Gin Wigmore on her new album: ‘Some of the lyrics are dark, and that was just a product of the environment’

Kiwi singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore has just moved into the Silver Lake area in Los Angeles with her rocker musician husband, Jason Butler, and their two young sons. Photo / Bobbi Rich @mamahotdog

Now a US citizen, singer Gin Wigmore tells Aroha Awarau why New Zealand will always be her safe place to land.

Kiwi singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore has just moved into the Silver Lake area in Los Angeles with her rocker musician husband, Jason Butler, and their two young sons. In a home of musicians, it’s no surprise that before this online chat even starts, she has a word of caution.

“My husband is working next door. So, if there’s loud heavy music that comes through in our interview, that’s him, it’s not me. It’s all kind of chaotic,” she explains.

The suburb of Silver Lake is one of the hip spots in the entertainment capital, attracting celebrity residents like Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, and Chris Pine. More A-listers living in Tinseltown are preferring this low-key area to the hustle of Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. For Wigmore, 36, and her family, it’s a perfect base to raise her children and focus on her music.

“It used to be sketchy-as-f***, but now it’s absolutely not at all. It’s an old neighbourhood that was very much on the fringe of LA back in the day. Now, it’s where all the artists and the weird and wonderful would go and feel safe.”

The Auckland-born and raised singer tries to make it back home to New Zealand at least once a year, to re-energise and give her boys, Pascal, 5, and Izaiah, 2, a little taste of Kiwi life.

“The hardest thing about living in the States is feeling so torn because you know that growing up in New Zealand is way more relaxed and that sort of barefoot, open-door policy. You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel much more in LA. It’s good to bring them back. My eldest loves it. But then, at the same time, they’re kids. They love everything! You put an ice cream in front of them and they like ‘this is rad. I want to go back there.’ They’re easy to please.”

Gin Wigmore has moved to Los Angeles with her rocker musician husband, Jason Butler, and their two young sons. Image / Instagram

The last time she was home was in November 2020, while America was “melting down”. It was during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matters protests, and the tumultuous general election that Donald Trump and his supporters violently responded to when Trump lost the US presidency to Joe Biden. Wigmore liked her visit home so much, that she planned to stay here with her family. But the slower pace was too hard for her husband to get used to.

“We came back for five months to chill out. We were thinking of relocating. We got here and we went through the process of enrolling the kids in schools and we did all the things. But I think it was such a culture shock for my husband. He was born and raised in LA, and you get used to that mad pace of everything. I think it’s very hard to train that muscle once you’re an adult if that’s not what you’re used to. Trying to force my husband into relax mode was not happening.”

Wigmore has settled in LA, even buying (and later selling) a hotel in Palm Springs. She’s also been granted US citizenship. It made perfect sense because her professional and family life is based in the US. Most importantly, she made the decision to become a US citizen to keep her whānau together and eliminate the threat of her US green card ever being revoked.

With two sons under 5, Wigmore loves being able to juggle her passion for creating music and art with raising her children. Photo / Bobbi Rich @mamahotdog

For now, the chart-topping artist will have to enjoy New Zealand and make the most of its home comforts during the odd visit. She’s returning next year for a tour that starts in Gisborne in March and then travels to Hawke’s Bay, Nelson, Raglan and Leigh.

“I love doing that in New Zealand, going to all these places where you grew up. I used to road trip down to Raglan all the time and go up to Leigh. We’d go to Omaha, and we’d hang out and go to gigs. You’d drink loads of wine in the carpark and then go inside and see all these bands you loved. It was so great and so cheap. it’s going to be so nostalgic going back to all these little places that we were scumbags at.”

The tour coincides with the release of a new album of songs, as yet untitled, and coming home is the perfect way to introduce the world to her new music.

“I’ve always played in NZ first, with any new record. It’s because that’s where my heart and my soul is. It’s like a safe place to land after this very vulnerable process of writing and creating. And if it all goes sh*t, you’ve got your mum there.”

Wigmore had an outpouring of inspiration during the pandemic and wrote many of her new songs while the world was in lockdown.

“Generally, you’ll have this period of creativity and then you’ll go share it with someone, by a gig or putting out singles or doing some kind of event that revolves around it. But because you couldn’t do any of that it felt so isolated, and you felt like you weren’t doing anything. But you’re doing lots.”

She used the political and social unrest in the US as inspiration.

“It felt like a volatile and important time to be in America. And just by virtue of being here in a big city, it seeps into you, and almost by osmosis you’ve got sh*t that you need to talk about, and you don’t really know that it’s happening until it’s done. Now it feels like we’ve come out the other side and you’ve got your markers back and you can share it with the world, be like ‘oh yeah, I was creative, look how much stuff I’ve done’. Some of the lyrics are dark, and that was just a product of the environment and what we were surrounded by at the time.”

Gin Wigmore will be performing an eight-date tour around NZ in March and April, 2023. Photo / Bobbi Rich @mamahotdog

Wigmore’s husband, lead singer of the LA-based heavy rock band Fever 333, also tours regularly. The couple normally take their young sons on tour with them, which is especially exciting for 5-year-old Pascal, who has shown a talent for playing the drums and is keen to follow in his parents’ footsteps. But touring is something Wigmore is keen to do less of.

“I don’t want to be on the road all the time. I see my husband, he’s a musician, and I see what he does with his band and I’m like ‘no way’. That’s some real road dog, 20-year-old sh*t. I’m like, ‘set me up with my glass of wine and my candles and my laptop and that’s how I want to work now’. I’m doing a lot of writing, not music, but journal-type pieces, which I’ll probably put together in some sort of book format.”

Wigmore loves being able to juggle her passion for creating music and art with raising her children.

“My admiration and respect for mothers is through the roof. Especially now that I’ve experienced it and weathered the storm of my husband being on tour for months and raising two little babies and working and trying to juggle all these things. You’re trying to raise the future. You’re trying to raise these little impressionable minds in a way that can benefit and help society move forward. It’s such a major job.”

Gin Wigmore will be performing an eight-date tour around NZ in March and April, 2023.