Unguided Courage, Total Destruction And Scandalous Relationships

"I made some massive life changes, personal changes,” expat New Zealand singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore begins. Wigmore now lives in Los Angeles, where she wrote and recorded her third album, Blood To Bone. “I did a 180 on what I’d been doing, and it was weird. It was this kind of unguided courage, strong desire and will to completely do a backflip on the life that I was living.”

The wider world had first got to hear of Wigmore in 2004 when, aged 16 and totally independently, she beat out some 11,000 songwriters from around the world to win the US-based International Songwriting Competition. She cut her debut album, 2009’s Holy Smoke, in Hollywood with Ryan Adams’ then band The Cardinals, and her second, 2011’s Gravel & Wine, with Marvellous 3 singer/guitarist Butch Walker and his band The Black Widows, in Santa Monica, both debuting at #1 in New Zealand and platinum sellers. 

"By way of total destruction, I met someone else and it was all absolutely fantastical and scandalous."

“I was here actually, in Sydney, for six years,” she continues, “and I’d always had this driving desire to move to Los Angeles, but I didn’t really have a catalyst as such to just go, ‘Right, now’s the time.’ Life was really good here — I was in a good relationship, I was engaged, it was all kind of going along this nice path, but I was really bored. 

“I guess I was feigning happiness, so by way of total destruction, I met someone else and it was all absolutely fantastical and scandalous, stopping the relationship and going with this man I’d met on this punk tour I was on in the States. We fell in love instantly and now I’m married to him, and for the first time in many years I felt like I was really living.”

With no real guarantee that “the man” would actually stick around, and supported by royalties from a few syncs her publisher had got for her songs on various TV shows, Wigmore settled into LA, wrote furiously and found a studio.

“It was really cool making this record because I was across everything, right from the seed of having a thought, a reflective moment on my life, to wanting to write about it, to writing it down, to recording it, and then choosing all the instrumentation, playing a lot more on the record and producing it as well with a friend of mine. So it’s a very Gin-heavy album. I’ve really seen the whole width of what it is to make an album, which is really satisfying.

“The new album is very present, it’s what’s happening now, it’s about the changes that I’ve had to make, it’s about the people that I’ve had to meet and wanted to meet, the new life that I’m in really. I feel like I’m a lot more open and want to be a lot more vulnerable in life, because I really want to live to the fullest I can right now. I feel very alive and I want to draw on that.”