Adia Victoria Summons Ghosts at Hogs For The Cause

Adia Victoria, by Huy Nguyen

The Southern alt artist won new fans at a food centered festival with her haunting blues.

Adia Victoria knows how to summon ghosts. She stood on stage at Hogs for the Cause on Saturday afternoon dressed in all black, a pendant hanging around her neck, a tear in her nylon tights running up her right leg. Her Oxford shoes glowed a deep obsidian. The smoke machines hissed, creating a low hanging fog around her band, who walked onto the stage dressed like gothic cowboys.

“We came all the way from Nashville to play you our blues,” said Victoria, as the droning guitar lick of “Far From Dixie,” a track off her latest record, A Southern Gothic, slowly crescendoed. Her voice rasped through the verse, soared through the chorus, reaching high for the opening note as she sung the lyrics, “And I’m a far way from Dixie / You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.” She played with her voice like fire: taming it and letting it burn us at the same time.

The crowd at Hogs For The Cause 2022 likely wasn’t expecting to see an energy as brooding and chilling as Victoria’s. Imagine more than 100 vendors all serving various forms of pork, every tent named with another pork-related pun. Men in LSU jerseys lined up at a tent called “Pork Hub'' with a logo similar to Porn Hub’s. Three toddlers stomped in a mud puddle next to a vendor called “Silence of Da Hams,” where a ghostly five-foot long image of Miss Piggy was raised over the tent, cursing us all. A man handed out pink pinwheels to kids in strollers. Jazz Fest dads sat on bails of hay, taking in the bright blue sky. A Millennial walked past me with bacon earrings. Face paint, temporary tattoos, and cans of beer were being shared on the grounds of UNO Lakefront Arena, where It felt like a moment in the Hannah Montana movie when Crowley Corners held their fundraiser to save the town.

Needless to say, the vibes were great. Lighthearted. It’s a pork festival. Which is why Victoria was nervous to bring her witchy aura to the stage. “Are y’all having fun?” she asked the crowd. Everyone applauded, though it was clear that many were hearing her music for the first time. She laughed. “I was worried, Here comes the girl wearing all black singing about demons.” The crowd laughed along with her. “We all have them, you know,” she said while looking down at her feet.

Victoria’s music is drenched in history. She not only represents her experience as a Black woman born in the South, but she uses herself as a conduit to channel the experiences of all who came before her. Ghosts are around us and we must learn to listen to them, she said. “We’d like to welcome the ghost of Skip James to the tent,” Victoria said into the mic after beating on her acoustic guitar. The song went into a breakdown, the bass climbing up in a classic blues progression. Soft red spotlights reflected on the underbelly of the tent as she stumbled towards the mic, eyes following an invisible line that floated over our heads. Eyes widened, she smiled, waving the ghost of the delta blues singer over. “Here he comes” said Victoria, before launching into the scorching outro of “Head Rot,” a track off of her 2016 debut album, Beyond the Bloodhounds.

Victoria embraces being an outcast. She holds her head high while doing it. She wants to tell the stories of those forcibly forgotten, those pushed to the margins, of women who nobody believed. “Mean-Hearted Woman” tells the demonized blues woman's side of the story. Shakers drummed like a rattlesnake's tail as Victoria stepped away from the mic, finger picking the eerie arpeggio. “My baby woke me on Christmas day / He said it’s time for me to go my way / I asked him why you wanna say that for / He just packed my bag and put me out the door,” she sang. The lights turned an icy blue as her voice filled with sorrow and the desire for revenge. It’s enough to make any woman go feral and murder the last old creep that catcalled them.

After her set, a drunk woman grabbed my arm with urgency and asked, “Who was that?” A teenage boy walked up to me, asking if I could airdrop all the videos I had to him. “Did y’all know her music before this?” he asked, cradling A Southern Gothic in his arms, plastic peeled on the vinyl sleeve that was freshly signed. Victoria greeted her new fans at the merch table, who ecstatically thanked her for her music. It was something that everyone collectively experienced. With every burning note, she drew blood from us all.