Select Music

Gin Wigmore

Gin Wigmore really gets it. She gets what it is to think you have it all, and lose what you loved the most. She gets what it feels like to be heartbroken, far from your family, in a self-imposed exile. The 21 year old singer-songwriter has taken her life’s ups and downs, held them up to the light, and crafted songs which speak to a universal experience of fear, hope, love and joy.

Gin, whose sound is something of a mash up of Neil Young, Blondie and Macy Gray, spent a reasonably carefree adolescence teaching herself the guitar and scribbling down notebooks full of lyrics. Growing up in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, she raided her big sister’s wardrobe and kitted herself out in the most rock star threads she could scrounge up. Gin lived, slept, and breathed music. She knew who she wanted to be, just not yet how she wanted to sound.

When Gin’s sister returned home from London, a copy of David Gray’s White Ladder in tow, the pieces started to come together. Gin describes the experience of hearing the record, ‘It was a revelation. I just suddenly saw that you could get your emotions and inner world across through your music and lyrics.’

Inspired, the then 14-year-old penned her first song, Angelfire. Before her 15th birthday, Gin had written an album’s worth of songs. She started playing small gigs, landing a weekly residency at a local Auckland pub. She loved the interplay with the crowd, though she remembers being so nervous that she felt sick before every show. When she got onstage it all melted away: ‘I loved it; no one else I knew was playing live gigs. You got to get out of the house on a Wednesday and go try and be a big kid.’ Gin borrowed enough money to pay for only one hour at a local recording studio, so she just whacked 12 songs down, mistakes included. Everyone present was stunned by the uniqueness of her voice and the maturity of her songwriting.

Soon after this first recording session in 2002, the Wigmore family was dealt a tragic blow: Gin’s father, Peter, died of cancer. Gin stopped writing and playing altogether. Unable to deal with her grief at home, Gin found a way to escape by joining an exchange program to Argentina. She worked teaching 3-5 year-olds at a bilingual kindergarten. Gin loved the wealth of culture and history in Argentina, ‘and the sexy boys!’ she laughs.

In the evenings Gin took tango lessons, which had a fairytale quality: taught by a courtly 75-year old gentleman, on a city street, by lamplight. Living and working in Argentina worked its magic on Gin, and her desire to communicate through her music returned. By the time she moved back home to Auckland, she was writing songs again. ‘I grew up a lot in Argentina – I got an outside perspective for the first time. I had also had time to grieve, so I could finally tell my stories again.’

Back in New Zealand, Gin wrote a tribute song to her father called Hallelujah. Her sister, on a whim, entered Gin’s song in the US-based International Songwriting Competition. She won both the Teen and Grand Prizes. Gin was stunned, ‘I wanted to sum up what Dad meant in my life, to say all the things I’d never been able to say to him. I never thought anyone outside my family would hear it.’ When she heard she had won, she didn’t really know what to make of it all. ‘I’d never won anything, from a bloody lottery ticket to a scratchy. I just took it like the post – like anything else.’ The prestigious award, judged by music industry professionals and artists Sean Combs, Bo Diddley, and Branford Marsalis, had chosen Hallelujah over 11,000 other entries from around the world, making Gin the youngest and only unsigned Grand Prize winner in the history of the competition.

As part of the ISC prize, Gin was awarded a trip to the US, and a semester of study at one of the world’s top music institutions, Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts. Once again the distinctiveness of Gin’s voice and her captivating songwriting (with influences now ranging from Neil Young, David Gray and Jeff Buckley through to Edith Piaf and de la Soul) won her new friends in both the USA and UK.

In 2007 Gin relocated to Sydney, Australia where she lives near the beach with her puppy, Duke. When she’s not writing and playing, she can be found indulging in her favourite pastimes: lying on the couch with a gossip mag and a glass of red wine or partying with her mates. She is currently recording with Australian producer, Tony Buchen (Lior, Kid Confucius, The Church) and plans on releasing an EP in early 2008, followed by a tour around Australia. Gin is managed by Vicky Blood, and is the first artist signed to Island Records Australia.