The Intense Musical Storytelling Of Adia Victoria: Review, Photos & Video From Philadelphia

Words, Images & Videos by: Jake Krolick

Adia Victoria :: 10.17.16 :: Johnny Brenda’s :: Philadelphia

View Jake’s gallery after his review.

We live in tumultuous times. The divide amongst class and race seem more prevalent now than ever. You hear pain, dissatisfaction and aggression regularly in all forms of music, but if you dig back into genres perhaps no more mournful was the blues.

Midway into her set, Adia Victoria stood front and center on the stage at Johnny Brenda’s. Covered in a shimmering gold beaded dress she exclaimed, “I was told I was nothing, I became something when I started playing the blues.” Victoria let her eyes roll back, cocked her neck and let her smoky falsetto voice howl out the sting of being told that as she grew up in the rural south.

Victoria’s upbringing and experiences literally called the blues in to her life. Once she left Spartanburg, South Carolina she moved to New York then to Atlanta and now settles in Nashville. She’s adapted her version of this dark Americana into something dancing the border between gothic blues and rock and roll. To say it is hauntingly stunning is a drastic understatement, because the gut-wrenching emotion, lyrics and guitar work behind her songs has transformative power.

My first taste of this 30-year-old outspoken musician was a little over a month ago at the Hopscotch Music Festival. There I caught only 10 minutes of her performance, but it sent a clear message not to miss her tour stop in Philly.

Before her set Adia Victoria emerged from the back of Johnny Brenda’s to taste the room and size up the crowd. Her set was an hour plus of intense musical storytelling featuring cuts off of her first album Beyond The Bloodhounds. The album title references a book by Harriet Jacobs, Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. Adia had said in an interview that after growing up in the south where she felt like everything in nature was set out to get her, all she wanted to do was get past these things that wanted to rip her apart. It’s an intense concept filled with ache, survival and resurgence and one that was not missed in the music at Johnny Brenda’s show. Victoria mixed her vocals and fiery guitar work with her band’s solid playing styles, a really competent mix of Alex Caress on keys, Tiffany Minton on drums, Jason Harris on bass and Mason Hickman on guitar.

Through the performance, it never once felt as if Adia Victoria was holding anything back and she surely wasn’t there as a woman to simply ogle over. By the third song of the evening the juice was turned up and the shredding rock and roll broke through in “Head Rot.” The song talks about a lover lost to another woman and the fury of the tune broke loose in a nasty bit of guitar that brought howls from the crowd. Through her songs she was painting us pictures of pain and fear and death and life. The lyrics dealt with personal hell, physical abuse, alcohol, cheating lovers some heavy topics that fit well with the genre. Yet through the furious subject matter one could find bits of light and beauty in her voice as she set aside the guitar.

The songstress thanked the crowd and told us it was wonderful to have out a nice sized group for a Monday night saying “The last time I was in Philly I played to six people and three were my friends.” The highlight of the set was a mind-blowingly great cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues” where Victoria twisted up the pace and emphasis on sections of the song to really make it her own. At times it felt like she was channeling Nina Simone, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and Nick Cave and other times she was just simply unique and powerful in her own right.

Adia Victoria is currently on tour through mid-November.

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