In the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, the titular character wisely states, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.”
Genre-bending trailblazer Dora Jar has embraced this sentiment in her own work, especially on her debut album No Way to Relax When You Are on Fire. Dora’s career was first ignited after joining Billie Eilish on the “Happier Than Ever” Tour. Listeners are drawn by her reflective and innovative songwriting, as she continues to stoke the fire with EPs and multiple singles.
However, the phrase “on fire” has a double entendre. From behind the wheel of her tour van, Dora shared with 1824 and ECHO, “I sometimes feel like I’m on fire and I am full of action and I just keep going and I can’t relax like right now. And sometimes that feels really good and sometimes it’s very crazy.”
Dora approaches this chaos and these raw emotions with childlike wonder, finding escape and inspiration in books, films, textures, and music. “I like colors, and I love movies that mix live action with animation, like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” she shared. “I like textures—like paper—and I even wore paper in some of the album’s visualizers. I also love potato sacks and Fantasia 2000. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with “Rhapsody in Blue”—it’s 17 minutes long, and amazing the whole way through.”
The influence of the film Mary Poppins is recognizable by the record’s cover art. Dora Jar stands windswept in the foreground framed by a psychedelic pink sky and a hazy set of smoke stairs. “The cover is directly from a Mary Poppins scene where Mary Poppins takes her umbrella and pokes the black chimney smoke to create a staircase as they walk up it,” Dora explained, “and that sticks out to me because in the creation of this album, I was very obsessed with contradictions in myself. Smoke as a staircase is a big contradiction. Something that lifts, but it’s not grounded – you would fall right through if it was real. Smoke is from fire and that is connected.”
Dora also finds her creative sparks in her own adventures, “a lot of inspiration comes from walking and just seeing the world pass by,” specifically pointing to the lyrics “You look like the witch without a broomstick” from her single “Debbie Darling.” “I think the lyric, “it’s like a witch” actually comes from – there’s these little metal pipe things in New York City that I don’t know what they’re for. And they have sort of like a pointy hat like witches. I just thought it was funny so then it found its way into the song. I like things that make me chuckle and mixing that in with something very sincere. I feel like a witch sometimes.”
Like the fearless characters from the novels Dora reads, she doesn’t let fear extinguish her creative fire. Despite not having technical knowledge of the guitar or being able to read music, she has become known for her intricate guitar parts. For Dora, figuring out the guitar has become a “fun challenge.” “It’s kind of like a video game, like when you keep dying and then you realize how to do the jump and it’s like, you just keep doing it over and over again until you pass the level. I like finding the guitar parts that are interesting to me.”
Track 4 on the album, “Rag Doll” opens with a stunning chord progression. “I was sitting on my couch, and … I found the melody, and I was playing it so slowly, but I was obsessed with it, and I just kept playing it, like, I would wake up early in the morning and play it. And then, eventually I could play it without messing up and then I wrote a melody over it.”
Now on her “Behind the Curtain” tour, the visionary is letting imagination drive her live shows. “It’s so fun playing live and I wish I could do it all the time. I feel like I just keep getting more energetic. Even on this tour, we’re like seven shows in, and the show has changed so much the more we get to do it. It’s all about just being in the moment and letting the audience sort of lead us to new exciting places.”
As a child, Dora and her sister bonded by discovering new artists. Through attending concerts with her sister, Louisa, who has cerebral palsy and utilizes a wheelchair, Dora realized the importance of accessibility, especially at live shows. Inspired by Disneyland’s accommodations, Dora has made it a priority on this tour to make her shows accessible. “There’s always people making sure that there are seating areas, and just the other night in Chicago there was an adorable girl who was in a walker and she was right up front. I think raising awareness helps the fans know that if they see someone who has special needs to make way for them to have the best experience possible, and just making sure everyone has that same value when we’re all in it together.”
Now in her late twenties, Dora continues to blaze her own trail and plans to nurture her imagination for years to come. “I want to write a musical one day when I’m 40,” she proclaimed.
Listen to No Way to Relax When You Are on Fire here.