Dwayna Litz is an American singer, songwriter, writer and inspired speaker, whose expressive country voice captivates with its authenticity and sincerity. Her musical gift is as striking as her external beauty, but the true greatness of Dwayna is revealed far beyond the limits of the stage.

As founder of Lighting the Way – a Christian non-profit organization – she became a support for women who survived violence, and those who found themselves on the roadside of society. In this conversation Dwayna openly shares the story of the creation of her powerful new track “America Come Home”, talks about the evolution of her songwriting mastery and about the mission to which she dedicated her life.

Hello, Dwayna! In our magazine we have already written about your singles more than once and, to be honest, we follow your work with great interest. Sincerity is felt in each of your releases, and the new track “America Come Home” is no exception. Thank you for finding time to talk with us and share the story of this song. Let’s start with it specifically – tell us, how was it born and what does it mean for you today?

Thank you for that and for this interview! I am always so happy to get to work with you at Voxwave. I love my country and am old enough to remember when it was not so hostile and dangerous. Most of all, I love the people that make America great, but our culture has changed so much through the years that it has inspired me to write songs. I appreciate freedom and the chance to go from rags to riches in such a country, but then the injustices of classism and politics can weigh me down to the point of not even wanting to watch the news these days. I love America so much that I compiled a coffee-table quote book years ago on American history, so I truly do miss the way our country used to be, before the mass shootings and so much violence. We also used to have more class in leadership, at least on the outside, as a testament to our culture domestically and abroad.

I listened to “America Come Home” several times and will honestly say – it gets through to you. From your voice and words, goosebumps on the skin. What feelings were the strongest when you were writing it?

The prices were so high, and the last presidential election was happening, and both sides were just poor choices of leadership from a moral standpoint. I began singing out the melody, “America Come Home..”, and it was like a prayer, personifying the America of my childhood. I just started singing and could not put it down as the song flowed out. I wrote the whole thing in a couple of hours (which rarely happens but sometimes does as I write songs) and called Tim Crouch, who co-produces everything with me, and said, “We have to get a session together as soon as possible!” It was also special to me, as we assembled a group of new musicians last minute to record it, and it was on that session I found the foundation of my “sound” as an artist. That day was the first time I worked with Steve Brewster on drums, Duncan Mullins on electric bass, and James Mitchell on electric guitar, and I found “me” as we all worked together. It was wonderful, and we all knew the song was special—like a gift! I think everyone in the band felt the same way, as all we could do was make music about how much we wished America could come back home.

In the song there is a moment of nostalgia for America, “as we knew it before.” And what America do you remember and what would you like to return?

I remember catching the school bus when parents never dreamed kids would be abducted. Now, I pass school kids in the mornings waiting on the bus to take them to public schools with an adult standing there with them to make sure the kids stay safe. I am so old there were no school shootings in elementary school. At large events, we never dreamed there would be a shooter! And, of course, 911 changed everything for the whole world. It was like we didn’t know how good we had it back then. People spent more time together, too.

All proceeds from “America Come Home” go to help children from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Now it is already in the top-200 FM-radio and, I’m sure, will climb even higher soon. What would such success mean for you, especially considering the charitable mission of the track?

I appreciate all your great questions! Last week, it charted at 177, and Dolly Parton was behind at 197. I called my radio team yesterday and said, “I don’t understand this!” I let them know I would love to succeed but do not know how to succeed at something I do not understand. How in the world could “America Come Home” have charted higher than Dolly? I get that there is unrest now in Minneapolis, so I guess that was why, but there was no way I could figure that out. I finally felt peace when I decided to keep the focus on the music—the songs—instead of trying to predict the charts or what will work or not work with radio. It sort of takes a miracle from God for an independent artist to ever get heard I think in the first place! So, I have to just remind myself that I have a wonderful life, no matter what my songs do or don’t do on FM radio or whatever. That being said, I am working my hardest to make the most of every song. I have no publicist, so I do all the marketing myself, and I enjoy it! It is a lot of work, though. I have to answer your question by going back to what I have always said (long before this radio team approached me), if a song of mine can just touch one heart it is success to me. If someone hears one of my songs and thinks, “I feel the same. I am like her…” that is success. Success to me is about how music can touch us to unite us all, including my music.

“America Come Home” can become for you a ticket to the Recording Academy and to Sirius Radio – an impressive prospect! What do you feel, looking at this possible turn in your career, and how are you preparing internally for it?

Another great question. I never want to live for fame. To be honest, I used to in my twenties, and it was not fun. I have to surrender all of my music and plans to whatever God wants, knowing that God loves me and will never let me down. If every song comes from God, surely I can trust Him with whatever He wants or may not want for my songs. I mean, there is so much out of my control. I have to just keep my focus on making every song the best I can make it —from the craft of songwriting to the production—and then, if things happen or do not happen, I can know I did my best and that God will keep taking care of me either way. My music is what it is, whether it gets on Sirius or not…and the only way I can have peace as opportunities arise is to remind myself that I am blessed to the utmost either way. I wake up with happiness in my heart every day and peace, and no amount of fame can give me that but God. Still, the thought of my music touching others and helping them get from one place to another, like my songwriting does for me in life, thrills me so much that I will always keep trying my best to get my music heard. 

The video “America Come Home” looks like a call for unity, so that the States become less divided, step by step, person by person. You allowed it to be freely distributed, and this is very noble. What stands behind this decision for you and how does such openness work in reality?

 I had planned to do a performance video of the song. Someone had referred me to a new person who shot videos. Well, it was so hot in TN that day, as I danced around, and I had never worked with that videographer before. My photographer that has shot all my other photos had spoiled me. There was no lighting or white board for color…and the video was just not professional enough to use, so I put together that slide show and the video guy I had hired was nice enough to hang in there with me to at least get a slide show for the song. I am a perfectionist when it comes to my art. I would rather not do something at all than not do my best, so the video was meant to be a scrolling slide show. The opening photo is of the farm where my dad was raised. People say it touches them to see how beautiful the land of America is, and I just wanted the entire project to work for the human good in America. As I work with so many underprivileged kids, I will keep my word on that, too, helping them with any proceeds from the song.

I want to return a little to the beginning. At seventeen you decided on a move to Nashville – a step that determined your fate. How has your style of songwriting evolved since then?

I grew up loving English in school. Of course, I grew up singing as a soloist, too. The first time I knew I loved writing was when I stayed up past midnight as a junior in high school to get my essay just right. I can remember that was the first time I had the pleasure of re-writing to make sure it touched the heart. Well, I won the best essay in the whole high school and was chosen based on that essay to be an intern for Congress in Washington for a week. So, after I moved to Nashville, when I was 19, I told a very prominent Country Music Awards “ASCAP Writer of the Year” many years over, “It must be the greatest feeling on earth to write a song.” He said, “Dwayna, I think you are a songwriter. You just don’t know it yet.” Well, he was right. I never forgot that. I began writing from my heart at age 21, and it was a song called “Stranger in Your Eyes.” I put the demo recording on my YouTube channel. I felt it all and got it on the first take in the studio, and that song got me every single publishing and production deal I ever got in Nashville. And, I was right when I was 19. It IS the most wonderful feeling to write a song. My style has evolved because I have listened—and studied—great writers more, like Billy Joel, Kenny Loggins…and also had the chance to co-write years ago with writers who were hit writers. I learned a lot just from writing with people like Sam Lorber who wrote many hits and co-wrote a song I recorded years ago, “Cry Like A Baby” with me. I remember he would stop, as we wrote lyrics, and he would say, “That is too much head and not enough heart. It has to be heart and not head,” and I have remembered things like that. I agree with Lionel Richie who said, “If it doesn’t have soul, it doesn’t have meaning.” I like deeply emotional melodies and lyrics that have depth, and somewhere along the way I realized when a song was done vs. still needing work. I remember the days I did not know how to finish a song on my own, but I think that as an independent artist who has been forced to write alone (as back in the day the hit writers wrote with me because they thought I was on the verge of a major record deal), it has made me a better writer. Now, I love writing alone and prefer it that way, as I write from my heart, and my songwriting helps me process my emotions about whatever I am going through. It’s really healing and healthy to FEEL it all through my music. 

Dwayna, you say that you write songs only from the whole heart and about your life – never “to order.” But after all, in the music industry it’s not so easy to stay afloat. Were there moments when they tried to convince you to act differently for the sake of success?

Absolutely, and I hated those days. I was never good at writing based on “a pitch sheet.” I was never good at crafting a song “for someone else.” I was always signed as a singer/songwriter, and that is really all I was in that my songs have all been from my heart about my life from an honest place. I do not miss the days of going into a publishing house to have to “make myself write.” Now, I write when songs come, and I love it that way. I love it when a song will not let me go, and those are the kinds of songs I write now. “America Come Home” was certainly that. I could not stop working on it until it was done. I realize that I am different. I do not really fit with the music “of today” in any genre, but I am going to keep on being me, keep doing it to the best of my ability. After all, there is no other alternative. I like being me! I can’t be anyone else.

Moving on to your amazing work outside of music. Your organization Lighting the Way has received the award “Best in Manhattan” six years in a row. Tell us, how did it all begin – how was the idea to create this non-profit organization born?

I began it in CA. I will sum it up to say that I had no “plan b” for my life. I had planned on making it as a star, period. I did not go to college, and it was all I wanted. “Music” was really an idol, and I had so much sadness on the inside…until one day I was literally crying about it all down on my knees to God, when I could feel this loving God loving me as my Father. He wanted me to love Him back, even more than I did music, so that whatever God wanted for my life would be okay. Well, I only left music because it seemed I could never make it in a way that was moral! God was actually giving me a great gift in those hard years. Fame and fortune could have never given me the love inside my heart that only God can give. Feeling like God was all I had, and nothing I had planned had worked out, I began a nonprofit. As I helped others, I noticed something strange happening—God made me happy, too! I found out I had more than one gift in my love for helping people to the point of never meeting a stranger, so to speak…so it spread all over the world by word of mouth, and the best part of the story is that when God was ready He gave me back my music. Only God knows how much I love it. I guess He had to “make me okay,” though, first on the inside…and this is why I always say that God loving me is the greatest love I will ever know. I love Him back for how much He loves me. I write sometimes about that, too. I will have the best Christian songs I have ever written out in 2027 in an album called “Still” about how God is “still” everything He promises, no matter what.

You do huge work, helping women who survived violence, you work with prostitutes on the streets of New Orleans. Your book “Happiness Does Not Require the Participation of a Man” is used in prisons, shelters and homes for pregnant women – a difficult environment. How do you find the strength to remain a bright person and support others? 

My book ‘Happiness No Man Required—50 Tips for Women to be Happy With or Without a Man’ was like writing a really LONG song! The idea flowed out, after one too many wrong guys, but it is not against love. It IS against wasting time and going from love to heartache and lies from some smooth talker to heartache and love to heartache…life is too short for that! I now have a dream of falling in love with my best friend. You have to have both chemistry AND compatibility. Again, I wrote that book from my heart. A major publisher said, “If you will leave God out of it, this title is a hit idea,” but after all that God has done for me, there was no way I was going to agree to that. Each tip is illustrated by a true story, and women say they cannot put it down. My life has been interesting, and it is not over yet! I think this may be the happiest season of my whole, entire life, thanks to all the music.

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