Marty Willson-Piper lead to you finding your place with this album?

That was written in the early ‘90s; from ‘92 to ‘95. I was living in LA, in between my stints in The Fall. A really famous agent had put us together [for me] to write as a writer because that’s how I always have it; I made this album with Marty. It was really beautiful and lovely and very much me and very much him too; it was a duo album. When I came back here, rejoined The Fall, finished up that album in Cornwall and went to get a deal with [it], nobody would answer the phone. It was mid to late ’90s, I was already in my 30s – over the hill for them. It was a time of All Saints. I don’t even think people listened to that album, so it broke my heart because it was such a beautiful album. I really believed in it, I worked so hard on it and I put so much emotional content into it. I was devastated and that is what made me quit the music business.

[Later on] I got a new manager through Youth who heard what we were working on, called Nick Lawrence. He said to me, “Do you have anything that’s never been released? I’d like to start assembling a body of work for you. I like to make you a proper website. Let’s get a full cannon of your work.” And I said, “Well actually, I do have this album.” At the time it wasn’t called ‘Lost Angeles’ (I call it that because it was the lost years between The Fall). I have to dig back to get the DHTs by the guy that produced it. I haven’t listened to it for 15 years. I had such a devastating experience with being kicked to the curb which I didn’t realise wasn’t about the album: it was about people just not being open to listen to it – no one cared. It wasn’t like no one listened to it and said this was shit; they just didn’t listen. I took it personally but it wasn’t. Anyway, I found it, tracked it down and sent it to Nick and said, “I’m just gonna push the button. I can’t promise it’s anything.” He immediately came in and goes, “Oh my god! This is a beautiful album, You’ve got to put this out.” So that’s why it came out, however many years later.

How did you bring your personal experience into that album, laying bare your experiences in your work?

I’m laying it bare because I’m the same as everybody else. We’ve all been through so much in whatever capacity. Obviously I’m speaking from my own experiences, but I’m really hoping that my experiences are going to resonate heavily with everybody that has been marginalised, kicked to the curb, told they’re not good enough; underestimated, undervalued for whatever reason. It’s time for me to fucking grow a pair, stand up and speak for those that I can help. I’m comfortable talking about anything: I don’t have a filter, why should I? We’re all vulnerable human beings.

With the ‘Lost Angeles’ album, that was a time when I was very raw from my separation/divorce from Mark Smith and Nigel Kennedy and I’d been through the mill. I also had a very challenging and crazy boyfriend during that time in LA; a well-known record producer who was very misogynistic. I was trying to find myself as woman – as a human – and not attach myself to another man; I was processing what it feels like to be in really intense relationships and then being on your own. A song like ‘Little Wounds’, for instance, I originally started thinking about when you look at dolphins or sharks in the water – their bodies are covered in little scars. Every little scar tells a story: what bit of coral they got scratched on or what fish fight. And I thought, actually we all have little wounds; all of us. Some you can see and some you can’t, but those are the things that make us stronger. Although they initially hurt, they heal and you go on and learn from them. It was stuff like that.

What is ‘Living Thru My Despair’ about personally, was it about Mark Smith/The Fall?

It’s interesting you ask about that because I ummed and arred about putting that as the first track: it was quite a statement. Mark [Smith] famously wrote many, many songs about me after we broke up – even when I was still in the band – and I wrote songs about him because there was unresolved stuff, during The Extricated for instance. Not just about him; I had an unresolved stuff within me, not really anything to do with him. I blame no one for any choice I made in my life. ‘Living Thru My Despair’ – yes, there are a lot of Manchester references in it. I was very lonely when I lived in Manchester: I didn’t have any girlfriends. I was completely immersed in The Fall, but I was also a fish out of water. I moved to a different country, a different city and a very different way of life than I was used to and there was a lot going on. So I wanted to paint a picture, but the positive is you go through hard times and you live through [them]. Not all that was bad either. It’s a song about strength; all of these songs are about finding your strength and your power through pain and adverse situations or situations where you have to galvanise yourself. Manchester was hard but it’s not particularly about that. I always say my heart is half-Mancunian and so I love it too.

Does the album name have anything to do with the film ‘Valley of The Dolls’? ‘Dolls’ being a slang word for drugs…

Pharmaceutical pills. Yes, absolutely, yes. The original ‘Valley of The Dolls’, the book and the film, came out when I was a little girl. Sharon Tate was in ‘Valley of The Dolls’ – she’s so fucking fabulous. That was a big upbringing thing because the Manson murders happened when I was really young. It was on the TV every night in LA; it was around our neighbourhood. I remember asking my mom, “What is the Manson murders?” and it was fascinating to me. That whole sort of ’60s glamour. But really the movie that inspired me was ‘Beyond The Valley of The Dolls’, which is a Russ Meyer movie written by the film critic Roger Ebert, loosely based on Phil Spector and starring Strawberry Alarm Clock, who come and play ‘Incense and Peppermints’ at this wild party in Beverly Hills, where everyone takes acid. ‘Incense and Peppermints’ is my very first single I ever put out with the Adult Net. ‘Beyond The Valley of The Dolls’ had an all-woman rock group in it called the Carrie Nations: they played and sang wearing cool ’60s prom gowns; they were sexy, strong women that had this cool band. Not only was I inspired, but my friend Susanna Hobbs was also totally inspired. Both of us saw that movie and were like, “We want to do this.” I certainly was like, “Oh my god, the Carrie Nations!” because I hadn’t seen an all-girl rock group before, except The Supremes, but they weren’t playing their instruments. So it was that whole genre of old California glamour, ’60s Slim Aarons vibe.

“I was very lonely when I lived in Manchester: I didn’t have any girlfriends. I was completely immersed in The Fall, but I was also a fish out of water. I moved to a different country, a different city and a very different way of life than I was used to”.

You also write about the seedy underbelly of the California Valley…

For most of my life, I saw LA and California through these tainted eyes, but the more I lived there, and when I went back, I could see that, underneath this layer of superficiality and beauty, was pain and desperation. Loads of people famously come to LA or Hollywood to make it, to become stars, to become rich, to go into the movie business…but it’s all bullshit. And for every dream that’s made, every star that’s there, every person that succeeds, there’s 10 million broken things. There’s many women out there that turned to the porn industry or whatever it is that they need to do, and if that’s what they want to do, that’s fine. I’m not making any comment or criticism on that, but it is part of it. It is part of the whole underbelly, which is dark, and there’s also shitloads of poverty, crime, misery, greed and all kinds of stuff underneath the beautiful sunny skies, the Pacific Ocean waves and the smell of orange blossom in the wind. There’s this wonderful thing where you go there and you’re like, “This is paradise,” but oh, no, no it’s not. I love the dichotomy.

Was it through a feminist lens when you were singing those lyrics in ‘California Smile’?

Yes, completely. Its completely through a feminist lens. In a way it’s about me in ‘California Smile’:

I’ll be your everything, everything you’ve ever wanted;
I’ll be your anything, anything you’ve ever needed.
Watch me, I’ve played them all: the wife, the whore, the maid, the doll…

I’ve played all those roles to some extent. I exposed that I felt like that and I own it in a feminist way, absolutely. I’ve used what I’ve had to use to get what I wanted to get.

Were there any other feminist themes in the other singles like ‘Aphrodite’?

Yeah, throughout the album, those things are completely there. I think we’re actually going to re-release ‘Aphrodite’, give it a bigger shove later on. ‘Aphrodite’ was the first song that I wrote with Youth; the very first thing he sent me as a backing track. It was originally called something else because what happened was he would send me the songs with his title and then I would write the songs according to his title, because I love doing that – it’s like putting together a puzzle. It would be like how his mind and my mind gel, which is quite a hard thing to do. ‘Aphrodite’ was probably the only song [that] I changed the title. First of all, the songs are channelled for me. I don’t know how I write songs: they come through the ether and I’m sure they’re coming from non-physical energy. It comes into my head; it feels right; I don’t filter it…I tweak it. They’re very multi-layered and they’ll resonate with lots of different people in lots of different ways. We did that in The Fall too. But with ‘Aphrodite’, that’s the first thing [Youth] sent me and I absolutely loved it.

I would put on my headphones, take my one-hour walk around the park during lockdown and the words would come out as I walk. But what was going on psychologically in my mind was I had been having horrendous, pains in my body, like aching joints, and I really freaked out. I was freaking out during COVID Because I also lost my father and my brother; my brother died of multiple sclerosis. I was worried that I had an autoimmune disease, so I managed to get an appointment with the NHS; get my blood tested to look for markers. They didn’t find anything wrong with that, but they found something wrong with my liver, where an enzyme was really high. So I was like, “Oh my god, I’m really sick.” I didn’t know so, while I was writing that song, I was worried that I was really sick. So the lines are:

‘neath the microscope, drain the fibres of the rope.
See this navy blue? That’s the colour of my blood.
But deep inside me, lies Aphrodite…

And stuff like “medication”, chemical sedation”. It was fine: I got rid of it and it was nothing. I went on a diet, I lost four stone – I had a fatty liver. It was not a big deal in the end. I was being told through my head that Aphrodite, the goddess of love, lives deep inside you, in everyone, and we have the ability to heal ourselves and to think better thoughts. It’s a song about strength, love and thinking better thoughts. I was also thinking about epi-genetics, a deep way of meditation: you take your mind back to absolutely nothing into the quantum field and can re-jig your DNA and cellular stuff with thoughts. I went on a course to do that. The power of the mind and the power of what’s inside you is so incredible, and there’s nothing more powerful than love – love obliterates everything. It obliterates darkness, it obliterates hate…we are Aphrodite. We are all goddesses or gods – it’s inside us. So yes, it is feminism on the deepest, most spiritual level. I’m hoping to go to Mount Olympus to film another Aphrodite video; it’s a very important song to me.

I see a lot of contrast between dark and light in your songs. Is that something you’ve carried throughout your life in your songwriting, even in your time in The Fall?

It’s a balance, always. The Fall was very dark so I brought the light: I’m about the hooks, the riffs, the things that get into your brain. For me, songwriting is magic. When I was a little girl and I would go to summer camp on the hippie bus, up into the Malibu mountains for day camp, and they would have a radio playing everyday; I would hear like Carole King, James Taylor, The Carpenters, Janis Joplin…all the things that were hits of that day. I would hear it on the bus during the day and I would go home at night; the songs would pop into my head while I was asleep and wake me up. And I was like, “What is this magic? I can remember every note and every word, and I’m not even listening to it; it’s infecting my brain. This is the best thing ever.” So that’s what made me want to be a songwriter. In terms of dark and light, we have to have to both to live in this world! You cannot be happy all the time – I certainly am not. We talk about mental health all the time. Get fucking real! We all have serious ups and downs, some really serious. It’s just part of everything; I love the balance of dark and light. I love the fact that you can be really dark but you can find a path of light through it, which all the songs and my book have the same theme of: going through the darkness, getting through the other side and coming out better. I think that with this album that is exactly what it’s about.

The last song on the album, ‘Black Butterfly’, was different to the others; I thought that was some of your best work. Are you going to do more of that style compared to the punk tracks? I feel that’s your niche.

That’s very, very, very intuitive and perceptive; everything that you asked me is spot the fuck on. Yes, that’s exactly where we’re going: I’ve got more songs recorded that go more into that psychedelic dream stuff. ‘Black Butterfly’ is absolutely my favourite song on the whole album. ‘Changing’ is also incredible, but in a different way. ‘Black Butterfly’ is the song that I’m most proud of literally ever in my life; I ended with it because that’s where I want to begin the next [album] with.

“There’s also shitloads of poverty, crime, misery, greed and all kinds of stuff underneath the beautiful sunny skies, the Pacific Ocean waves and the smell of orange blossom in the wind.”

You also had strings on the album, are you going to do more of that instrumentation too?

Yes, definitely. I’m very open to that; we used strings as well on the last Extricated album, ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’, on the last track, ‘God Stone’. That was almost like a stepping stone to ‘Black Butterfly’. Youth and I were talking about my love for Led Zeppelin and its big Led Zeppelin references in it in terms of a ‘Stairway To Heaven’ vibe; a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in terms of the structure – there’s no chorus. There’s also a Portishead vibe in terms of delivery; it’s very psychedelic. It’s not what you expect when you start listening to the song: it ends up very far from what you think it is, which I love because it takes you on a journey. In the live band with my girls, we finish every set with that song. It’s something I’m so proud of. The punkier stuff is definitely a part of the record – I can certainly do that – but this is more where I want to go. I’m not scared anymore. I had to start at one place, like at the beginning, ‘Living Thru My Despair’ is much more Fall-like. It’s a journey of my whole history. And then ‘Changing’ is a bit more Brix and Marty-like. But when you get to that, that is really amazing – I absolutely love that song.

You had some special guests on the album, such as Susannah Hoffs. How did that come together?

During the making of the album, most of it was recorded between my house and Youth’s studio in Spain. When we could get together finally, we got together in London and did some more at his studio in Wandsworth and then I flew to Spain to do the live drums in Spain. We wrote ‘Changing’ there; the only song we wrote face-to-face in the room together and we wrote in 40 minutes. On my way there I got a message from Siobhan Fahey. We always talked about forming a band together; she’s come on stage with me when I was in The Extricated a couple of times. She was travelling with Nick, the producer, and they were in Europe. Nick and Youth are friends too and Youth actually produced Bananarama once upon a time. Youth said, “Why don’t you invite them over to the studio?” So they came up for a few days and while we were in the studio, [Siobhan] came in and sang on two tracks – ‘Valley Grl’ and ‘Changing’. That was so great because she has the opposite voice to me; the most character filled voice. Nick said you should ask Susanna if she’ll sing something on it. I’ve always wanted to do something with Sue; she’s really busy though so I asked her, “Would you do some backing vocals on my track?” and she said, “Yeah, of course.” I thought it was quite a statement to have two women from two of the biggest women bands ever in history – Bananarama and The Bangles – on my record, having my back. It was time for us to fucking own it: we’re all at a certain age and I’m sick of the ageism. We’re all fabulous at this age – age is just a stupid number. I’m better now than I’ve ever been.

You’re working with so many females now, with the band as well. How does that feel compared to when you were playing with men?

I love it. My first band at Bennington, with me and Lisa – it’s going back to [that] for me. I’ve always wanted to play with Deb Goodge before; I played with her once with Thurston [Moore], who she plays with, and she came on with The Extricated another time. She’s so great; she’s one of the best bass players in the world and I’d absolutely kill to have her in my band. I called her first and she said, “100%, I’ll do it,” and she suggested Jen from My Bloody Valentine and Jen said “100%, I’ll do it.” Jen, I call my ‘Silent Assassin’. She is such an extraordinary talent: she plays keys and guitar, she does all the programming for me and she sings backing vocals. She’s very understated as a person. These women: they’re great players, they’ve got my back and they do not have egos. I don’t either anymore: I got rid of that a long time ago. It’s so important to embrace other people’s talents because it’s working together as a collab that makes gives you the strength. It’s not just one person and it’s really important to give people their due, to understand that I make them better and they make me better. I am loving working with the women: it’s a very different energy than the men. It feels really good, really safe, really positive. It seems some of the bullshit dynamics have been taken out of the touring life. Since that time, Vas and Ros have left and I’ve replaced them with a new woman called Lisa Lux on the drums. I’m down to a four-piece; I’m playing more guitar than I was when you last saw me. We’re switching it up a bit. Vas and Ros were phenomenal, but they needed to focus on their own band Duex Furieuses they were blowing off and my commitments were going to take too much out of them. They needed to do their own thing, so now it’s me, Deb, Jen and Lisa.

And you’ve got tour dates coming up this year?

Yes I’ve got some festivals to be announced; so far Rebellion is announced. There’s more festivals coming, I think [we’re] planning a small club tour in mid-May and hopefully an Irish tour in September, if we can swing that. I’ve also got a lot of other things going on, a lot of commitments, so it’s going to be very busy. But my priority is with this album, which I’m thrilled to be getting out; I hope it resonates with everybody and people love it.

What was it like touring with PiL?

I don’t know whose idea it was to ask me to open all the PiL shows in England and Scotland, but it was a brilliant idea because PiL’s fanbase is very heavily male and of a certain age, and it was amazing to bring the feminine energy and to go out and kick ass hard on that tour. I was a little nervous: I hadn’t met John [Lydon] before. He knew who I was; I knew who he was and he would have had the final say with who’s on tour. So it was an honour and also a little scary to be going out there, because we were given a list of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’: absolutely no pictures backstage, no pictures of John, no this, no that…so he just had his rules. I was really happy to open, I was gonna respect everything that he asked of me, go out and do my job as a professional and not get in his way. Gosh, I’ve been listening to PiL since I was teenager. We were super respectful to them and they were very grateful to us. We did a great job opening for them. People didn’t think of me as an opening up: they were like “It’s a double bill. She’s worth the price alone.” So I felt really good about that. They loved what we did; [John] was absolutely divine to me; I really enjoyed it. He was very poorly during that tour: he had a terrible chest infection. So it was good that he got through it.

I would love to see you do your own headline shows now and build a following with this new incarnation of your work.

I’m really hoping to speak to women and younger women, and be somebody that they could say, “Wow, I want to look forward to being like her when I’m her age.” I’m 60; I’m not gonna fucking lie about it and I’m not gonna fucking stuff my face full of God knows what. I’m just gonna own it now. I wish that there’d been more people like me when I was in my teens and 20s. I was somebody that had to fight, push through the glass ceiling really hard, and was very undervalued and underestimated, for a long time.

Were there any female influences on you back then?

This is a random one. The ones that I most remember hearing were by women. One of the bands I loved on the radio everyday was The Carpenters. When I was about 10 years old, I saw that The Carpenters were coming to play an outdoor festival near where we lived. I asked my mom if we could go and watch the festival; I really wanted to see them. My mom said, “Sure, I’ll take you.” I went to see The Carpenters and pushed my way down to the bandstand. I stood there with my jaw hanging down because Karen Carpenter was playing the drums and I was like, “Oh my God, there’s a woman playing the drums. She’s playing the drums, she’s playing the drums!” I got super excited. She had a glorious voice and she was playing the drums: I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Then later on, people like Chrissie Hyde, who was an extraordinary songwriter, singer, played the guitar and had this great band when I was in high school…I remember seeing The Pretenders’ albums with [her] red leather jacket and begging, begging, begging for a red leather jacket to be like her. Then there’s people like Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads (bass player), Gaye Advert (bass player), Carole King; a piano player songwriter. I was always fascinated by the stories of the Brill Building: the songwriting partnerships and turning out the hits. Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager was the major thing for me and Carol Kaye from ‘The Wrecking Crew’. There were some amazing women players and it showed me that you could do it, but there weren’t enough.

It’s still hard being a female musician…

Well last year, I was the president of the F-list. That was really great, because that brought a lot of attention to that. I went to speak at the Independent Festivals conference and did a keynote speech about putting more women in festivals. When you look at the statistics, it’s all skewed, it’s all fucked up from the top; from record companies down. There’s not enough women bands being signed and the talent is out there. At the end of the day, it’s about raising awareness because you can’t change something if you’re not aware. So I’m gonna stand up and I’m gonna scream loud; I’m gonna go out there, have the best time and take my audience with me; build a bigger audience and get people feeling fantastic when they go out, like they can do anything, conquer anything and climb any mountain…because you can.

Brix Smith’s new debut solo album, ‘Valley of The Dolls’, is out now.