Nashville singer-songwriter Adia Victoria‘s 2021 album A Southern Gothic was draped in dynamic tones and moods; for her first single since its release, she’s ready to turn up from the get-go.
The new single “Ain’t Killed Me Yet,” out today, is a rollicking blues burner about living hard and making it through — something Victoria says in a press release resonated for her over the past few years.
There was little to celebrate in life the Spring of 2020 but living itself. With the live music industry shuttered to a close I was forced to find a new way to live. I took a job at Amazon to pay the bills and on the way to the warehouse for a red-eye 10 hour shift I considered my dilemma. Racing through empty streets at 2 am, trying to keep to steps ahead of a virus I couldn’t make sense of, life was lived in barest of immediacy–one breath to the next. That Spring I would end every journal entry with “Life ain’t killed me yet.”
“Ain’t Killed Me Yet” is the blues existentialism pared down to its bones. It is the irreverent celebration of those who meet life on their own terms. When the future is uncertain, the immediacy of the pleasures and vagrancies of the now is all that matters. I wrote “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” while behind the wheel on the way to work in a warehouse where death was a real possibility. The blues anchored me in the now so that I could not only survive but I could give the finger, and blow smoke in the face of my fear and anxiety.
In addition to the new single, Victoria rolled out a schedule of spring tour dates today, including an April 19th stop at MilkBoy in Center City Philadelphia; the awesome NYC singer-songwriter Lizzie No opens the show, tickets are on sale now, more information can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar.