Fur Dixon
In the early 1980s, 18-year-old Fur Dixon defiantly rejected her mother’s Christian evangelical doomsday cult, a multi-million dollar empire. It was there, at age 12, that Fur began her singing career, an angel-voiced child singing duets with infamous televangelist Garner Ted Armstrong. The church was stiflingly oppressive and, running like hell from their fire and brimstone, Fur escaped into the brave new world of the explosive L.A. punk and rockabilly scene. She took up bass guitar and within a year joined a wild, Tex-Mex Cumbia flavored rockabilly band, The Whirlybirds, and toured America. Next, Fur formed and fronted The Hollywood Hillbillys, a Day-Glo psycho- hillbilly surf band who played with live chickens onstage. The Cramps, wowed by the skinny half-hillbilly, half punk hell-raiser, asked Fur to join them on the eve or their 1986 “A Date with Elvis” tour of Europe, Scandinavia and the UK. Fur was the first bassist to play with The Cramps live, throbbing out a solid, hypnotic rhythm, rocking a fur-lined bra and that famous bunny tail, and exuding smoldering sexual energy for around 69 shows, then quit.
Upon returning to the USA, Fur relocated to Austin TX where she fronted rock ’n’ roll bands the DIXONS and BLOWUP. Always on the move, she switched over from bass to guitar, started playing solo acoustic shows, then formed a successful Americana/folk duo in L.A., Fur Dixon and Steve Werner, releasing 4 albums over 10 years. In 2016, needing an outlet for the distressing state of the world, Fur formed WTFUKUSHIMA! a loud, electric, high energy rock ‘n’ roll band and released her solo debut album,
Return 2 Sender, in 2018. It reached a large US, UK and EU audience with much thanks due to Rodney Bingenheimer. That year, Fur and WTFUKUSHIMA! toured the UK, Scotland, Spain, and Portugal in support of the album. Unbeknownst to Fur, when she left The Cramps 30 years earlier, she’d left behind an adoring and ever growing fan base who lovingly came out to the shows and gave her a hero’s welcome.
Having outlasted one of the biggest cult churches in American history and transcending the cult of The Cramps, Fur’s versatility has been astounding. Throughout a career of playing religious music, rock ‘n’ roll, psychobilly, surf, country, folk and Americana, the common thread at her core is that Fur Dixon is a siren-voiced songwriter whose incendiary performances and riveting songs of love, protest, defiance and redemption are nothing short of soul-stirring and that her capabilities are limitless.
