That Big Deal Forever Feeling: Lucy Dacus Doubles Down On Love, Radio City, Ryman & The Greek (Cover)

Lucy Dacus is going all in. She’s letting love guide her, as detailed on her gorgeous and intimate new record, Forever Is A Feeling; she’s planning an immersive, theatrical production for her upcoming tour; and she’s about to embark on the biggest, most high profile trek of her career, which includes two-night plays at iconic venues like New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and L.A.’s Greek Theater among others— and Dacus isn’t taking any of it for granted.

“A lot of these venues are bucket list places,” Dacus tells Pollstar. “I have never been to Radio City, even to attend a show, and we sold out two nights, which is crazy. I’ve played Red Rocks before but never headlining, and that one looks like it’s almost sold out. The Greek, as well, I’ve never played, and I’m doing a couple nights there. Even the Chicago Theatre — my mom grew up in Chicago, and I’ve always seen that walking around. I think my mom saw Dionne Warwick and I’ll be playing two nights there. [I’m] feeling very blessed. Really, really gorgeous places and historical spots.”

Dacus and her team, which includes manager Dalton Sim of Good Harbor, Creative Artists Agency’s Kevin French, Geffen Records and The Oriel’s Chloe Walsh doing PR, have done a masterful job setting up this tour and album which drops today (March 28). Her album was preceded by “Evening With Lucy Dacus” acoustic shows, all underplays at non-traditional venues including Église Saint-Eustache in Paris, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, The Driehaus Museum’s Murphy Auditorium in Chicago, the Legion of Honor’s Gunn Theater in San Francisco, and Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. The limited tickets to those shows were distributed via a lottery request system and helped build the buzz for her upcoming tour as a slew of press raves about the new record.

Forever Is A Feeling is the 29-year-old singer/songwriter’s major label debut and her fourth solo album. It’s also her first new collection of tunes since boygenius — the indie rock supergroup featuring Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers — seemed to own 2023 and early 2024 (see Pollstar‘s boygeinus cover story) . Their debut full-length album, The Record, launched the trio into the stratosphere headlining major venues, including New York’s Madison Square Garden (grossing $1 million and selling 13,384 tickets) and Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl while winning three Grammy awards and earning top spots on best albums of the year lists.

Much of Forever Is A Feeling weaves together a variety of love stories, including heartbreaking pairings ultimately doomed to end, lust that has yet to be acted upon and a sweet connection that gleams with liberation and hope for a future, which makes sense if you consider where Dacus is at now in her personal life.

Less than two weeks before the album release, Dacus revealed in a high-profile New Yorker interview that she is in a romantic relationship with her boygenius bandmate Baker and explained that the track “most wanted man,” which continues with the line “…in West Tennessee,” is based on her bandmate who hails from outside Memphis.

“[Forever Is A Feeling] starts off in a place of keeping someone I love at arm’s length—not being sure if I should break up with somebody, kind of deferring to the status quo, resisting change,” Dacus told Pollstar in between “Evening With” performances in Europe. “Then through the record, I let my emotions get the better of me, which is good because I make all these changes that have made my life even better and have allowed me to express my love freely. I would encourage everybody to get to that point in their lives.”

Dacus, who started writing songs at age 8, is known for her tonally-rich and ethereal vocals as well as her guitar skills (she was named to Rolling Stone’s 2023 list of “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”). The singer/songwriter was adopted as an infant and grew up in a musical family in Mechanicsville, Virginia (population 39,482), a suburb of Richmond, with a mom who taught elementary music and was a professional pianist and a dad who was a graphic designer and played guitar.

CAA’s Kevin French flew out to see Dacus perform a decade ago after hearing her 2015 single “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore.”

“He was actually either the first or second person to start working with me,” Dacus says. “He came to Richmond, Virginia to see me play a brewery and signed on, which was amazing because I had not played that many shows outside of my hometown. I had DIY booked some tours before I even had music out, but Kevin French has really set my life in motion.”

French — who started representing Baker shortly before he started booking Dacus and introduced Dacus to her manager Good Harbor’s Dalton Sim — says that while Dacus has come a long way since then as a live performer, that he immediately “saw her talent.” He explains, “She’s always been just this tremendous writer and I think that’s why she has these rabid fans that can connect with her music. But her show now, I mean, I think it’s a matter of confidence. She’s got a great band together now and she knows what she’s doing. She’s got a vision and she’s really special that way.”

The first few years booking Dacus were focused on getting her most comfortable on stage as a performer, but French notes that she started selling out venues pretty quickly, going from 500-capacity clubs to playing 1,000-cap rooms in 2017. Still, he says the team was mindful to “take the right steps and gradually grow.”

And then boygenius was born in 2018. Dacus, Baker and Bridgers hit the road on a co-bill tour earlier in the year and then teamed up to write, record, and self-produce boygenius’ self-titled debut in October 2018.

“It was such a great tour and I think it really helped Lucy’s career a lot,” French said. “She was playing first on that bill. Boygenius wasn’t really a band then. They were all just doing their own shows and they ended up putting out an EP. … And then things really just took off from there. ‘21 and ‘22 had a really big year on her last album and she was getting to the point where we’re doing multiples like Brooklyn Steel and, playing 2,000 cap rooms and selling those out.”

Dacus released her first album, No Burden, in early 2016 on Richmond-based Egghunt Records and then re-released it later that year after signing with Matador Records, followed by 2018’s Historian and 2021’s Home Video, as well as a few EPs.

Nearly five years after boygenius’ EP, the group released its first full-length album with 2023’ critically acclaimed The Record, which inextricably changed the band and many of their fans’ lives with its empowering representation of queer musicians as well as three badass women joining forces. The group became the first all-female band to win the Grammy for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance, along with Best Alternative Music Album. And now Dacus is the first of the group (which is on an indefinite hiatus) to return with a new album.

Though Dacus has long been praised for her candid lyrics, Forever Is A Feeling just might be her most vulnerable album yet. The album marks the first time Dacus, who has dated both men and women, has used pronouns to describe a love interest (with track “Best Guess” declaring “you may not be an angel / but you are my girl.”) She also shares her thoughts on spirituality in the track “Most Wanted Man” (which flips the pronoun script) and a few of her sexual fantasies in “Ankles,” the first single off her album, which is already getting radio airplay.

Dacus explains that she often writes songs while on walks alone. She says, “I’ll hum and sing to myself, and often the lyrics and the melody come at the same time. Then by the time I get to wherever I’m going, I’ll sit down and write it down or I’ll get to the guitar and I’ll figure out the chords. But lyrics and melody coming together makes a lot of sense to me, because the melody can kind of emphasize the meaning of what I’m trying to say.”

She notes that this album was different from any other she’s done because there were “way more collaborators.” Along with her usual team of Collin Pastore and Jake Finch, collaborators include Hozier, Blake Mills, Bartees Strange, Andrew Lappin, Melina Duterte (aka Jay Som), Madison Cunningham, and Chloe Saavedra. Plus, Phoenix Rousiamanis, who is now in Dacus’ band, played all the violin and most of the piano and keyboards on the record. Dacus’ boygenius bandmates Baker and Bridgers are also featured on backing vocals on a few songs.

“Forever Is A Feeling is another huge milestone in Lucy’s incredible career. When she takes these songs out on the road, her fans are really going to feel the true breadth of artistry and songwriting on this album. It’s going to be so special to experience these songs in a live setting,” says Matt Morris, Executive Vice President, A&R at Interscope Geffen A&M.

When plotting out the routing for Dacus’ accompanying “Forever Is A Feeling Tour” French says that since boygenius and the success of Dacus’ 2021 album, the team felt pretty confident they were “looking at doubles at Radio City and the Greek L.A. and headlining Red Rocks. But we went up with one show in each market.”

He adds, “We announced one Radio City, saw that ‘Well, we were right. We do have two here.’ She sold out two Radio City Music Halls in New York, two Anthems in D.C … two Greek Theatres in Los Angeles, Red Rocks. It’s a giant leap for her and we all were really, really confident when we heard the music months ago. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is going to work.’”

Dacus’ live band features “Ricardo Lagomasino on drums, Dominic Angelella on bass, Sarah Goldstone on keys (she also played with boygenius) Phoenix Rousiamanis on violin (and keys sometimes), and then Alan Good Parker on the guitar.” She notes that “Parker is someone I’ve known for a long time because he’s from Richmond, Virginia as well, and his playing is really special. Really incredible band, and by the way, awesome people.”

The production for the tour will be “very theatrical,” with Dacus saying that it’s “much more robust” compared to previous excursions. She adds, “I want it to feel kind of immersive. I also chose venues based off of how beautiful they are. I was like ‘no rock boxes, no clubs.’ We even had to skip some cities because they didn’t have an appropriate venue.”

The “Forever Is a Feeling Tour,” which features support from Katie Gavin (of MUNA) and jasmine.4.t, starts April 16 at The Met in Philadelphia. North American headline dates are booked through May, along with a few festival appearances including Montreal’s Osheaga in August and Atlanta’s Shaky Knees in September. European headline and festival dates are booked June through July including stops at U.K.’s Glastonbury and Denmark’s Roskilde Festival.

French promises that more dates are to come including additional U.S. festivals in the fall and another leg of headline shows that will be announced in April.

Dacus will be sure to be watching the crowd sing, which she says is her favorite thing about playing live.

“Most compliments I can explain away, for example, people saying, ‘Oh, congrats on your record’ or ‘Your record’s great’ could have simply not even listened to it and they just want to be nice,” Dacus says. “But you can’t fake knowing the lyrics. That means you have really spent time with it, so that registers as a huge compliment to me.”