Terrible Human: A Conversation with Vivienne Wilder

Interview by Imani Dominique Busby (@imani.dominique)

Photography by Barrett Potts aka Fifty (@fifty.jpg)

In this open conversation, Vivienne Wilder discusses the process behind creating her latest album “Terrible Human”. She discusses the resonance that an artist’s vulnerability can have on a listener and the ways in which she does so through her music. This interview explores Vivienne’s upbringing and evolution, her sonic and geographic influences, and solidarity through shared experiences.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your introduction to making music.

My name is Vivienne Wilder, and I am a singer songwriter based in Toronto. I'm also a freelance musician who plays bass in a whole bunch of different bands and does gig work on bass for a living.

I got into music as a little kid because both my parents are musicians. At first, I went through the sort of classical stream but once I was in my teens, I started playing in bands. I was playing rock music, jazz, and kind of doing everything along the same timeline. I started writing music in my early 20s and started my own band after many years of being a side person.

You grew up in a musical household and began performing at a young age. Did that early immersion shape your artistic voice, or did you have to push against it to find your own path?

I think it's a little bit of both. I was lucky to have the parents that I did. My dad's a classical bassist for orchestras and my mom's a singer who did lots of jazz, musical theater, and pop band stuff in the 70s. So my parents had a pretty amazing and eclectic record collection. They had all the rock classics on vinyl, and lots of interesting contemporary music, too. Always keeping up with things. My dad obviously had lots of classical records, and so it was a very mixed bag of what I was listening to.

Having gone through classical music lessons as a kid, there's a lot of rules and there's a lot of tradition. I think it's cool to have exposure to that, but I think it was also important for me to break out of it and get into, just playing music for fun and getting creative with it. Rather than always playing other people's music, using it as a form of self expression.

I always knew that I wanted to have a band and play rock music. But it took me a while to sort of get to that point of actually starting my own band. It was only until my mid-20s that I finally had my own band.

How has your songwriting process evolved over the years? Did you approach this album differently than your previous work?

Yeah, totally. So with this record, some of the songs are really old and the songwriting process took a very long time.

One of the songs, “Wrong Hero”, I started probably in 2014 or 15, and it was just something that I could never finish. I really liked the sort of seed of it, and it always haunted me. It just sort of came together for this record. When I was in the studio with Ian Docherty, the producer, slash engineer, slash guitarist,— the process that we had in the studio together was largely like me bringing in song sketches, a lot of which had never been performed live, but I had demos of. And then we sort of, you know, cobbled together these tracks that were very much a team process.

There was even a track on there “Total Mess”, which Ian came up with the instrumental for, then sent it to me and was like, ‘Do you want to try putting vocals over this?’ I wasn't entirely happy with any music ideas that I'd had, but I liked the lyrics or some of the ideas for it. And then they just sort of clicked together. So that's how that song happened and I've never had that experience with writing before. I've done some co-writes with people over the years, but that's usually been from computer to computer or maybe sitting in a room together. But setting something to a track that ended up being a Vivienne Wilder record is a very different experience.

Your new single, "Total Mess", explores cycles of self-destruction and the fleeting highs of recklessness. What inspired this song, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?

That song was inspired by me therapeutically having a look back at my younger days and things that I still hadn't kind of gotten over. Something I've always found with writing songs is however much you want it to be confessional, it’s all more metaphor than literally things that have happened to you. I think that the writing process is always very helpful for for digesting experiences and making sense of them. Seeing patterns within your own life, figuring out what actually matters to you. Writing is such an amazing tool for that.

I feel really fortunate that I've found songwriting as a tool that I have been able to use to process things. So "Total Mess” is one of the more personal ones for me, unfortunately. But also, by writing about these things and sharing them, it’s better than holding them in shamefully or being afraid of what’s happened in the past. And by sharing, you not only begin to heal yourself, but you might also help someone else heal –or find a sense of kinship in a stranger, like hearing a song and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not so alone.’”

Growing up especially, there were a lot of singers and bands that had songs that resonated with me and helped me feel like I wasn't a freak that was totally isolated and just a weirdo that couldn't ever have friends or something.

I definitely relate to that feeling of having music be an avenue to understand both your own experience and to have solidarity with other people. To think, “Oh, other people have experienced this too or have processed this the same way.” I really like that that you've been using your music to do that for other people too.

Kind of in a similar vein, was there a particular song on Terrible Human that challenged you the most, either emotionally or musically?

Yeah, I had kind of mentioned it before with “Wrong Hero”, just because that one took such a long time for me to finish. I don't even feel like I'm the same person I was when I first started writing it. When those lyrics finally clicked in and I had that sort of lightbulb moment, it was effortless. It's the most lyrically minimalist song on the record. Which also makes it funny that it was so difficult to finish to me compared to all the verbose diatribes that happen on some of the other songs.

When I hear myself singing that on the record, I'm like, “Oh, man. I'm struggling to keep it together a little bit for some reason.” It was just hitting me in that moment. And it was just me and Ian in the studio, and Ian was just so sweet and supportive in that moment. So I'm really grateful for his energy on that too.

How was the adjustment to the Toronto music scene from Saskatchewan?

I've been in Toronto now for 18 years, so that's wild. I lived in Saskatchewan for as long as I've been living in Toronto now, so that's, like, pretty wild to me. Saskatchewan still feels like my home and Regina still feels like my hometown. But the transition to Toronto was totally exciting. I think I had always known that I would move to Toronto, at least for part of my life. Most of my family lives in southern Ontario and we would visit a lot, so it wasn't like a total leap into the unknown. But coming from a smaller city like Regina to Toronto, and like I moved right into the thick of downtown, it was a thrilling experience. I definitely had a lot of like hopes and dreams and a feeling of “Oh man, like, here I am. What's gonna happen next?” It was all a world of possibilities.

I did like live in Texas for a while in the middle and I've traveled a lot which I think has been really important for me as a musician and human in general.

But Toronto more and more feels like my home.

Between Toronto, Saskatchewan and Texas, which one do you prefer as an artist? Whether that's from your experience there, the general music scene and industry, or artist support systems as a whole.

They're all very incomparable in a lot of ways. Like, Regina is a tough one. I have a bias because it's where I grew up and you know, growing up, of course, especially as an angsty teenager, I was like, “I hate this place. I never want to come back. Can't wait to leave.” And I don't think that's totally fair. I actually really enjoy visiting family there. And because it's a smaller place, it just feels more relaxing. I love the Prairies and there's a whole vibe there that I find very inspiring too.

Texas, I mean that was all like a culture shock for me because…Texas. But I was living in Austin, which is definitely a very left leaning city compared to the stereotypes you get of Texas.. But being there was incredible for me because that's kind of how I started writing songs. All my friends in Austin, who were a lot of like Americans from different parts of the country, congregated there so there was just this, this sort of community that was super supportive and inspiring. They’ve left a huge impact on me and were kind of an essential part of of my education.

And then coming back to Toronto, I went to school and finished off my classical degree. But eventually started freelancing and making money. Doing all the different pickup work I could do, playing with singer songwriters, playing in cover bands, playing country music, playing hard rock, playing with Argentinian hip hop fusion bands, like, just like anything you can think of. Which is one of the coolest things about Toronto being such a huge city. And it's so international that you can find anything here. t's just sort of a limitless well of cool stuff that's always happening in Toronto.

If you could describe Terrible Human in three words, what would they be?

I'm gonna just say all the feelings.

Are there any artists or albums that were particularly influential to you during the making of the album?

That's always a hard question for me because I'd listen to lots and lots of different things. But I think at that time, because also it was like coming right out of pandemic lockdowns, there wasn't a lot of going out to live shows. So I was finding music on the Internet and I found a band called “Romeo Void”, which, everyone seems to have known about them, actually, except for me (haha). The lead singer is a total badass, and I love her lyrics and I love the sound of that band. And I went through this period of just wishing I could be that band. I'd say that definitely had some — I don't even know if it was, like, influence, but it was like validation for this record. Especially with the saxophone stuff and some of the punkier moments. There were some songs by Black Angels that I got really into.

Some of the fun janky baselines I came up with were actually super influenced by Black Angels and Viagra Boys songs.

What impact do you hope that Terrible Human will have on the listener?

I want people to listen to it and feel all the stuff that I'm revealing in it is relatable. And it's able to connect with people. Music is just a super social experience for me. Of course, we all listen to music alone and headphones and stuff, but even then, it's like someone is speaking to you directly into your ears. So it's a really intimate thing.

And some of these records, some of the songs on this record, and even, like, the title of it, I had a really hard time being okay with it. I felt really nervous about. About having a picture of me as a baby with the words terrible human over it. I thought it was really funny, but it also makes me really sad. And I guess that’s how I want people to feel when they listen to the record. There's a lot of I think funny lines in the lyrics and funny kind of ideas, but also there is a lot of, like, dark sadness and that. And I think that's okay, embracing both things. It's just part of being a person in the world. If someone listens to this record and kind of feels better about the complexities of their own life, and feels like they can connect with some of the stuff I'm singing about, then I'm happy.

That's a really incredible answer. Thank you so much, those were all of the questions that I had for you for today. Is there anything that you feel was missed or, that you'd want to touch on?

I don't think so. Those are some pretty deep questions. Thank you.

Oh, my God, anytime. Thank you again for speaking with me, especially on a Saturday, too. It's really such a pleasure talking with you and learning more about your art.

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