Seldom does an artist come around whose lyricism is immediate and forgiving. Victoria Bigelow is a singer/songwriter whose honest, introspective and emotional music is right on time. I was listening to The Coffee House on SiriusXM a couple years ago and came across a voice of warm timbre. It was obvious that the voice had woven a tapestry of hurt into art. It was comforting and all-encompassing as parts of my malleable being were being spoken to, gently. A lover of nature, prose, the badass female musicians of the ‘90’s and the singer/songwriters of the ‘60’s, Bigelow has created a voice that is distinctly her own. We had a pleasure getting to know Bigelow.
When did your love for music start?
It started when I was twelve. I had gotten a shitty, nylon guitar from Walmart. Taylor Swift had just released her first album and I was feeling very inspired.
You lived in Marietta, Georgia and moved to Nashville at a pretty young age. What was it like navigating the music space as a teen and how has it evolved in your twenties?
It was a lot. Around thirteen, I made the trip from Marietta to Nashville twice a month. When I was fifteen, I moved to Nashville to pursue it more consistently. That was happening during a lot of familial changes, so music ended up taking the back seat once I moved there.
Nashville can feel a bit overwhelming. There is music everywhere which is beautiful but it can definitely feel very loud. I’m very introverted, so navigating that space could be a bit difficult but also very inspiring.
What is your relationship to your space now?
I just moved to the desert. I knew that I wanted to venture out west and with the pandemic Los Angeles didn’t feel safe right now. So, I’m in Los Angeles’ backyard: Phoenix. So, moving here stemmed from the need of wanting my own space.
I saw that you are performing at Hotel Cafe, August 3rd. Are you planning on performing in more Los Angeles venues?
That is the goal. I’m hoping to integrate into the scene. I’m very unfamiliar with Los Angeles. I’ve only been a couple times. I feel like a newb. I don’t even know if people still use that word.
How has Eliot impacted your creativity, energy & perspective in relation to songwriting and being a woman?
It’s kind of the grand gotcha of life. I had all the time in the world before I became a mom. I was doing whatever I wanted to do as one does when you’re twenty-one. I had him very unexpectedly. That was when I realized it was probably time to take myself a bit more seriously and do the things that I care about doing. It forced me to want it more and to be more diligent with time management.
Any moment that I have for myself is incredibly sacred. It’s forced me to grow up in a lot of ways because in many ways I was still very much a child. It forced me to let go of insecurity and self-doubt as I have absolutely no choice but to because I now have a small being to take care of.
As a woman, it has been extremely empowering. I struggled with body dysmorphia and eating stuff in high school. For some reason, having a child and my body going through what it went through, allowed it to achieve homeostasis. I was really happy and felt really good. My body after giving birth felt really good too. It reintroduced me to myself in a lot of ways which is a huge blessing.
That’s beautiful. I think that it is amazing that your boundaries, sense of self and true artistic desires were so much clearer after that experience. What a gift that is.
It’s a gift for sure and I’m so grateful. In the same breath, I’ve been editing my music video for “Love in Vain” for the first time. Learning Final Cut and how to do all those things has been incredibly time consuming and it is very difficult when I need to work and I can’t. Grappling with that can be hard.
You cover, “Chelsea Hotel #2” on your most recent ep, To Everyone I’ve Loved Before. Is Leonard Cohen an inspiration to you?
The last EP was kind of cobbled together in the sense that as I finished a song, I would release it. Those singles then comprised the EP. I had been working on a couple songs during the pandemic, but all of them felt myopic and self-indulgent for the time. I was unsure how I felt about it. I was listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen and decided to cover it. I was connecting with it more than anything I was writing. I love Leonard Cohen.
The cover art of your EP, To Everyone I’ve Loved Before is beautifully haunting. Did you paint it?
I wish. A girl two grades below me from high school, Erin Henry (@soil.mate) is an exceptional artist. She is one of my favorite artists ever. I saw it on her page and said, “Can I please?”
I was wondering if the head that you can’t really see, did that part speak to you at all?
Yea, it’s a part of why I love her art. It’s a lot of surrealist portraits. They often overlap or have multiple eyes or certain parts of the face are washed out. During that time, I didn’t want anyone to look at me. I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of what I was feeling.
“To Everyone I’ve Loved Before” is a beautiful song. Can you walk me through the process of writing the tune? Where were you when you wrote,
“Thanks for coming
I wanted you to miss me
I wanted you to hate me for
Just a little while
I feel nothing
But I wanted you to kiss me
I wanted you to
Remember the way that I smile
To everyone I loved before, I apologize
I never was too sure of you
Everyone I loved before
Was seldomly surprised
I never was so sure of me.”
I was sitting in my bed in this shitty apartment in East Nashville. I was ruminating on the way that we can feel when we are around an old lover: you don’t even care but you want them to care because you get off on it in some weird way. And then a grand apology follows it about how I’m an asshole and perpetuate these situations.
What is the story behind, “Low?” It really blew up, did things change for you after its release?
“Low” has definitely minorly changed my life. It was right after I had given birth. I was up late breast feeding one night and then put him down to sleep. I picked up my guitar and it was something I’d been messing with for a year. I didn’t think the chord progression was going anywhere but then the song just kind of happened.
I released it a year later on my own. I was living in Upstate New York on a farm and I wasn’t expecting anything to come of it. Then Bruno Ybarra at Apple Music found it somehow and put it on a bunch of playlists. Someone at SiriusXM heard it and put it on The Coffee House where it lived for four months. That was crazy. It was the first sum of money from music that fell in my lap. People were messaging me, sharing their own stories. I’m extremely grateful that people have connected so greatly to that song.
What are you working on now?
I just released “Playing G-d” and “Love in Vain.” I draw a lot of inspiration from Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and that era of music. But I’m also super heavy into 90’s women like Alanis, Liz Phair and Aimee Mann. This song is a very direct homage to Alanis and so is part of the music video.
When I got to Phoenix, I was re-introducing myself to my early influences to get re-inspired in a childlike way. Once money gets involved and you’re thinking about what people think about you it starts to ruin it.
Can you speak to the EP?
It’s definitely meant to be consumed as an entire project. I know we live in the digital age and asking anyone to do that is a reach but I wrote all of these songs way ahead of time and then I got to Phoenix and wrote two more. I wanted to get it all out before I started the recording process. It’s been a bit more thoughtful and intentional on my end. It’s also a bit more emotionally vulnerable. I touch on my childhood trauma and things that nobody likes to talk about, especially me. I have no idea how it is going to be received but I am happy for myself to have gotten those things out of my body.
Julia Cameron wrote a book titled, “The Artist’s Way,” where she makes it a point to express the importance of morning pages: writing three pages each morning about whatever is on your mind. Do you have any exercises, non-musical interests or hobbies that help you nurture and/or lean into your creativity?
I love to be outside. I love to read. I feel a thousand times happier and more at home inside of a bookstore than I do in a record store.
Right now, I’m in a huge Murakami phase. I love everything that he does. I’m also going back and reading some classics that I missed along the way like Anna Karenina and Animal Farm.
Right now, my favorite author is Murakami. I love everything that that man has touched.
Murakami is great. I recently read Norwegian Wood. What is your relationship with performing?
It’s such new terrain for me because I performed a lot when I was a kid. I did way too much of it and then I stopped for a really long time.
But I love performing live and will take any opportunity to do so. It’s the only way to get better.
Watch Bigelow perform live at Hotel Cafe August, 3rd.