Singer & performer, lyricist & author, producer & filmmaker, and most recently street photographer, Marianne Dissard is probably best known for the music she recorded in Tucson, Arizona, her home of two decades.

Born in France in 1969, Marianne Dissard moved to Phoenix, Arizona as a teenager in 1985. She attended USC Film School in Los Angeles before settling in 1994 in Tucson, Arizona where she remained based for two decades. She’s been living in the UK since 2017, first in Ramsgate, Kent, and now Coatbridge, Scotland.

➔ MUSIC

From 2006 to 2017, Marianne toured her baroque Sonoran noir art pop worldwide, backed by Tucson’s finest musicians. A charismatic performer, her critically-acclaimed American chanson plays effortlessly with contradictions: ‘tender, yet abrasive; melodramatic, but vulnerable; comical and heartbreaking’, as noted by Minneapolis producer BK-One in his astute liner notes to her ’Cibola Gold’ Best Of album, who adds, ‘and fearless’.

In 2013, after two decades of collaboration with members of alt-Americana Tucson bands Giant Sand, Calexico, XIXA, and Orkesta Mendoza, Marianne moved back to Europe. Since then, she has made music and toured with French guitarist Yan Péchin (Bashung, Miossec), Allyson Ezell, Italian composer Christian Ravaglioli, The Inspector Cluzo, UK broken folk duo Lunatraktors, and lately, English producer Raphael Mann whom she met whilst they were both living in Ramsgate, England. The two recorded new music remotely during the first two years of the pandemic, resulting in an album of covers, ‘Rappel*le’, released in 2023.

➔ WRITING

Her first book, 2019 memoir 'Not Me', an impish and poetic exploration of trauma and the life of a disordered touring musician, was praised by some of Dissard's favorite authors; Mitch Cullin ('Tideland'), Chris Rush (‘The Light Years’), and Andrew Smith ('Moondust') as well as producer John Parish. Some twenty years prior to that, she’d published a few poems in American magazines. She has written lyrics in French and English for artists including Howe Gelb, Amor Belhom Duo, Naïm Amor, and herself.

➔ FILMMAKING

She studied at USC Film School in Los Angeles, working for directors Gregg Araki, Jon Jost, Alex Cox, the latter possibly an influence when she directed her own rambunctious western ‘Lonesome Cowgirls’ in 2010 (a Warhol remake and companion piece to her second album). She also directed and produced lo-fi 1994 Giant Sand/Howe Gelb documentary ‘Drunken Bees’; and for French TV, ‘Low Y Cool’ about Tucson’s lowriding community with director Robert Kramer; as well as several music videos and oddities for herself and others.

➔ PHOTOGRAPHY

Returning to Ramsgate in the fall 2020, her touring cancelled by the pandemic, Marianne began compulsively photographing in the perimeter allowed around her home. This obsession eventually culminated in a solo site-specific installation in Ramsgate Port and led to solo gallery shows in Paris, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and a book. ‘Doris Johnson’, the iconic image from that series, was exhibited at Turner Contemporary in Margate in their fall 2021 Open group show. A second street photography project, in Knightsbridge, London this time, was initiated as visuals for her new stage production, ‘Souvenir of England’, in 2022 and premiered as a street installation in August 2023 in Ramsgate. 

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