Kiwi singer Gin’s palace of pals

The Kiwi singer tells Glenn McConnell why, at seven-and-a-half months pregnant, she’s getting on a 14-hour flight to perform in Tauranga.

Surely, you must remember Black Sheep. The year was 2011 and musician Gin Wigmore appeared on our television screens in black-and-white. She was a silhouette, of sorts, standing against an enlarged, peering projection of a seemingly devious man.

Wigmore, as she had all throughout her earlier albums Holy Smoke and Gravel and Wine, maintained this gritty, powerful and undeniably badass aesthetic.

The Kiwi musician, originally from Auckland, attracted an international following for her unique take on blues and pop rock. Despite that, her music has remained defiant.

But it’s not just her music which, if you haven’t heard it, packs the power of blues, with some optimism and the dance-ability from pop rock.

When I say this is music you can dance to, it’s not music that will be played late at night in a bar. It’s music you’d maybe blast from a bedroom stereo or – if you’re President Obama – add to your summertime playlist.

The former American president included her track Gravel and Wine in a playlist he released for summer.

Who knows if Obama knew that the Kiwi singer had, by that stage, moved to the US herself.

She now lives in a desert. It’s the sort of place where you’d think people wouldn’t live. The dirt is dry, the ground is almost white. In an entire year, it can rain on just six days. In summer, the temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius. This is the place Wigmore calls home.

It’s also the place Wigmore has started her new business. She’s a hotelier now, as well as a singer.

Sitting behind the desk of her hotel, called The Good House, Wigmore jokes that ever since she was a child she knew she wanted to have a ‘‘cool’’ job.

‘‘For lack of a better word, I know that may sound narcissistic,’’ she says. But she wasn’t into those ‘‘normal’’ career paths.

Her original plan was to be an actor, but her older sister, Lucy, is an actor. Copying your siblings isn’t exactly cool.

Along the way she’s also tried teaching and, for a while, she studied to be a veterinarian.

While she dips and dabbles with other codes, music seems to be one of the things Wigmore just can’t let go of.

‘‘It’s my first love, you know, and it’s like every first love, right? You’ll always have a soft spot for it and you’ll always be willing to go that extra mile, or take that 14-hour plane ride, pregnant. It’s always worth it,’’ she says.

That’s right, she’s pregnant again.

When Wigmore performs in January, alongside

Tami Neilson and Hollie Smith, she will be about seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second son.

The powerhouse trio is performing in Mt Maunganui, on January 7.

‘‘I’ll be well, well pregnant. It’s going to be, like, full-on baby belly going on,’’ she says.

‘‘And I’m having a boy, so, I’ll have two boys. And, I don’t know what I did in my last life. But now I get to be tired, all the time, with two boys.’’

With extreme tiredness imminent, it seems surprising Wigmore has scheduled herself to headline a mini summer festival in Tauranga. On top of the long flight, she has to organise her husband, American musician Jason Butler, and their almost 3-year-old son. Then she’ll need to find a plan for the hotel she runs.

Why not give it a miss?

‘‘It’s a trick, but it’s worth it,’’ she replies.

‘‘If you have strong feelings and opinions about things, it’s not about just saying it, and you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to action these

things and be accountable in what you believe in.’’

Her show in January isn’t just any old gig. It’s a show with three excellent Kiwi women. That doesn’t happen every day. In fact, at the other festivals around the same time – Rhythm & Vines, Homegrown, and Bay Dreams, among others – women make up a very small minority on the setlists.

This gig, like Wigmore’s music, seems like an act of defiance.

She says she’s putting her money where her mouth is, so to speak. Her most recent single, Girl

Gang, is about how powerful women are when they work together. The point of the project was to tear down the idea, which Wigmore says must have been ‘‘started by a bunch of men who wanted to bring down women’’, that women can be ‘‘their own worst enemies’’.

It’s a project about collaboration – and power in numbers. ‘‘Once we come together in our art, in our creativity, such a blossoming of wonderful things can happen,’’ she says. Girl Gang was a collaboration, with women artists to create every aspect of the track.

‘‘That was my thoughts on Girl Gang, ‘how do I rally a bunch of women together to see what we can create?’ ’’

Having raised her flag, and not just spoken – but sung – her truth, Wigmore says she had no real choice when promoters from Live Nation came knocking. The opportunity to perform alongside Neilson and Smith was not one she could say no to.

‘‘If we want this kind of change to happen with lineups and festivals, we need to get involved and do it, whatever is happening in our lives, you know, it might not be the right time but it’s important to be accountable and show up for these things when they are presented.’’

While artists themselves tend to be a progressive bunch of people, Wigmore says the industry still has a long way to go in the back offices and at the record companies.

Increasingly, she says people are too scared to take a stand. Other musicians need to be making demands for better conditions and more diversity, she says, even if it might annoy the booking agents.

‘‘It’s going to take this sort of I don’t give a f..., punk sensibility.’’

If all goes well, the hope is that this threewomen mini-festival at Mt Maunganui could become a regular thing.

Although the show is being billed as Wigmore, with Neilson and Smith, Wigmore is the first to say every one of these acts can and do sell their own shows.

‘‘There’s been enough festivals or whatever where it’s men, men, men, men, men all the time.

‘‘To see that three women can hold their own and be a strong lineup is really important for New Zealand to get behind and start doing more things like that,’’ she says.

If it all goes well, then she says this will be another success for a new, ‘‘awesome girl gang’’.