Best of What's Next: Gin Wigmore

For a girl who grew up thinking she’d be a school teacher, Gin Wigmore has certainly changed career paths—although perhaps her standout songwriting talent (she won the U.S.-based International Songwriting Contest when she was just 16) should have been a hint that she’d end up in the music business. Though the New Zealand-born, Australian-bred Wigmore still swears she’ll end up in the classroom one day, she’s just released Holy Smoke, her international debut LP; her voice is raspy and raw yet disarmingly feminine as she croons her way through songs that span an impressive range, from smooth pop to gritty rock to a touch of reggae, all backed up by Ryan Adams’ The Cardinals. Educational aspirations aside, the album gives the distinct impression that music might just be her destiny. Paste caught up with the busy 23-year-old to talk about writing in Australia’s Blue Mountains, living out of a suitcase and her main source of songwriting inspiration (spoiler alert: it’s boys).

Paste: Tell me a little about what the response to the album has been so far.
Gin Wigmore: Well, I’m not sure in the States yet because it’s so fresh. It came out, yeah, a couple of weeks ago. But in New Zealand it’s been great, in Australia it’s been great. It’s gone four times platinum in New Zealand and sold lots of records. I’m really stoked. In Norway, Greece, Vienna, worldwide it’s been getting a lot of buzz. And now the next goal for me is America. So I hope this record will cement me in America a little more.

Paste: Tell me a little bit about the process of crafting this album. How long had you been working on the tracks that made it on the album?
Wigmore: Actually, not that long. The earliest song on the album is “Oh My,” and I wrote that when I was 18, so my oldest song is maybe four years old, and everything else has been written in the last six months, some in the last month before recording. I get sick of it really quickly and my attention span is pretty short, and so if I was recording an album of songs I wrote when I was 16, I would have no real love for it. But since they’re all really recent they feel like they apply to me now.

Paste: You have a very distinctive voice and sound to your music. How do you think that sound came to be?
Wigmore: I was always a black sheep and had this weird voice growing up—in school plays and things like that I had this weird voice. I’ve only really been comfortable with the way I sing in the last couple of years. I listen to a lot of music and it’s really eclectic, but I wouldn’t say I model myself after anyone.

Paste: This album is dedicated to your late father—he was the inspiration for a song that was a big turning point for your career, seeing as you won a songwriting competition with it. Where else would you say you draw your inspiration when you’re writing music?
Wigmore: Boys. Boys, pretty much. It’s always from personal experience. I’m not at the stage with my writing yet where I can just write about someone that I see walking down the street and see what they’re thinking. I can’t write like that yet. Everything has to happen to me. I guess the most inspiration comes from death or love or loss or something like that, so boys and family, I’d say.

Paste: Is there a particular location you like to go to when you write, or does it happen anywhere?
Wigmore: I really like the Blue Mountains in Australia. It’s kind of where I was meant to be. It’s little miners’ cottages and I like to go up there for a few weeks and lock myself in a cottage and just write. There are no distractions, and it’s hard to find places with no distractions.

Paste: What does the rest of 2010 look like for you?
Wigmore: Just touring, I have about five weeks of touring with Citizen Cope and then I’ll return to Australia and then New Zealand and then I think I’ll take a break.

Paste: If you looked into a crystal ball and saw your future in music, what would it look like?
Wigmore: I hope to make some more records. I hope I can find stuff to write about. Just to be able to live off my music. I hope to collaborate with other musicians. That’s the neat thing about it, you get to meet some unbelievable musicians.

Paste: That was actually my next question. Is there anyone you’re dying to collaborate with?
Wigmore: Dr. Dog, I would love to collaborate with Dr. Dog.

Paste: Looking back a few years, tell me about your earliest memories tied to music.
Wigmore: I listened to a lot of Art Garfunkel, John Denver, and my dad had all these soundtracks for musicals like Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables and so it was all these old records. And Rod Stewart. And so I had this eclectic mix of old stuff going on.

Paste: As you started to develop your own musical tastes and preferences, do you remember the first CD you bought with your own money?
Wigmore: I do—I bought the Oasis album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory and then I think I bought the Alanis Morissette [album] Jagged Little Pill next. It was so good and I remember replaying those songs again and again. Alanis Morissette was definitely an icon for me growing up. She was just so cool.

Paste: What would you do if you weren’t making music?
Wigmore: I’d be a primary school teacher. That’s been my dream. To be a musician was not my dream at all. It was totally just a hobby, just a way to stop being an angst-y teenager. But a primary school teacher—mark my words, I’m going to do it someday. Part of me doesn’t want to get too famous or anything like that so I can go back to teaching. I really, really want to do it.

Paste: Tell me about some of your favorite performance memories, or, on the flipside, maybe some that you learned the most from as far as being a performer.
Wigmore: I remember a bad one touring New Zealand and it was my hometown and there’s lots of support, but I remember this one show with David Gray. It was on my bucket list, to play with David Gray. And he came through Melbourne about six months ago and asked me to support and I was so stoked. And so I just over prepared—I put all these stickers on my guitar to show me which fret to go to, because I’m pretty average at guitar, but I put all these stickers to the point where I didn’t know what they meant. I was taking it so seriously, and then I fucked everything up. And I lost it, and I was so gutted after that show. And the next show I had wine and I took off my stickers and I was totally unprepared and it was brilliant. It went perfectly.