FEATURE: Spotlight: Adia Victoria — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua Asante

Adia Victoria

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ALTHOUGH I have interviewed…

PHOTO CREDIT: Huy Nguyen

Adia Victoria before, I have not included her in my spotlight feature. I am highlighting her, as there are many who do not know about her music. Her album, A Southern Gothic, came out on 17th September. Showcasing her incredible ‘gothic blues’ style, she is one of the most fascinating artists in the world. The Nashville-based artist is amazing. I am going to come to a recent interview with Adia Victoria. Before then, there are a couple of 2019 interviews and a review of her previous album, Silences, that I want to include. The first interview is from Popmatters. In it, we get a sense of how Adia Victoria started out and what she aimed for on Silences:

“Adia Victoria always wanted to be heard. The problem was, no one seemed to be listening. Hence, the journey began for a young, black woman from the South who battled for truth, justice and a better American way of life.

She wanted to find a means to express herself, whether it required her voice or her pen. The exploration involving a kid raised by a religious family in South Carolina en route to becoming a blues musician living in Nashville — a city that’s seemingly less authentic than advertised during its heyday — has been a perilous one. But Victoria is a determined fighter, and is telling a personal story of survival ahead of Silences, her second full-length album, to be released on Friday, February 22.

The 12-song album, which she co-produced with Aaron Dessner (The National), is a remarkable achievement filled with lyrical and musical ambition while following the travails of a willful woman (“I like to do things my way / Or I don’t do ’em at all” is heard on “Heathen”) who takes on God and deals with the devil, getting worn down in the process. By “Get Lonely”, the tender ballad that serves as the final track, she’s just striving for that feeling of splendid isolation, as long as a lover is involved. It’s no coincidence that Victoria wrote all the words on the record, other than on “The City”, where she gets a co-writing credit.

The outspoken singer-songwriter-guitarist, who still tries to meet once a week in a poetry group with friends Caroline Randall Williams and Ciona Rouse, has already led a fascinating life during an endless search for belonging. Revealing many of her experiences during a phone interview from Williams’ home in Nashville on Valentine’s Day, she also was focused on the impending record release and the “Dope Queen Tour” that was about to begin, laughing that there was no time to celebrate the holiday with her boyfriend.

Asked what her expectations were for this album, her first full-length release since 2016’s Beyond the Bloodhounds, Victoria first joked about getting back on the road again, starting February 18 with six traveling companions. “I expect I’m gonna be in a van for a very long time. (laughs) I’m going to war. I’m preparing for battle.”

Victoria quickly took a seriously straightforward turn, though.

“I try not to put too many expectations on this experience these days because I want to be able, whatever it is that I come up against, that I meet and confront, I want to be appreciative of it,” she said. “I expect to put on a damn good show with my band. I expect us to have some very strange and interesting experiences out there on the road and I expect a lot of people to hear their own story on the album. Even parts of themselves that they don’t necessarily see spoken about in quote-unquote ‘polite society’. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted from this album was to kind of expand the conversation on things like mental health, the effects of capitalism on the human psyche, what it’s doing to us to constantly have to be on all the time”.

Prior to bringing in a review, another album around Silences provides more depth and detail about a fascinating artist. I think I recall hearing some of the songs from Silences a little bit before they appeared on the album. I was instantly hooked on Adia Victoria’s music. Red Line Roots spoke with her in 2019. She spoke about being influenced by the foremothers of Blues:

“RLR: The songs on “Silences” have been out in the world for a while. Have there been textures or corners of the songs that you have discovered by bringing them out on the road?

AV: Right. So, you know, it’s just a completely different animal, recording an album and putting on a live show of it. Some of my favorite musicians, people who have had the biggest impact on me, they’ve allowed these songs to live and grow with them. My band, we’re seven human beings up on stage performing every night, so there’s going to be changes, it’s going to evolve, as it should. And that’s something we had the foresight to say, “We don’t want to play the same show every night.” So we’re open to new interpretations, new dynamics, and it just keeps things fresh, and keeps us engaged.

RLR: This album feels like a journey that you’re taking the listener on. It’s a record that rewards someone who listens to it in order. But that’s not how many people listen to music these days. Does that matter to you at all, or is that a distraction from just creating?

AV: There’s a certain part of me that idealizes how I would like to have my art received and engaged with by the audience, but I have also understood that’s part of my ego that can’t be satiated. I can’t control the way people engage with my art and I find it a lot more enjoyable when I don’t try to.

The album itself, it is a story, it’s a cohesive story of wandering outside of yourself and then what happens when you reach those boundaries of the self and let the world in. Failing that people listen to the whole album front-to-back, I wanted each song to be a kind of vignette of that process.

RLR: As you think about blues music, the devil looms large in both music and folklore and the devil is an explicit and implicit thread through this record. How do you think about those songs in conversation with each other and also with blues in general?

AV: I was very much influenced by the foremothers of the blues writing this record and also just living my life. I’ve been diving deeper into my blues scholarship; I just finished a book called Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, by Angela Davis, where she covers Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday. She’s talking about the function of the blues as a political statement, of these women who were often one generation removed from slavery. And the first thing that they did with this little bit of autonomy is they completely severed themselves from the social norms and mores of white, capital, Christian, male hierarchy.

RLR: Can you say a bit more about the blues you’re thinking of?

AV: I think about it as a sort of juxtapositon to how we’re socialized in order for our system to work. Especially women, but not just women. All of us are inculcated with these restrictions of how to act, how to be, and how to be correct in this world. And often the end result of that is a profound sense of isolation from oneself. You come to an understanding from what you are taught as a child that there are parts of yourself and your psyche that are off-limits. In our society, it’s considered radical to be human. We’re raised to be something other than human: we’re raised to be good consumers, good worker bees; we’re raised to be subservient to power, and this is not our natural station. To me, that’s radical. There’s nothing more natural than allowing yourself to feel and to express that. But we don’t live in a world where we’re afforded that privilege”.

I think that Silences is one of the best albums from 2019. It is a terrific record that brought Adia Victoria’s music to new audiences. I think A Southern Gothic will help elevate and broaden her fanbase and reach. This is what AllMusic said when they reviewed Silences:

“In following up 2016's excellent Beyond the Bloodhounds, Adia Victoria both deepens her arresting Southern poeticism and takes a significant sonic leap beyond her indie blues origins. On Silences, the singer/songwriter's sophomore set, the melting pot of swampy blues, folk, and garage punk that marked her debut has given way to a more exploratory and layered approach. Recording in Upstate New York with co-producer Aaron Dessner (the National), Victoria frames her 12 varied missives against a backdrop of subtle electronic noise, austere string and brass orchestrations, and tensely cinematic indie rock. While the blues are not absent from this set, they are transmuted to something more ephemeral and adapted to whatever climate or situation suits the artist's needs. A native of South Carolina who did stints in New York, Atlanta, and Europe before calling Nashville home, Victoria's prickly relationship with the South remains a throughline in her music, and she pulls no punches grappling with its deep-rooted influence. Whether slaying spiritual deities on the dramatic "Clean" or coming to terms with demons on the Fiona Apple-sque "Devil Is a Lie," she plays on her own mercurial nature, delivering a devastating emotional blow followed by a playful wink. Of Silences' more pop-driven arrangements, "The City" and "Get Lonely" reveal her aptitude for silvery synth-led fare, while the more organic swagger of songs like "Pacolet Road" and "Dope Queen Blues" build on her previously established strengths. Combative, defiant, and teeming with Victoria's distinctive mix of streetwise poeticism and literary depth, Silences is a strong and inventive follow-up”.

Knowing about Silences and its recording process, I was interested to learn how A Southern Gothic differed. With the pandemic causing issues for all artists, American Highways discovered more about the creation of a much-anticipated album:

“Americana Highways: I would imagine with the pandemic, it’s a much longer process than you’re used to.

Adia Victoria: It’s funny – actually, in a way, it wasn’t. I guess the process of actually recording the songs was longer, but the writing period was just as long as my previous record. But what is time? Time’s a flat circle!

AH: Exactly! Now a lot of it was written and recorded pre-pandemic in France, correct?

AV: Yes. A few of the tracks were written while I was in Paris on a writing sojourn. I was there with one of my collaborators, Marcello Giuliani, and Stone Jack Jones – he’s a Southern folk artist. I’d say we did about four songs the month I was there. I was there from end of January 2020 to end of February 2020, so I got home just before everything shut down. So Paris is definitely a big part of this record. Which is great, because I love Paris.

AH: One thing I noticed is the title, A Southern Gothic, with the article “A” in front of it. It seems to me that, by saying it’s “A” Southern gothic, it’s specifying a part of the South that really hasn’t been talked about very much – a different perspective.

AV: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think one of the things that pushed me to name it that – I had recently gone into one of my favorite antique book stores here in Nashville, a place called Rhino Booksellers. I was looking at their Southern literature section. There was the usual names there – Eudora Welty, Faulkner, O’Connor – the people you’d usually expect to find in that section, and I realized that there were no Black Southern authors there. Then I went over, and I found Black Southern writers in the African-American section, because they’ve kind of been, in a way, just divided off and segregated away from what we think of when we talk about the South. And then I got to thinking about my own experience growing up in South Carolina and understanding that what I was necessarily feeling and perceiving in the world was not being reflected back to me. What was being reflected back to me – by my church, by society at large, by school, by teachers – was that I was not included in the South. I was this aberration. Naming it A Southern Gothic is kind of reclaiming what we think of when we think of “Southern,” and I think about my own experiences, and my ancestors’ experiences in South Carolina, and what could be more goth than the sh!t that they had to put up with.

AH: Did recording it in Paris, writing some and recording some there, allow you to have a wider view of things and consider stories in addition to your own?

AV: Yeah. yeah. Paris, to me, has always been my sweet spot of creativity. It’s a place I’ve been traveling to, often alone, with the express purpose of writing. I think there’s something about 1) of course, the distance – you’ve got a whole ocean between you and home and 2) even though I’m passively fluent in French, I still have to consider my words, I have to consider my thoughts. I have to listen closer and differently than I do when I’m back home, when you take communicating for granted, and you’re kind of on auto-pilot. In Paris, I find I’m a much more present, tuned-in being than I am here. And, of course, Paris is famous for walking and just pondering and being with oneself. It’s kind of like the perfect storm – all the ingredients for me, personally, to create. But when I do go to Paris, I do carry over with me Southern writers, Southern scholarship, Southern literary criticism, because I am over there with the distinct reason of looking back home, and seeing it differently, being so far removed.

AH: Listening to the album, for almost the entire time, there’s this kind of underlying sense of tension, like a lot of Southern gothic novels. Did that level of intensity take a lot of energy to tell stories that way?

AV: Yeah, it does. This was the first time that I felt I was writing for my life, and I was living through the story that I was trying to tell. In A Southern Gothic, you’re hearing about the story of a young girl – right off the bat, you learn that her father’s a preacher, and that she is not at one with her community. She does not feel she belongs – she feels isolated and judged. And I was using this young girl to tell my own story through. So it wasn’t me literally, but it was feelings I’d had, it was friends that I’d known. And then the other songs on the record – it’s people singing ABOUT her and observing her behavior. So it kind of becomes a question of who’s the reliable narrator? There’s this tension that I wanted that record to have of, there are no epiphanies. She starts the record lost from South CArolina, and then she ends the record in New York City, and she’s, “BAM – I’m going home.” So there is no resolution. She never arrives anywhere, so we’re never sure what we should trust. Is it this woman who’s telling us what happened to her? Or is it the people around her saying, “This is who she is?” So I think that creates a tension, certainly.

AH: It seems like, over the past couple of years, there’s been a community of artists outside of the mainstream country genre that are really supportive of other artists, and some of them are on your album – Jason Isbell and Margo Price. It seems like certain folks really want to work with each other, and that enhances everybody’s music. Is that what you find?

AV: Maybe, sure. I just call up my girls and say, “Hey, y’all wanna make some art?” I think that’s a big part of the community that I’m blessed to be a part of here in Nashville. There’s so much talent here and so many kindred spirits and weirdos and freaks. It took me until a pandemic to actually really take advantage of the connections and the stories that are here and the talent that is here. For a lot of people, a lot of performers here in Nashville, we saw the uncertainties that swallowed up so much of the business. The business side of things was in absolute disarray last year. Touring was canceled, promotional cycles were canceled, called off, Everything shut down, so the business can’t keep making money. But we can keep creating, and that’s especially powerful for me. We’re taught so much, “Think about our careers! Think about money and the business and what makes sense as far as advancing.” And all of that is 1) make-believe, 2) based on nothing and 3) liable to disappear at the first sign of weakness. And that’s what happened – the business cratered. But what we were left with was why we got into music, why we picked up a guitar in the first place, or moved to Nashville. It was songs, it was writing, it was meeting up with friends and making art, and that’s internal. That doesn’t go away.

AH: Now that things are lifting a little bit, we hope, from an outsider’s perspective, it seems like artists, performers, musicians have a renewed sense of, maybe not purpose, but joy in what they’re doing. Is that something that you’ve felt or that you’ve seen?

AV: That’s a good question. I was at Newport [Folk Festival] last month. I wasn’t there to perform, I was there to do my podcast, “Call & Response” – we were doing a little special, “Live at Newport.” It was crazy, because that was the first national festival to come back, and no one really knew what to expect. A lot of performers didn’t have their full bands with them, they were doing stripped-down things. There wasn’t as much hustling going on. It was, “What am I even walking into?” It was the first time that I had even been around live music since the pandemic – a year and a half, right? And when I tell you that it felt like the most sacred event that I’ve been a part of as far as my work is concerned…there was this reverence for other people’s bodies, other people’s presence. Before, you’d take it for granted. I was at Newport in 2019, and you’re so busy (snapping fingers) trying to “catch the carrot” and hustle and make headlines and have a big moment – it’s so ego-driven. But there was this sense of grace that flowed from the top down. Jay Sweet, the [executive producer] of Newport, was very intentional about making sure that people felt space to feel and that people did not feel that they were “supposed” to feel a certain way, or put pressure on the performers – “We gotta make sure we come back strong.” No, this is new territory for ALL of us. I just felt so protected and held up in that moment, getting to perform with Allison Russell and the super-jam that she did with all the women, Chaka Khan – Once and Future Sounds – that was holy. It felt sacred. It felt like community, the way that community SHOULD feel. My prayer is that we are able to maintain that sense of grace moving forward, for ourselves and for each other and for the audience. Let’s be present for each other, let’s take care of one another, because, as we’ve learned over the past year, we’re all we have. If you ain’t got your people, you ain’t get nothin’.

AH: All through the album, you’re listing and discussing a lot of problems with the South. But at the very end, “South for the Winter” is almost a “no place like home” moment, realizing at the end, “Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass, but that’s where I want to be.” Was that what you intended?

AV: That song’s probably one of the most autobiographical songs on the record. I wrote that by going back and reading journals that I kept while living in New York City, 2005-2008. It was the first place I’d lived outside of my mom’s house in South Carolina, then moved to Brooklyn. And I just thought about a moment when I was with my underage friends – we were 19, and we were stumbling around 5th Avenue, just wasted, and trying to get downtown to party, and “Why? What am I doing here?” That was the place that I’d moved to to become a ghost. And then I realized that I kind of got abstracted into this mass culture up there – it’s very different than the mountains of South Carolina. And just wanting to get back home, to feeling something concrete, instead of chasing these big velvet lies that the world brainwashes you into thinking you want. That was another one that I wrote in Paris at Stone Jack Jones’ house, and I was, “Man, I wanna go home. Already. What is this feeling?” I feel like, with Southerners, that’s never really resolved. It’s such a conflicted territory, a conflicted land to grow up in and have ancestors there. It’s tearing you apart, but to leave it would break your heart”.

Go and follow Adia Victoria is you have not heard her music before. A Southern Gothic is a brilliant album that cements her reputation as an artist to watch closely. I think that we will see many more fantastic albums from her. A Southern Gothic, after one listen, is almost…