The Ziona Riley Interview

Are you originally from Nashville, TN? What was your childhood like? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar? Was music something that was relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?

I was born in southern Indiana and lived in the town of Gosport (population 800) until I was 7 or 8 when we moved closer to Bloomington. Our household in Gosport was wrapped up in a restrictive, legalistic Christian belief system which kept us pretty isolated from the secular world. My mother, the daughter of a composer father and classical singer mother, had been a flautist and had a deep appreciation for classical music, especially of the Baroque era. She taught us to sing in harmony at a young age and we were like a self-contained little church choir – six of us, two boys and four girls, singing traditional hymns and 70s revival era praise and worship songs at our mother’s behest on the daily. For the first 7 years of my life, I don’t think I heard any secular pop music, except for what wafted into my ears at other people’s houses, or from car stereos as they drove past our yard. One time a car went by bumping heavy subby bass. I had never heard anything like it and truly believed that it must be something demonic or occult. What else could possibly be making that sound? But you can’t miss something if you don’t know it exists and I never felt deprived of modern secular music as a little kid.

One of my earliest musical memories is of being so floored by Beethoven’s 9th, I had to lie down next to the stereo speaker to listen. Later, as a tween, I would spend hours at the piano trying to re-create what I heard by ear. We didn’t have a TV at home, so music was a significant form of entertainment. I first became interested in the guitar when I was maybe 12, or 13 at a 4th of July lake party. I watched a friend of my grandmother’s teach my older sister how to do Travis picking and play a rudimentary version of “Blackbird.” Later, I had my older sister teach it to me, and I was hooked. I’d grown up seeing my mom play guitar everyday – she was very devout and had almost daily worship sessions, just her and her guitar on the front porch. But it was something about “Blackbird” and that style of fingerpicking that sparked my interest that day. I think what I initially loved about the guitar was that it was portable. Before the guitar, I had loved improvising and picking out tunes by ear on the piano but noodling around on the piano felt so loud and public, and I was anything but loud as a kid. With the guitar, I could take it into my room and close the door and learn it in private.

What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music?

My five siblings and I were homeschooled so most of our time was spent together, frequently unsupervised, and we were quite creative. We would write and perform shadow plays for our parents, produce talk radio shows with the tape recorder, and invent elaborate games. My oldest brother was a gifted pianist, and he would tell us scary stories with eerie live tracked melodies and spooky sound effects. It was a magical childhood in some respects, but not unscathed by neglect and abuse. As a young teenager, found myself in a trauma-bonded friend group, wilding out in a chaotic rumspringa-esque phase. I think my natural ability for guitar was a major resilience factor for me at that time. It gave me a sense of identity and purpose and I came to realize that I just didn’t belong at the corn-field keg party. Eventually, I found my tribe with the high school theater kids and townie buskers of Bloomington. I spent a lot of nights riding bikes around town, busking, and sitting around people’s basements and backyards jamming and making up songs. We weren’t really a concert-going family (though I do remember seeing Carman at an Indianapolis arena during his “Satan, Bite the Dust” tour), but my grandmother was well connected to the faculty at Jacobs School of Music, and she brought us to see student recitals, orchestra concerts, operas, and ballets.

I was always so inspired by those outings, and I would walk out of the performance halls daydreaming myself on the stage. At that age, I was extremely timid and shy, but I connected with the desire to become excellent at something and share it with a grateful, admiring audience. Later in life, my mother introduced me to Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Paul Simon. And then my dad introduced me to The Cars and Steely Dan. The mood toward secular music had become a lot more forgiving at that time. As a teenager, I was obsessed with the Pixies and Radiohead and learned a bunch of their songs to busk with my friends. I always wanted to be a musician, but it wasn’t until after I graduated college, the summer of 2010, that I allowed myself to consider the possibility of making a career out of it. I had started writing my own songs and playing them at open mics, and the promotor at The Bishop, a small, but mighty venue in Bloomington, noticed me and started asking me to open for touring artists. I got to open for some really great artists – the Milk Carton Kids, The David Wax Museum and Laura Stevenson and the Cans were among the more notable.

Did you participate in any groups prior to becoming a solo artist? When and where did you play your very first show and what was that experience like? Tell me about writing and recording your debut album “Not Too Precious” back in March of 2019. Would you mind giving a brief background to the songs that are featured on the album? What was the overall vision for this work?

This body of work was written slowly over a period of years. When I moved to Nashville in 2012, I spent a good chunk of time feeling unable to write songs. I stopped trying for a lot of years. A couple of the songs on this album, Kerfuffle and Proximity, were written in 2011 and the rest between 2018 and 2019. I had spent most of the decade focused on healing from complex PTSD, so it makes sense that one of the first songs to kind of break me out of my writer’s block was “Bury This Heirloom,” a song about generational trauma. I wrote “Jesus Christ Lightning Amen” around that same time, inspired by a cult called the Christ Family which I had become interested in while trying to understand my mother’s trauma. She joined a number of cults throughout the late 60s and 70s and based on her descriptions of the group, I believe the Christ Family was one of them. I wrote “Coming of Age in the Midwest” shortly after that, inspired by the concept of trauma bonding. I recorded the album directly to tape with Trevor Nikrant and put it up on Bandcamp. I have had some tapes made by Banana Tapes, a small label and manufacturer in Nashville, but other than that, its only corporeal form is Bandcamp.

I did a big ol’ tour of the Southwest last May and took my dog and my brother along. It was so exciting. My friend Lou Turner, a poet and songwriter based in Nashville, had been doing a residency in Truth or Consequence, NM and invited me to play a run of shows with her out there. I routed myself there and back and booked as many shows as I could on that route. Another musician, Lindsey Verrill of Little Mazarn, who I’d gotten to know when they’d toured through Nashville, reached out when they caught wind of my tour plans and offered to do a few dates together in Texas. The whole tour was scrappy as hell. We didn’t play in a single traditional venue – it was all house shows and DIY spaces, including a community garden in Dallas. One of my favorite nights was a house show hosted by avant-percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in Truth or Consequences. Lou Turner and I performed along with our poet friend, Brook Chambers and Bob Crowmeat from Raleigh. Tatsuya made delicious corn chowder for the audience and displayed some of his own artwork – handmade bows. He had said he wasn’t going to perform, but ended up joining Bob Crowmeat for an ecstatic jam – so fucking good! Another tour highlight was my Amarillo radio interview/performance with Jenny Inzerillo on High Plains Public Radio, which you can find on my YouTube channel or on the radio station’s website. In general, I’d say I definitely caught the tour bug and I am always open to traveling for a show if I can make it work financially. I’m currently in Montreal performing in the Festival des arts Entrelaces and I’ve got a show at TV Eye in NYC on August 3 rd . I’ll be in Chicago between 8/10 and 8/13 (show date/location TBD) and in Bloomington, IN for Poodle Fest on the 19 th.

You just recently toured the West, how has that experience? You’ll be performing at the One Stone in Albuquerque, NM tomorrow night. Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

I have so many more songs that are not out yet, but I’m in the process of making a full-length album, hopefully to be finished by the end of the summer. On July third, I got together with Jim and Austin Hoke, two inordinately talented multi-instrumentalists, and we got started recording the forthcoming album at my pal Joe Pisapia’s studio in East Nashville. I’ve also been asked to submit songs toward a couple of compilations, one of which will be out on Like You Mean It Records July 28th. Proceeds from the compilation will benefit the Hello In There Foundation, a philanthropic organization established by the family of John Prine. I don’t know exactly when my full-length album will be out, but if folks are interested, they can follow my Bandcamp page at: zionariley.bandcamp.com, Instagram: @zionariley, or facebook.com/zionariley