Country Chanteuse
A onetime teenage karaoke queen in Tokyo, Member Danni Rosner is now performing to real audiences in the United States.
As a middle schooler Danni Rosner belted out Disney tunes at karaoke lounges in Shibuya. More than a decade later, she performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of thousands of baseball fans at LA’s Dodger Stadium.
Now the lead singer with LA-based, all-female country trio Honey County, Rosner, who uses the stage name Dani Rose, recalls her early music “career” in Japan.
“They told me to shut up as a kid,” she says during a recent Skype interview. “‘Danielle, I understand you like to sing in class, but you are being too loud.’ So that means I was really bad, but I loved it so much I just kept on doing it.”
Rosner and her family arrived in Tokyo from Chantilly, Virginia, in 1994, when she was a fifth-grader. “In Japan, you had so many different nationalities and cultures, like short shorts. The Swedish ambassador’s kids were wearing short shorts and we were, like, ‘Wow, those are cool!’” she says. “We were very lucky to grow up in that environment because it made us open to so many different experiences.”
She returned to Chantilly for high school before graduating from Virginia Tech, where she sang in local jam bands and the school a cappella group.
A music lover with eclectic tastes, ranging from American rock act the Allman Brothers Band to Japan’s Brilliant Green, Rosner discovered country artists like Tim McGraw and Marc Cohn during college.
“[I was] driving through the mountains in Virginia, and that was when ‘Where the Green Grass Grows’ came out, this country pop [song], and I was, like, ‘I love this,’” she says. “I started to get that vibe.”
Rosner’s first job after graduating in 2007 was hosting a music show on public television, and she performed Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” at Amateur Night at the Apollo in New York City. “Feeling that energy on stage,” she says. “I was, like, ‘This is my calling.’”
After relocating to LA, she was asked to open for country singer LeAnn Rimes in 2012. The talent buyer told Rosner she was the only country singer in LA. “So that’s how I found out I was a country singer,” she says.
Rosner hired a manager, who suggested she form a band. Honey County’s first single “Blood from a Stone” was featured on the HBO vampire drama “True Blood” and the band’s party anthem “99 Bottles,” released last year, has racked up nearly 80,000 YouTube views.
But singing the national anthem behind home plate at Dodger Stadium in April, clad in short shorts, was, unsurprisingly, a memorable moment. “It was honestly so surreal,” she says. “I will never sing in another stadium because it was so good.”
Meanwhile, Rosner and her bandmates are recording a new album in between performances at summer music festivals.
“I love to work with people and I am open to ideas. I think, again, because of my upbringing,” she says. “In Japan, you have to be an open book. You have to accept everything.”
Words: Nick Narigon