A Nashville-based singer/songwriter whose songs sketch shadowed narratives drawn from Deep South existence, Adia Victoria drew widespread notice for her gothic indie blues approach once Atlantic issued her first album, Beyond the Bloodhounds, in 2016. She paused touring commitments over the ensuing two years to deliver one EP performed entirely in French and another consisting of classic blues interpretations, then entered the studio with the National’s Aaron Dessner to shape her 2019 sophomore release, Silences; her third full-length, A Southern Gothic, arrived in 2021 under the guidance of producer T-Bone Burnett.
Raised as one of five siblings inside a devout Seventh Day Adventist household in South Carolina, Victoria remained in religious schooling until just before sixth grade, when her mother transferred her to public school and she began cultivating a reserved outlook. Throughout high school she composed poems and short fiction while reading extensively, moving from Flannery O’Connor to Angela Davis. After graduation she lived briefly in New York City before relocating to Georgia; there a friend presented her with a guitar on her twenty-first birthday, igniting a focused engagement with music and an affinity for early acoustic blues. Following travels across Europe she established herself in Nashville, where she started composing original material. Absorbing regional rural blues and vintage country sounds while weaving in her literary sensibilities, she became a steady performer on local stages and cultivated a loyal audience.
She first worked with producer Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Josh Rouse) on the 2014 single “Stuck in the South,” which earned favorable notices and secured an Atlantic contract the next year. Beyond the Bloodhounds appeared in May 2016, receiving strong critical response and prompting an intensive two-year touring schedule. Two EPs followed in 2017: How It Feels, sung wholly in French, and the concise blues-covers collection Baby Blues. At Dessner’s upstate New York facility she tracked her next album, Silences, issued in early 2019 on Canvasback Records. For A Southern Gothic she again partnered with T-Bone Burnett to assemble a sequence of songs examining Southern identity, with Jason Isbell and Margo Price contributing guest performances.
