Adia Victoria hails from Spartanburg, South Carolina, informally known as “The Upstate” just a few miles down Highway 9 from the trucks hurtling along Interstate 85 between Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia to the south. This geographical background heavily informs her music, which is often referred to as “gothic blues” and takes inspiration from Black blues artists like Robert Johnson, Skip James, John Lee Hooker, Junior Kimbrough, and RL Burnside.
For Live on KEXP, Troy Nelson maps her physical journey from South Carolina to New York to Atlanta as well as her musical journey from early loves The Strokes and The Black Keys to ending up working with founding member of another well-known “The” band, Aaron Dessner, on her latest full-length, 2019’s ‘Silences.' Telling Dessner she wanted the record to sound like, “Billie Holiday got lost in a Radiohead song,” the album is a dense and expansive expression of the blues in the hands of a creatively independent woman of color unafraid to explore.
Recorded 03/12/2019.
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