Wallis Bird has been mesmerising listeners across the globe for more than a decade. Just last year, Wallis unveiled her seventh studio album 'HANDS' – arguably her most personal and experimental creation yet, exploring trust, alcohol abuse, stagnation, and self-improvement.
Though these are heavy themes to address, each song is uplifted by Wallis' voice.
The title and its album cover are a testament to an accident in Wallis' childhood, where she lost her fingers to a lawnmower. Wallis needed to relearn how to hold things, and also how to play the guitar differently. It seems fitting then, that such a personal album have such a personal title and album cover.
Since the release of 'HANDS', Wallis has been on a whirlwind of a tour, hitting stops in Europe, the US, and the UK. She's not visited our shores since before the pandemic, but her previous tours here (in 2016, 2017, and 2019) left an indelible mark.
Now, Wallis Bird is ready to head back to us. Ahead of her ten-date adventure around the country, we speak to her about tour life, music, the joys of performing live, advice for fellow queer musicians, and what's coming next.
You’re playing all over the place when you get here! What are you most looking forward to about returning to Australia?
I'm most looking forward to the conversations I'll have with friends old and new about the recent Voice vote. I'm looking forward to hugging my Australian friends as it's been five years and a lot of life change for the entire world in that time. I'm looking forward to breathing in deeply in Australian landscape, sharing that with my partner Tracey and my travelling companion Aidan. I'm looking forward to what the land brings, performing for the entirely wild Australian audience, having First Nations artists open up the shows, having my heart cracked open, little things!
Image © Tobias Ortmann
You’ve got more than 1,000 shows under your belt. Tell us about your relationship with performing live – why is it important to you?
Live performance for me is not about promoting something, it is about an opportunity to join together in a room with your equals and receive. The audience wants something from me, I want something from them. My music is just the reason we're there but really I'm observing, being moved in directions. I am so in tune with playing that I can focus on the emotion of the room, not my playing, and dream and create during the gig. Barely any monitors anymore, barely any amplification anymore, I have begun moving pure with the bare bones. I crave the skeleton, the secrets, the scents, the whispers, the reflections of the walls, the nervous or excited energy of raw acoustic. Many performers nowadays see performance as an exercise in ego, to perform AT an audience, they close their heads off from the moment with in-ears and backing track and are slaves to a 'design', regardless of the people or the space. To me this is the death of the concert experience and the closing off of spontaneity or energetically in the room or the moment. Most bands do the same f...ing show every night – walk away having done their 'job' successfully and move on to the next stage. The more shows I play the more I break away the barrier between my skill and my needs and it leaves me vulnerable, which keeps me grounded and part of a community. I'm not in this to make commercial gain, I'm in this to experience life.
What about music in general? Where did your love for it begin and what artists/musicians have sustained that love?
It surged and rolled down from all my ancestors and from the cosmos and sheer chance of existence with all of us other humans and the eco system and fuck knows where – and here I am! All I can genuinely say to you is that it's a true compulsion that I've been friends with and walked beside my whole life and now I treat it as both me and my outer soul – every thing in this earth and beyond is music to me. I would have to say that Mother Nature, love, children, friends and family and not knowing anything have sustained me.
Your 2022 album ‘HANDS’ is arguably your most personal/experimental yet. What inspired you to move in this direction, for this album in particular?
Well, it's both rooted in social politics, fear, positivity and pain. The writing period was during the Black Lives Matter revolution and the worldwide pandemic while Trump was putting children in cages and Nazi flags back on the street, so I felt like I was raging into the dying of the light to be honest, but because I believe in marking out the time for posterity, I need hope and a reason to praise humanity, so I go through the bleak to come out the other side. It makes me feel like I've processed something so whoever is listening can share my tools if they need them.
How has your experience as a queer person shaped your musical output?
When I started this path, being queer was at its smallest level social suicide, and at its wider scale, illegal. So my fight was to project health, balance, love, tell a f...ing joke to take the edge off everything because at the end of the day it's natural to be gay, so I flat out rejected judgement against me for being queer. I got stuck into my community, hung out with and loved the sh.t out of those who were disgusted by me, smiled at f...ing everyone, and killed people with kindness, rose above the pain of it and wrote honest songs in a rich, sonic landscape. I left no room for doubt. And it drove believers in church and state mental because it was both childlike and 'I don't care less what you think', I aim to make music that reflects dignity.
What advice would you have for a queer artist/musician wanting to make it big?
Be whoever the f... you are. Be open to have your ego broken and rebuilt. Treat your workmates and bandmates with respect, be a thoughtful leader not a bossy person. Make up rules because the industry is in a loop of blandness and commercialism. Be careful who you work with because the industry doesn't take risks and usually only wants you once you're already 'working'. Bring your ideas always. All of them. Try their ideas, choose your battles when they need you to do something that feels inauthentic – their business is different to yours and you have to trust that as well. Trust your gut about people. And about choices. Sleep, drinking warm water and mindful warm-up will improve your performance noticeably. Daydream. If you want to be a party artist you better know how to communicate with a calm head when you're hungover. You better be very organised so nobody has to pick up your sh.t after you, that only lasts so long. You better listen to your team and they better make you feel like you're being listened to. Ask them what they foresee for you, and does that align with what you want? Make a dream list of your ideal career. You want to be massive? Are you willing to work hard as a f...ing dog and be reliable for it? Are you willing to get your mental and physical health regulated and balanced so that you don't let others down? Especially if you expect the same from others? This career is not for everyone, choose your big path and go through the worst of it in your mind. Can you handle it? What will that take to handle it? Can you deal with and work through rejection? Now write like you f...ing mean it, always keep learning new skills, stop trying to fit in, stop landing on the easy line, do better than you were just about to. Most of all – BE F...ING ENCOURAGING to yourself, talk nicely to yourself!
What observations do you have about the public’s response to the new work?
Most importantly my closest to me are proud of the work and my constant progress, they've told me they understand my will to make each work stand on its own and be a step forward. Every other outcome is a welcome lesson. I've enjoyed the steady returns of my work. Each year brings more interesting opportunities, new doors opened that weren't before, exciting collaborations are coming to fruition. Something particularly good is that I'm recognised as a musical innovator now whereas before it was considered a weakness to be consistently genre fluid. I never played by a book, though my work is hardly avant garde, It's simply made with love and freedom to grow and to entertain myself!
What’s next musically for Wallis Bird?
My partner Tracey and I bought a farmhouse with two other couples so we're all currently building a multimedia artist studio and retreat with a view to healing through musical and physical therapy, being self-sufficient on the land and creating a community for worldwide and local artists to meld, I'm most excited about that and building new musical worlds.
Wallis Bird 2024 Australia Tour Dates
3 January – The Outpost (Brisbane)
4 January – Brunswick Picture House (Byron Bay)
6 January – Vanguard (Sydney)
7 January – Baroque Room (Katoomba)
9 January – Smith's Alternative (Canberra)
10 January – Trinity Sessions (Adelaide)
12-14 January – Cygnet Festival (Tasmania)
17 January – The Palais Theatre (Franklin)
19 January – Northcote Social Club (Melbourne)
20-21 January – Illawarra Folk Festival
