Gin Wigmore's star rises

It's tantalisingly close, this fame business. You probably haven't heard the name Gin Wigmore before, or her gutsy whiskey-and-dry voice, but it's a prediction worth making that in the blink of an eye this 21-year-old from the sleepy seaside suburb of Devonport on Auckland's North Shore is going be a household name. And that's just the way she wants it. Seated in an oversized chair as she waits to be photographed, Gin (short for Virginia) cuts a childlike figure in her tiny black jeans and white T-shirt, but has a very unchildlike attitude. She is on the cusp of releasing her debut six-track EP, Extended Play, and is not only expectant of the attention she is about to receive, but prepared for it.

"It's going to be fun. I used to be scared of the idea, but if you can take on yourself, you can take on the world," she says. What she means is that when you go through what she has, it somehow lends you an underlying and unstoppable confidence.

It started off well enough. At 14, living a sheltered and comfortable life with her two siblings and parents, she found a guitar her dad had been given, taught herself a few chords, and began playing at Temple Bar on Queen St.

"That was fantastic because my night was a Wednesday night, and all my mates would come; we were all under-age and the bar [staff] thought we were heaps older."

It was a regular mid-week party until the staff eventually busted her. She had to start bringing her dad to the gigs "and it was lame after that". But not lame enough for her to stop. Not until her biggest fan, the same man who brought her to those gigs when she couldn't go alone, died of cancer two years into her musical adventure.

"My dad dying was actually a reason for me to stop music properly for about a year, because he was a big supporter. All I wanted to do was write a song about him and, you know, when something's too fresh, you can't quite word it."

So Wigmore stopped playing, packed her bags and went to live in a rundown mudbrick town in Argentina on a student exchange programme.

"I turned up for my first day of high school - and it was the local nunnery.I was like ‘this is not what I signed up for; I'm here to meet boys, lots of fun times, lots of pashing', so I said I was sick and I ditched out of the programme and then jetted down to Bariloche and did some snowboarding, then moved to Buenos Aires for a while. My mum was freaking out."

What really tipped her journey on its axis was returning to New Zealand to pen the longed-for song to her father. In just a day, she wrote Hallelujah, a plaintive, immaculate expression that draws you in as much for its simplicity as for her startling voice (there will be inevitable comparisons to Macy Gray and Joss Stone). Thanks to her sister's encouragement (and entry fee money), she entered Hallelujah and another song into the International Songwriting Competition based in New York and, out of 11,000 entries, scooped the main prize and the top teen category.

"I get a call when I'm living in this scummy little flat in Taranaki and she's like ‘Gin, your first song has won the whole category' and I was like ‘That's really cool', and then she goes ‘Do you want to know who the grand prize winner is?' It was me. Pretty crazy."

Wigmore has charisma in spades and a frankness that smacks more of an Australian sensibility than the uptightness New Zealand seems to be boiled in. Which is one reason she moved there more than a year ago, originally to the Gold Coast but relocating to Sydney after signing to Island Records. It helps that two of her favourite pastimes, drinking and partying, are particularly popular in Australia.

Back in New Zealand to make her first music video and start the promotional juggernaut, she is bubbling, finding it hard to sit still, telling enthusiastic stories about everything, from how she met her current boyfriend (she was stage-diving at a concert, fell into his arms and started kissing him), to the worst moment she's ever had performing live (when a girl interrupted her mid-song to ask why she didn't sing in a Kiwi accent), to how she got the tribal tattoo on the inside of her left arm (for $20 from a guy on the side of the road in Bali - "it was septic for ages"). It's hard to imagine her being the same unguarded storyteller once she has five years of media fatigue under her belt, but she hopes her family will keep her on the right path, as success isn't a stranger to her siblings either - her sister Lucy plays Justine Jones on Shortland Street, and brother Oliver works as an archaeologist in Peru, spending his winters snowboarding in Canada. Despite living in different countries, they are all much closer since the death of their father.

The day before our interview, her mother and sister are at Gin's showcase performance at Chapel Bar on Auckland's Ponsonby Rd - an event set up by her record company. It's a tightly packed crowd of music executives, media, musicians and friends. Social pages photographer Norrie Montgomery is slinking about, waiting to turn Gin's dreams of fame to fleeting reality (sure enough, she appeared with her sister in the following Sunday's newspaper gossip pages). But you get the feeling it's her friends she really wants to impress, rather than reviewers or executives.

"My friends have known I've always dabbled [in music] but it's always ‘Oh Gin, you just play the guitar when you're wasted, we just all party and it's great fun'. There were a couple of my mates at the showcase and they're like ‘Wow Gin - you're actually doing music, and you're good at it'. That was cool."

She still suffers from nerves, but calms them with what she calls her "lineup" - starting with a few drops of Bach Flower Rescue Remedy, then a glass of sauvignon blanc, and then a shot of bourbon just before she goes on stage.

"I get pretty bad nerves but I'm getting better. I was a wreck before - just straight to the bathroom all the time. But it gives me such a rush; that adrenaline is what I love."

As she launches into Easy Come, Easy Go, a warm acoustic ballad sung in her trademark rasp, even musicians P-Money and DJ Sir-Vere are tapping along. You know when two of New Zealand's major hip-hop stars are impressed by a pop-folk singer from Devonport, we can expect big things. But only if she doesn't get bored first.

"I want to let everyone hear my music and enjoy it, but just as long as it's fun. I'll go as far as until it gets too much like a day job. n

Extended Play is on sale from May 26 

- © Fairfax NZ News