Adia Victoria Honors Her Roots on Powerful New LP A Southern Gothic

Photo Credit: Huy Nguyen

For Adia Victoria, creating A Southern Gothic was a demanding process physically, emotionally and spiritually. “I think that this was a record that walked with me through one of the most difficult periods of my life,” Victoria expresses to Audiofemme in a Zoom interview from the porch of her Nashville home. “It was a very physical process of writing this record.” 

Though the exquisite new album captures Victoria’s deep Southern roots, she had to travel across the globe in order to tap into them. In January 2020 – just before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic – the South Carolina native jetted to Paris where she met with creative partners Jack Jones and Marcello Giuliani, equipped with another important travel companion: books. As a frequent traveler to the City of Light, Victoria often brings literature with her, this time immersing herself in the words of Southern writers, along with Alan Lomax’s famous recordings of field workers, absorbing the sounds of a pick ax hitting the ground to the breaths between members of a chain gang.

“Words hit different over there for me, and my relationship with speech and rhythm and words. I’m hearing spoken words differently there. You could walk for miles in the city and never run out of things to ponder. For me, that’s the perfect recipe to create art. Art just pours out of me there. I go to Paris in order to see more clearly. I think the distance gives you a little bit more of a boundary. It’s not so raw to write about over there. I get to tap into a different part of myself,” she observes.

“When I was writing the beginning portion of this record, I was far away from the South, but trying to root myself there,” she continues. “I needed to feel connected somehow to the dirt and the landscape of the South where so much of myself and stories I tell are created through that interaction of the land and the person. A lot of what guided me in the initial stages was wanting to pay reverence to the Black folk that came before me who created the blues while bent over crops and cotton.” 

After arriving back in Nashville from her trip abroad, Victoria got to work with creative partner and instrumentalist, Mason Hickman. While crafting the album, Victoria was working as an Amazon warehouse employee, lyrics naturally coming to her as she walked the aisles fulfilling orders. The singer recalls a particularly grueling shift, feeling depleted by the eighth hour and experiencing intense anxiety with the pandemic raging and many unanswered questions lingering. “It was in the thick of hell and I was walking and I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ I felt so lost,’” she remembers.

But this painful moment turned into a source of refuge as a song began to form in her mind that manifested into “Carolina Bound,” pouring out the sense of desperation she felt for her home state of South Carolina. “I long for my mother brother and sister too/To see and smell the ocean turn my pain into blues,” she sings over a melody that strikingly blends the bluegrass nature of the banjo with the pain of the blues. “I mean to leave and not be found/Like a river run underground/I am Carolina bound.”

“I felt this homesickness, this primal need to go back home,” Victoria conveys of the song’s origins. “It literally came out of my body writing, walking, and working. The song definitely helped me transcend the dread of the present, and I feel like that’s something that the blues has always been for Black people. It’s been a transcendent art form for us, like a cultural heirloom that we’ve passed down,” she says. “There’s been so much drudgery done to our bodies that sometimes the blues of the mind, the poetics of the blues, have been our best means of escape and transcendence from the bullshit.” 

The singer-songwriter and poet brilliantly captures her roots and reverence for the history of her ancestors through her voice. Intentional about not wanting to make a record that was “strictly autobiographical,” Victoria takes into account the harmful traditions of the South from multiple angles across A Southern Gothic, asking as many rhetorical questions as she offers observations, stepping outside of her own perspective to see from the vantage point of many other compelling characters.

We meet a “Mean-Hearted Woman” who is coldly forced out of her home on Christmas morning by a husband who’s found another lover. Jason Isbell, Margo Price, and Kyshona lend supporting vocals on the standout “You Was Born to Die,” which finds Victoria flexing the dynamics of her voice, layered over a melody that’s as much a character in the story as the lyrics themselves. The sobering “The Whole World Knows” follows a struggling drug addict who feels like an outsider in her church-going community, while a young woman mourns the death of her sister in “My Oh My.” Victoria proves she has a fierce tongue and spirit to match on “Deep Water Blues,” undeterred in addressing white supremacy head on, proclaiming, “Now it’s been too many times I been put in a place/To have to wipe up a mess a white man made/Like my grandmama did and her mama did too/So I’ll be awful glad to get me clean of you/And let the water do what water do.”

“I wanted to almost have the record be a meditation on the way that perception is seen in the South. Who’s the narrator of one’s life? Is it you, or is it the way people perceive you? What does it cost a person who’s not able to live up to what it takes to belong in a group? What does belonging even mean? What are the ways that we’re asked to sacrifice ourselves in the name of Christianity and respectability and good manners?” she reflects. “I wanted some of the songs to be looking at this girl who can’t belong from an onlookers’ perspective and then some to let her speak and let us hear her prayers and her meditations. I don’t know which perception is accurate.”

Stepping outside of her own frame of mind didn’t come without its challenges. The singer cites “Far From Dixie” as the song she felt most vulnerable writing, a process that required time and patience. “I was in a troubled way and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say,” she admits. “I’ve learned never to write down what you don’t mean. Even if it’s not about you, if it’s not true to you coming out of your hands, I’d rather drive people crazy for a year than commit to something that I knew was not the heart of what I needed to say.” 

Always one to honor her word, Victoria reclaims the narrative of the phrase “Southern Gothic,” often defined in literature by flawed characters, darkness and a feeling of alienation. With this powerful body of work, Victoria owns her space as a prolific Southern storyteller like the ones who came before her. “Typically when people think of Southern Gothic, they’re thinking of a particular aesthetic of the South that is centered in whiteness and centered in white dread and white anxiety and white fear of ‘the other.’ But I wanted to reclaim that title to be used as a marker of a Southern Black girl’s experiences growing up doubly othered and skewered so far outside the dominant culture narrative that centered itself only by excluding you. I wanted to center the mythologies of a Black Southern girl. I wanted to center her experiences and place them shoulder to shoulder with other Southern writers who claim to speak for the South,” she explains. “It was my way of putting my work under that umbrella of Southern narrative and Southern storytelling. It’s my way of authorizing the experiences of girls that look like me, who grew up where I did.” 

Much like the respite the album-making process provided her, Victoria hopes that A Southern Gothic compels others to look inward. “A Southern Gothic, it’s a story. It’s a record that’s very much rooted in my body, rooted in the South, rooted in the dirt. It’s a record that kept me rooted when I wanted to float off into a cloud of anxiety last year. It’s kept me rooted to a true part of myself that exists audaciously independent of all the madness and the chaos. It showed me that there’s a part of me where art comes from that’s mine and it exists purely for itself and it can save your life, that part of you,” she professes of the album’s personal impact. “I would hope that it challenges [listeners] to engage with the lessons that the dominant narrative has imparted upon us to really question the particularities of the way that you walk through the world, the way the world walks through you, and consider the weight that is taken on by society’s eye upon you. How does that alter you? I would challenge them to listen more closely to their inner lives.” 

A Southern Gothic arrives on September 17. Victoria recently launched season two of her podcast, Call & Response. She’ll open for Jason Isbell at the Ryman Auditorium on October 24 and appears on his upcoming covers album, Georgia Blue, set for release on October 15. 

Follow Adia Victoria on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for ongoing updates.

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: Those Darlins

Those Darlins

“I am a woman from the South. If that’s what country is then I guess we are!” For Jessi Zazu of Nashville rock ‘n’ roll band Those Darlins, self-acceptance comes from art, be it found through her drawings or genre-defying hits created collectively with band members Nikki Kvarnes and Linwood Regensburg. Zazu speaks (and sings) with a rawness that’s honest and insightful – while maintaining a rough boldness that can catch you off guard. Prior to a show with Adia Victoria at Brooklyn’s Rough Trade Jessi took a moment to catch up with AudioFemme, and we were so impressed we decided to make her our Artist of the Month, then paired cowboy boots with Armani and shook our asses.

AF: How’s the tour going?

JZ: It’s going great. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Adia Victoria] is a good friend of mine, and the people in her band as well, so it’s fun. I’m just a huge fan of her music, and I’ve been watching her since she did solo night at writer’s night. It’s been really cool to watch her grow and take over.

AF: How’d you guys get hooked up with her?

JZ: She was at one of our shows when we were opening for Dan Auerbach. She saw us at Bowery Ballroom I think, and she just really liked us, and a couple years later she moved down here [Nashville]. My friends have a venue and I put on a few shows to help promote it, and she came up to me and said ‘I like your dress’ or something, and I remember thinking ‘Oh gosh, I don’t know who this girl is, but I like her!’ We became friends pretty quickly.

AF: What a dream come true for her. So how do you guys travel on tour: van, bus, or fly?

JZ: We have a van, a 12-passenger van. We drive around, we crash people’s houses.

AF: Who drives?

JZ: We take turns, but I would say Linwood drives the most.

AF: Any wild stories from the most recent run?

JZ: There was this one night where this guy was being kind of a douche bag. Everyone was pretty pissed at him…and I’m pretty sure that he was about to get it.

AF: Was he a fan?

JZ: I don’t know! I don’t really get it! He stood in front of me the whole set and seemingly enjoyed it, but he kept saying really rude things, it was kind of, I don’t know… I think part of him really liked it because it was good, haha! But I think the other part of him was something that deep down inside of him couldn’t accept that there were girls on stage. It was just very strange. And he was particularly kind of like trying to provoke me and stuff. He ended up getting kicked out of there though. He was also really wasted.

AF: Does that happen often, sexism from people in the crowd or music industry?

You know, not all the time, but it happens occasionally. Most people aren’t that aggressive, subtle stuff is more common.

AF: What recommendations do you have at the moment from the Nashville music scene?

JZ: Adia [Victoria] is my favorite new artist from Nashville at the moment. It’s been interesting over the past five years, because they say there’s like 85 people a day moving to Nashville. It was kind of weird whenever people started saying ‘Oh yeah, I moved here from LA, New York, and we’re like ‘Oh wait, what?’ It used to be the opposite. People from Nashville moved to LA and New York. But there’s just been more and more bands.

AF: Is the country sound – one a lot of people associate with Nashville – one you embrace?

JZ: When we started our band the first album was country, but it wasn’t like….Nashville country. It was something totally different. I think we found pretty quickly that we didn’t really fit within that world because it’s kind of traditionalist world, and what we were doing we felt was a little bit more punk, it terms of playing country, but not being reverend to what country is supposed to be. Just doing our own thing. We eventually started moving out of that towards garage rock. But ever since then we’ve always been categorized as country. I mean, I’m from Tennessee. I’ve got a country accent, and when I sing it’s pretty obvious. So no matter what genre I’m singing I’m still going to have a country accent. So I don’t really think of us as country music, but I do think of us as a band from the South. I don’t feel like I’m one kind of artist or another; I just feel like I make music, and that music is a reflection of who I am.  I am a woman from the South. If that’s what country is then I guess we are!

AF: I’m curious about your art, will you tell me about that? I know you’ve had some art shows. 

JZ: Well both my parents are visual artists. I grew up doing visual art before I even started playing music. It’s really kind of like my foundation. Nikki’s the same way. So I’ve always done art alongside music A couple years ago when I was working on our last album Blur the Line, and in the same way that the album was much more about self examination than our first album, it was a little more personal and vulnerable. And I was doing a lot of self portraits around that time. The show was called Spit and it was mostly self portraits, but there was a few portraits of others sprinkled in there too, my friends and family. I just sort of got to this point where I was drawing myself a lot because it helped me bring up a lot of stuff about myself that I was wanting to tackle. I called them “demons” at the time. Things that I didn’t like necessarily or things that I had done. Things that had been done to me. And I just had been going through a weird time with my body, I was sick for a while and I got really skinny. I would draw ugly pictures of myself and I would draw more masculine features. Just like all these ideas I had about myself in my head to get it out there. I’m working on another show now, but it’s going to be a while before I get it done.

AF: That’s such a beautiful description of art as therapy. 

JZ: Well, I’ve always used art as therapy. Before I ever started playing music. And I always kept sketchbooks growing up. Both my parent were artists as I’ve said, but my mom was very…we’re both kind of nuts, honestly. And she’s like, ‘If you don’t do art, you’ll be crazy.’ And that’s how I am – I have all this stuff, and if I don’t get it out in some way, if I’m not constantly creating I just don’t function. I need to constantly process everything to function.

AF: How does it feel to get your emotions out through your art as opposed to your song writing? 

JZ: Art is a very singular process. I’m by myself and it’s one on one. And that [Spit] was my first show ever so that was really intense because for so long I had been doing this stuff in private and I didn’t know what it would feel like to put it out there to the world. So that was intense. For the most part it just feels like a much more private – and the thing is when you draw a drawing it’s just drawn. You just do it and it’s done. With music, in the beginning for me it is still one on one with myself writing, but then I take it to my band members and it changes, and for me I’ve got to be a little bit more open about it. It’s a collaborative experience. But I think both mediums are very scary – if you’re writing or drawing. To create pieces based on your own inner dialogue.

AF: What are you working on at the moment?

JZ: As a band we’ve been demoing new songs, and we’re kind of taking a little break from it since we’ve got these shows, which I’m feeling good about, because my brain needs a break! But yeah, we’re at the stage of: ‘Here’s a song, what do you want to do with it?’ It’s a weird phase because the songs aren’t quite there. It can be frustrating sometimes; it can be exciting sometimes. As far as art work I’ve been doing a lot of commissioned work for other people. And Adia and I just released a book, it’s like a double book where one side’s my book and one side’s her book. It’s poetry, both of our poetry, and then I illustrated. We’re going to be selling them at our shows. Her book’s called Lonely Language and my book’s called Purge.  And they’re both Volume Iwe’re going to do a second volume.

AF: So much art going on!

JZ: I try to keep myself busy all the time. No breaks! But I’ve got to slow down sometimes.

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SAVANNAH STOPOVER: The Femme’s List of Who to See

Savannah Stopover
A precursor to SXSW, Savannah Stopover takes place March 5-7 in downtown Savannah, a haunting and iconic boutique neighborhood. As far as music getaway’s go, we couldn’t be more stoked to attend the 5th incarnation of Savannah Stopover. Check back for full festival coverage as it unfolds, and make sure to follow AudioFemme on Instagram and Twitter as we abandon the brutal Brooklyn weather for warmer scenery with one fantastic soundtrack. We’re still anxiously plotting our schedules to see how we’re going to catch as many acts, including some featured local bands, as possible, but here are five that we’re sure to see.
Grab a pass here before they’re all gone!

Ryley Walker
Thursday, March 5 10:00pm 
The Chicago-based folk artist Ryley Walker has been causing the music scene to bat their eyelashes. We can’t wait to tap our feet to these tunes in agreement. His sophomore release Primrose Green, the follow-up to the well-received full-length debut comes out next month. Rambling and soulful, inspired both by jazz and noise music, the 25-year-old creates a collage of the Chicago music network to come up with a sound that’s wholly his own.

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Fort Lean
Friday, March 6 11:00pm

We’re going to want a front and center spot for Brooklyn’s Fort Lean. The vastness of their sound can surprise you they’re from Brooklyn, as if the city is too crowded to produce such chill expressions. Play into type, grab a craft beer, and see if you can fight through the seduction to stick around for the late-night shows rather than back to your motel room with a lover after listening to these dreamers.

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Amythyst Kiah and Her Chest of Glass
Saturday, March 7 5:00pm
Friday, March 6 7:00pm (solo show)

Tennessee singer-songwriter and roots artist Amythyst Kiah is joined with friends Her Chest of Glass for the ultimate Saturday afternoon cocktail hour time slot. “Gothic Southern Folk” is about the most exciting mix mash of adjectives I’ve ever seen to describe music, in researching artists Mythyst has to be one we’re most thrilled for (not to mention she’s got killer style).

Parlour Tricks
Saturday, March 7 7:00pm

Parlour Tricks have made the AudioFemme front page before, and this editor thanks her lucky stars (as Parlour Tricks might say) to see how the New York City pop rockers translate their buzzed-about stage presence to serene Savannah.

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Diarrhea Planet

Saturday, March 7 12:00am
After you’ve shaken off any visuals invoked by their name, Nashville’s Diarrhea Planet are downright delightful. The punk rockers promise to deliver the climax of the festival with their Saturday late-night time slot. With bold vocals, wild lyrics, and grimy guitars, we’re sure to get sweaty for this one.

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Full 2015 Savannah Stopover Lineup:
Generationals, Southern Culture On The Skids, San Fermin, ASTR, Matthew E. White, Computer Magic, Diarrhea Planet, Reptar, All Them Witches, French Horn Rebellion, Donald Cumming (of The Virgins), Dumpstaphunk, Parlour Tricks, Hiss Golden Messenger, Heavenly Beat, Gap Dream, Rocco DeLuca, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, ISHI, Bombadil, Rose Quartz, Family and Friends, Capsula, Tall Tall Trees, Born Cages, Beach Day, Fat Tony, Horse Thief, Fly Golden Eagle, Mothxr, Young Buffalo, Jack + Eliza, SALES, Mainland, Christopher Paul Stelling, Clear Plastic Masks, Ryley Walker, Buxton, Fort Lean, Corners, PitchBlak Brass Band, Cobalt Cranes, Alanna Royale, Baby Bee, Lilly Hiatt, this mountain, Dreamers, Reputante, Caleb Caudle, Axxa/Abraxas, Suburban Living, Avers, Amythyst Kiah + Her Chest of Glass, Adia Victoria, Margo and the Pricetags, The Prettiots, Guthrie Brown & The Family Tree, ELEL, Grounders, BLKKATHY, Blank Range, White Violet, What Moon Things, Fire Mountain, Emilyn Brodsky, Needle Points, Lace Curtains, Music Band, Las Rosas, Semicircle, Ruby the RabbitFoot, Little Racer, Bedroom, Grand Vapids, Bond St. District, 100 Watt Horse, Cusses, Triathalon, Velvet Caravan, Damon & The Shitkickers, Penicillin Baby, Wet Socks, Crazy Bag Lady, Sunglow, Coeds, Wave Slaves, Beneath Trees, Paving Gravy, Nightingale News, Saint Corsair, A.M. Rodriguez, Boy Harsher, Blackrune, Black Water Choir, Heavy Boots

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TRACK OF THE WEEK: Adia Victoria “Stuck In The South”

Adia Victoria

Adia Victoria

“Stuck In The South,” the debut single from the little-advertised shadow figure Adia Victoria (along with her band: Mason Hickman, Tiffany Minton and Ruby Rogers), is a curious matrix, at once single-mindedly powerful and also complex, made up of conflicting impulses.

Adia Victoria’s is not a voice that sidles in politely. Rather, it slams open the door with one callused fist, stalks into the joint, elbows you off your barstool, and orders a whiskey neat. The 28-year old South Carolina native has clearly practiced making herself heard, both in the crowded Nashville bar and honky-tonk circuit where she made her bones as a performer, and also as a means of escape from the American Gothic nightmare she describes in “Stuck In The South.”

“Yeah, I been thinkin’ about makin’ tracks,” Victoria sneers in the first verse of the song, “but the only road I know, it’s going to lead me back.” She sings with an animalistic glare, conjuring not only a clear picture of her stagnant,  claustrophobic, sinister environment but also of herself as a character within it. Every twang on her guitar cuts like barbed wire, and it’s this anger, haunting and predatory, that makes the single so goddamned good. But in “Stuck In The South,” Victoria’s prowess as a storyteller is impressive too, and the track evokes the drawl and swagger of Southern rock and roll as colorfully as it does the “Southern hell” she’s trying to get away from. She seems to turn her fear of becoming a product of the South on its head, becoming unstuck not by running from her demons but by dominating them. The song immerses a listener in a three-dimensional environment, cinematically evocative and all the richer for its details and complexities.

Produced by Roger Moutenot (known for his work with Yo La Tengo), “Stuck In The South” is Victoria’s first foray into relative Internet mainstream. Her minimalist approach to releasing music–even now, after her single’s release resulted in a resounding critical chorus demanding more–makes a powerful song even punchier. Dig into “Stuck In The South” below, via Soundcloud.