Adia Victoria Confronts the Weight of History at Third Man Records

Since opening its doors in 2009, Third Man Records’ Nashville complex has evolved from a novel vinyl-centric version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory into one of Music City’s most consistently surprising, entertaining and diverse cultural institutions. The Spin got a taste of another great example on Thursday night when the compound’s Blue Room played host to A Delta Blue Christmas, an evening of poetry and music curated by indie blues-rock juggernaut Adia Victoria, preceded by a panel discussion on the extended history of black art, the history of blues as protest music and its place in activism. 

Beyond the aesthetics, Third Man’s Blue Room was a perfect space for the night’s program. Bathed in azure-hued fluorescent light, the show kicked off with a round-robin style poetry jam featuring the Blair House Collective, a poetry group recently formed by Victoria with award-winning authors and poets Caroline Randall Williams and Ciona Rouse (the latter of whose poetry collection Vantablack was published by Third Man Books last year). 

The poems explored the life of a fictional character, an aspiring blues singer in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Each poet used her voice to add a new dimension to this composite character, fleshing out her innermost thoughts, and in turn placing themselves in the shoes of a would-be ancestor. They used our contemporary empowered mindset to tell vivid stories of a dehumanizing existence — the subtext of the blues’ painful birth was amplified and harnessed into a stream of riveting, emotional and fearless spoken-word performances to form a righteously revisionist version of the blues to reiterate its rebellious origins.

A much-needed short break came next, allowing the mostly full room to digest a wealth of images, emotions and perspectives before the evening’s headliner returned the stage. Dressed to the nines and ready to motor through new material from her upcoming second LP Silences, Victoria followed her seven-piece band to the stage. Deep grooves and heavy vibes took hold, as the band thundered through a fuzzy and relentlessly uptempo string of blues-inspired indie-rock bangers. Victoria’s magnetic presence projected her inimitable charisma to all corners of the room and back.

Seemingly taking cues from performers from Prince to Tina Turner, Adia sang with her entire body. Contrasting with her band’s thundering accompaniment, Victoria’s voice isn’t one that beats you about the head. Sneaking in as a whisper, building up into a moan and developing into a howl, her idiosyncratic voice makes her one of the most unique in the homogenized market of blues rock. Though billed as a Christmas show, the occasional mention of “Christmas” was as close as this came to any cheery, happy-go-lucky Yuletide program you’d expect anywhere else. 

For the last third of the set, the very vocally supportive audience howled as Adia — who started the set without a hair out of place and was now a fearlessly hot mess of furious energy — finally picked up the guitar that’d been sitting behind her, teasing us with its latent power this whole time, for a rollicking performance of her early single “Dead Eyes.” A hard-nosed cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues” soon followed, and the the set softened from its intense start into a more traditional rhythm-and-blues dynamic. Shortly before launching into a new song called “The City,” Victoria mentioned that the show was a benefit for Jessi Zazu Inc., the nonprofit started in memory of her late friend, artist and musician Jessi Zazu — whose death at age 28 last year still resonates with anyone who was a friend or a fan of her work. After Victoria led the audience in a resounding call of “Merry Christmas, Jessi!” she addressed the city’s rapid and unsettling evolution from a little big town into a tepid casualty of the bourgeois. 

“This is history,” she said, “This is it.” It was a reminder of the transient nature of experiences and to hold onto the moment we were sharing. She assured a powerful and memorable end to the evening as she broke the fourth wall, leaping off the stage to dance with us in the crowd.

See our slideshow for more photos.

In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.