Davina Robinson

Artist Information

Biography

"Powerhouse Rock n' Roll Soul Chick" Davina Robinson is an American singer-songwriter based in Osaka, Japan. She has become known locally for her powerful, bluesy voice and energetic live performances.

Though a rock and blues singer at heart, Davina has displayed her versatility in a variety of genres, having played in many live situations as a front woman for cover bands and acoustic duos, and at clubs, parties and corportate events. She has also performed back-up vocals for Ray Parker Jr. and Cheryl Lynn, and has performed live on Japanese radio stations.

Davina began focusing on her original material, and released her first album, The Blazing Heart, in May 2008. The EP highlighted Davina's ability to merge rock, blues and funk, calling her approach "powerhouse rock n' roll soul". Songs from the EP, particularly "Making Love To Your Girlfriend", lead to accolades from the Billboard Song Contest and VH-1 Song of the Year Contest, among others. Davina supported the release with an acoustic tour of the Los Angeles area.

Davina released the digital single "Osaka Boys" two years later, and the track is featured on her first full-length album, Black Rock Warrior Queen, released November 2011. "Osaka Boys" has become an audience favorite at her live shows, including those at Hard Rock Cafe Osaka, where she plays regularly with her stellar lineup of support musicians. Shortly after the release of Black Rock Warrior Queen, Davina expanded her fan base by playing to receptive crowds in Tokyo and Yokohama, then followed up on the local popularity of "Osaka Boys" by releasing a promotional music video of the song.

Davina has also utilized her distinctive voice for narration; past examples include a jingle for Osaka radio station FM-802 and a commercial for Mister Donuts. Most recently, Davina can be seen as the central character in a humorous bug spray commercial, having gotten the part because of her powerful presence and voice. The commercial is currently running on nationwide Japanese TV.

Davina continues to generate buzz with her powerful voice and energetic live performances, defying boundaries as an American woman rocking the Japanese independent music scene.

Instrumentation

Masaaki Watanuki - Guitar
Shinji Ide - Bass
Takeo Soga - Drums

Discography

WORLDWIDE INDIE HITS COMPILATION VOL. 1
"Osaka Boys"
Released April 2012
Areasonic Records

BLACK ROCK WARRIOR QUEEN (full-length album)
Released November 2011
BSMF Records (distribution)

SOLID GROUND Charity Album for Japan
"Conversations In My Head"
Japan Indie Artists United
Released April 2011

OSAKA BOYS - SINGLE
Digital release May, 2010

GAIJIN SOUNDS COMPILATION VOL. 2
"Never Good Enough"
JapanZine Magazine
Released June 2009

THE BLAZING HEART (EP)
Released May 2008
(self-release on Plum Wine)

FEMALES ON FIRE COMPILATION VOL. 3
"Making Love To Your Girlfriend"
Warrior Girl Music
Released May 2008

VIOLET FEMMES COMPILATION VOL. 1
"Making Love To Your Girlfriend"
RPW Records
Released November 2007

Links

• Facebook
• You Tube
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Last.fm
• CD Baby Artist Page
• iTunes

Audio

• Funky Chick
  Listen  
• Behind Closed Doors
  Listen  
• Making Love To Your Girlfriend
  Listen  
• Conversations In My Head
  Listen  
• I Sing For You
  Listen  
• Never Good Enough
  Listen  
• I'm the One Who Dumped You
  Listen  
• Osaka Boys
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Funky Chick
• Behind Closed Doors
• Making Love To Your Girlfriend
• Conversations In My Head
• I Sing For You
• Never Good Enough
• I'm the One Who Dumped You
• Osaka Boys

Video

Davina Robinson - Osaka Boys (official video)

Davina Robinson Live - Making Love To Your Girlfriend

Photo Gallery

Press

• Dig This Real [+ Show ]
  

  Davina Robinson is a Philly-based musician with musical career roots in Japan. She has been successf...Davina Robinson is a Philly-based musician with musical career roots in Japan. She has been successful in a very important thing; rounding up the Japanese audience and making them her biggest fans. She has done so by making a stance as a screaming rock-and-roll icon that people relate to and want to be around in a club atmosphere. Ms. Robinson talks about adversity, pain, and the positive example that rises above rocker stereotypes.
  
  Previously there have been some great rock females that have broken boundaries for the pop/rock culture in the States, which is certainly a much more difficult space to overcome than it has been in more open cultures. This is not the truth in places like Japan, which has taken some of our coveted rockers and made them great again. It has also given other artists the chance to have a positive audience and a decent reception.
  
  As a rocker, a female artist has several things to overcome. The first is gender, which consistently creates a different image between men and women. Another is edge, and that is scrutinized by our media and youth in an almost unbearable fashion.
  
  This woman defies these challenges and stands up to the public in an honest and powerful way. With a four-song set that rocks hard from the start, Robinson employs hard drum beats and guitar riffs to describe her feelings about life, death and the possibilities that lie beyond.
  
  Each song has its own unique rhythm and timbre that carries out the overall spirit and urgency of rock. Opening with "Making Love To Your Girlfriend," the artist somewhat inspires irony in the rough edge and pace. Throughout the next two songs, "Never Good Enough," and "Conversations In My Head," she pulls through with a powerful spoken word-style hard rock that blasts the listener.
  
  What is the most striking piece, however, is the [fourth] track, "Keeping Me Sane." Suddenly there is a wonderful piece of Robinson's humanity that comes through and gives a fantastic and personal view regarding the difficulties in living and the burden of endless working and overcoming. This track will be the most recognized on the album in the future for this artist. The construction is excellent, and the content is breathable. There is much yet to be learned of the mind of Davina Robinson and we are listening.

• Indie-Music.Com [+ Show ]
  

  Davina Robinson put some soul in her suitcase when she moved from Philly to Osaka. Now she’s opened ...Davina Robinson put some soul in her suitcase when she moved from Philly to Osaka. Now she’s opened that case and dressed up her new CD, "The Blazing Heart," in some funky-rock-soul threads. Every track on this four song EP rocks with an honest intensity that makes the listener step back and say: yeah.
  
  The sound of the album owes a lot to the legacy of Jimi Hendrix and the cool of Lenny Kravitz, but it also has a funky side that dips into the grooves and riffs of James Brown. Robinson’s vocal delivery is strong and keeps up with the heavy arrangements. At times she seems to evoke a Ronnie Spector-esque quality that gives her songs a real bitch attitude; something that is missing from a lot of today’s chick-rockers.
  
  On "Making Love To Your Girlfriend" and "Never Good Enough" Osamu Mochinaga lays down some down and dirty guitar riffs that just slap you in the face and tell you to sit down and listen. Mochinaga also lends his hand in arranging all of the songs on the CD along with Robinson. The lyrics are smart and cutting like this from "Never Good Enough":
  
  Got to have blonde hair
  I can buy the dye anywhere
  Got to lose a few pounds
  It's harder than it sounds
  Got to have blue eyes
  Guaranteed to score with the guys
  Act like a lady
  Who, me? I ain't that crazy!
  
  I'm never good enough for you
  If I changed one thing you'd up it to two
  I'm never good enough for you
  Though I try and try you're just never satisfied ...
  
  I’m hoping that Davina Robinson comes back to the states and rocks the U.S.A. with what she’s got. This is definitely the beginning of a real good thing.
  
  

• Feminist Review [+ Show ]
  

  The inside cover of this four-song EP proclaims Davina Robinson "the Rock n' Roll Soul Chick," and...The inside cover of this four-song EP proclaims Davina Robinson "the Rock n' Roll Soul Chick," and it's an apt moniker. Robinson blends rock, soul, and plenty of vocal attitude, and her band is absolutely smoking.
  
  The first track, "Making Love to Your Girlfriend," is certainly the catchiest. It's fast-paced, rocks out, and is reminiscent of Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" in tone. Robinson's got spunk. She tells the object of her affections (or lust), "I know you think of me when you're making love to your girlfriend." The distorted vocal on bridge and the amped-up chorus made this tune stick in my head.
  
  "Never Good Enough" is a pretty good message song, as she bemoans the impossible beauty standards women are expected to live up to - although it sounds like she's singing more to one particular person than society as a whole. The list of qualities to pursue is both frustrating (because these pressures are real) and funny: "Gotta be the best dressed/Don't worry about going into debt/Gotta be size one/Anorexic chicks are no fun." The blistering guitar complements her anguished cries well.
  
  "Conversations in My Head" is confessional with toned down instrumentation on the verses, which allows Robinson to show off her considerable vocal talent. The narrator recounts her past and that of her deceased grandmother, an immigrant, wondering if her grandmother would be proud of her life. "Keeping Me Sane" is a rather generic track, a love song. It's good instrumentally, but the lyrics are nothing special, which is too bad because the creative content of the other songs sets them apart. Still, "The Blazing Heart" whet my appetite for what's to come from Davina Robinson.
  

• Eat Sleep Drink Music [+ Show ]
  

  Let's get one thing straight: "Never Good Enough" might just go down as the best rock tune of 200...Let's get one thing straight: "Never Good Enough" might just go down as the best rock tune of 2008. That said, whether or not the world at large catapults Davina Robinson to stardom is anyone's guess. On this four-track EP, Robinson is billed as "The Rock n' Soul Chick," and that's a pretty good description of her talents. On "Conversations in My Head" she sounds like the female equivalent of both Lenny Kravitz and Terrence Trent D'Arby. The big electric guitars in the mix are definitely what sets Robinson's music apart from that of others in the "Soul" category. Sometimes, things get a little cliched, as on "Making Love to Your Girlfriend," whose "thinking of another person while getting it on" sentiments have been done too many times to count before. But overall, this a really solid disc that fans of rockin' tunes and good singing should easily enjoy. (Plum Wine)

• Glasswerk [+ Show ]
  

  Davina Robinson was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Osaka, she has been playing to audiences t...Davina Robinson was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Osaka, she has been playing to audiences there for some time with a mixture of covers and originals and has used the experience to write her own rock n' roll soul tracks.
  
  Davina Robinson has a powerful voice that lights up each song with feistiness that so often doesn't come across from vocals alone although her voice is slightly lost compared to the rather loud instrumentals in the recordings available but a little more balance in production could really let her voice take centre stage.
  
  Keeping the topics close to her heart also gives a certain sincerity which comes across in each track; "Conversations In My Head" was inspired by her late grandmother through to "Never Good Enough" which is about her struggles in the music industry.
  
  Davina has already had some recognition, being runner-up in VH1's Song Of The Year and a semi-finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest and if she continues to produce music like this then her career should continue to go from strength to strength.
  

• FAME Reviews [+ Show ]
  

  Interesting 4-cut CD EP. Starts as a cop on early Mother's Finest (funk), moves on to heavy anthemic...Interesting 4-cut CD EP. Starts as a cop on early Mother's Finest (funk), moves on to heavy anthemic hard rock, transforms into a very righteously built-up impassioned chartburner, then closes in a techno'ed rocker, all of them kicked into blazing life by a tight studio unit in Japan. Davina Robinson styles herself as 'the rock and roll soul chick', and it's not a misnomer. "The Blazing Heart"'s emphasis is on chartability but the weight of truly musical elements intelligently wrought and fierily delivered is what puts the kiss in the ensemble's kick. 'Conversations in my Head' is the stand-out track, solidly crafted from start to finish, with a great refrain, not a hook precisely but a catchy set of measures around which the remainder of the tune serves as flowing narrative. Guitarist Taichi Tamura tosses an arresting leadline in the middle, taking the song to its zenith without stealing the light. Robinson jumps into Joyce 'Baby Jean' Kennedy (Mother's Finest) territory on Making Love to Your Girlfriend, and producer-guitarist Osamu Mochinaga provides the Gary 'Moses Mo' Moore (no, not that Gary Moore) axe. For some reason, the keyboardist(s) goes uncreditted but he, she, or they put in some choice backgrounds and fills, rounding out a very full sound and atmosphere. This is prime radio rock, unashamedly so, proudly admitted to in the promo lit and in person, harking back to the Headpins, Cars, latterday Chilliwack, and Journey. Astoundingly, Robinson wrote everything here. Do we finally have a woman who can create authentic pulse-pounding rock without reverting to endless simplistic cliches? (Whoops! Sorry if I offended there, Lita Ford.) I think so.
  

• NeuFutur Magazine [+ Show ]
  

  'The Blazing Heart' is the first release by Davina Robinson. 'Making Love To Your Girlfriend' is the...'The Blazing Heart' is the first release by Davina Robinson. 'Making Love To Your Girlfriend' is the track that listeners may already be familiar with; the track was a runner-up for VH1fs Song of the Year contest, and received honors in the Great American Song Contest. Beyond that, our Japanese readers (all 1.2% of our traffic) may know Davina Robinson from playing a number of shows around the country. For those readers of NeuFutur that are not familiar with Robinsonfs music, 'Making Love To Your Girlfriend' is a track that blends equal part funk and rock, blasting listeners with guitar riffs from the onset.
  
  Some of the more nuanced guitar lines that are present during 'Making Love To Your Girlfriend' will remind listeners of early Prince and Janefs Addiction, while the vocals are completely unique. These vocals are as powerful as the opening salvos that first hit listeners, and the bits of funk influence give the track an overall sound reminiscent of 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik'-era Red Hot Chili Peppers. 'Never Good Enough' is the second track on 'The Blazing Heart', and the track has a constellation of influences that are a little older than those during 'Making Love'. This means that the track has the pacing of Heart, while Robinsonfs vocals continue to forge an entirely new path in rock music. It is during 'Never Good Enough' that listeners will begin to notice the extreme skill Robinson exhibits in creating a narrative that listeners cannot do anything but follow until the track ends.
  
  'Conversations In My Head' is a continuance of the strong narration that was present during 'Never Good Enough', but adds interesting pacing to 'The Blazing Heart'. This means that while the track begins slowly, the track begins to gain speed until the chorus, where Robinsonfs vocals keep individuals interested until the track packs up shop. The EPfs final track is 'Keeping Me Sane', and it contributes as much as any of the previous cuts on the EP through the addition of a new-rock type of sound to the mix. Hints of electronic and even industrial music play at the extreme periphery of the track. 'The Blazing Heart' has something for everyone, and it is Robinsonfs catchy, new type of sound that will ensure that she will be as big in the United States as she is currently in Japan.
  
  Top Track: Never Good Enough
  
  Rating: 8.0/10

• Rockin' Moms Reviews [+ Show ]
  

  Davina Robinson is known as the Rock n' Roll Soul Chick and for good reason. Her powerhouse , soulfu...Davina Robinson is known as the Rock n' Roll Soul Chick and for good reason. Her powerhouse , soulful vocals capture you in the first song, 'Making Love To Your Girlfriend', a song which I was already a fan of and played on the Rockin' Moms Podcast. This LP includes just four songs that flow well from track to track. All songs are written by Davina herself and I would look forward to hearing more from this artist.
  
  One of my other faves is the song, 'Conversations In My Head', dedicated to her grandmother, is more of a Rock ballad that offers the listener a nice change from the other 3 up tempo tracks.
  
  Davina is currently living and performing in Osaka, Japan where this album was produced.
  
  Favorite Tracks: Making Love To Your Girlfriend and Conversations In My Head.

• Nette Radio [+ Show ]
  

  Davina's writing and approach to lyrics are easy to relate to, her powerhouse vocals are fantastic a...Davina's writing and approach to lyrics are easy to relate to, her powerhouse vocals are fantastic and exciting, and I can imagine her live show to be full of energy and vibrant enthusiasm.
  
  Davina Robinson's 'The Blazing Heart'. It's a fantastic CD, great new stuff. Powerhouse vocals - Davina just blows blows blows you out of the water with that big voice. And her lyrics really are fantastic.

• I: The Indie Music Show, WZNZ Jacksonville [+ Show ]
  

  Philadelphia-born Davina Robinson is an interesting story. She resides in Osaka, Japan with a local ...Philadelphia-born Davina Robinson is an interesting story. She resides in Osaka, Japan with a local band she describes as 'hard-working, swinging dick musicians'. Together, they've concocted one of the better CDs to have crossed my desk this year.
  
  The 4-song EP opens with the audacious 'Making Love to Your Girlfriend'. Davina's muscular vocals, bringing to mind Amii Stewart and Anita Baker, pay out an officiously direct response to a man bent on games when a commitment is in order. Davina don't-bullshit-me-I'm-not-in-mood tone speaks the minds of every woman on earth, and with a funky rock groove that gives us an idea of what would have happened had Santana ever shared a set with Lakeside. 'Never Good Enough', has an 80s AOR feel, conjuring up memories of Joe Satriani playing from a tape deck of a blue Chevy Malibu. The song takes issue with the inane (and insane) pressures put upon women to measure up to impossible standards of beauty and thinness imposed on them by the media and too many undeserving males.
  
  'Conversations in My Head' is a power ballad in the tradition of 80s hair metal (one can almost see the faux smoke billowing onto the stage, under blue spots). It's Davina's softer side, but isn't without barbs as Davina now comes to terms with past demons is her typical heart-shreding directness and clarity. The CD closes with the percussive classic rock homage, 'Keeping Me Sane'. It's only a four-song EP, but it's makes a pretty measurable statement. Highly recommended.

Setlist

Faking It
I'm the One Who Dumped You
Keeping Me Sane
Making Love To Your Girlfriend
Behind Closed Doors
Monster
Never Good Enough
Funky Chick
Osaka Boys

30-60 min set

Covers include AC/DC, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett, Led Zeppelin, Lenny Kravitz...

Basic Requirements

Calendar