♪ Lights in the valley outshine the sun ♪ ♪ Lights in the valley outshine the sun ♪ ♪ Way beyond the blue ♪ ♪ Way beyond the blue, one more time ♪ ♪ And it's way beyond the blue ♪ Born just a stone's throw from Nina Simone's childhood home, singer-songwriter Adia Victoria was raised in a strict religious environment.

Already a prolific writer, she discovered that music, and most importantly blues music, helped her step more fully into her identity as a Black southern woman.

She's become one of the most important storytellers for the South today.

(soft music intro) ♪ It was a long road that led you ♪ ♪ It was a darkness that fed you ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ Under the clouds they found you ♪ ♪ Cutting through the ground like kudzu ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ Through the shadows you shot through ♪ ♪ Now in my memory I keep you ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ How long did you wait for the sunshine ♪ ♪ To find you deep down in the coal mine ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ You were born deep in the hollows ♪ ♪ Now even when you leave it follows ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ Only in my dreams do I find you ♪ ♪ You're walking with the moon through the night wood ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ My, oh my ♪ ♪ Come lay your flowers on the ground ♪ ♪ On the ground ♪ ♪ On the ground ♪ ♪ On the ground ♪ - This song is like an homage to the way that the South haunts you and it lingers.

And I feel like for the Southerner the natural landscape is a place of... it's a scene of self-encounter, you know?

Everything takes on a bigger significance in the South.

And so "My Oh My" is a song about mourning and loss, and that haunted feeling of your past that still clings to you.

- How does it feel to sing that at Nina Simone's childhood home?

- I mean I, um, it was, it was, um, that was a struggle, I felt ghosts, and I'm not a ghost-y person but I felt ghosts, and I struggled to get through that because I could not get inside my own body, or I just felt like I was being drawn out of myself, which is a great feeling, but it's not great when you can't get your fingers to work, but I was shaking, you know?

I felt nerves that I have not felt in years before performing, but it also made me feel very alive.

- Can you explain a little bit where we are right now, and the connection to you, because it's a pretty special connection.

- Yeah, so right now we are in Tryon, North Carolina.

And I grew up just down the road a piece in Campobello, right across the state line in South Carolina.

And so I feel like I'm walking in my past.

I feel like I'm walking with Nina through our girlhood together, black mountain girls.

It's been a heavy day.

I'm on this street.

Just up the road is the Sidestreet Pizza and Pasta.

I used to go there all the time when I was in middle school, and I actually haven't been to this area since then.

So it's just been kind of jarring.

- Wow, like not at all?

- [Adia] Not at all.

- Like that's the first time you've seen that pizza joint since you were going there as a child.

- Yeah, I think last time I was there was, like, 1999.

- That's intense.

- Yeah, so it's like, I feel like I'm 12 right now, but I'm also 36, so I'm just trying not to, like, dissociate too bad on you.

- Right, right.

There's some parallels for you and me because the place that my family went for family reunions was Mebane, which is, like, 45 minutes from my hometown of Greensboro, but I never knew about Joe Thompson, who was kind of one of my teachers in this music, but I discovered him in my 20s.

And I remember you saying that you were not aware of Nina Simone when you were younger.

And to find her how I did when I did, and then to connect just how the parallels that run between our lives has just been uncanny.

Like, how did I not know?

- Yeah, we didn't listen to much secular music in my house 'cause I grew up in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church, so my world was so small, and I actually found Nina when I was in the south of France.

I was a French major in college, and in the family I was staying with was a black woman.

She put on "Four Women."

- Oh, that was your...?

- That was my introduction to Nina.

And so, unbeknownst to me, this little girl growing up in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, I was living in the shadow of musical history.

I had no idea.

- [Rhiannon] You tell stories with your music.

- I do.

- [Rhiannon] What was it about that song that...?

- Oh my God.

- [Rhiannon] You know?

- It found me, oh man, it found me at an interesting point in my life.

I'd just begun playing guitar a few years earlier, and performing publicly in Nashville for the first time.

And I was at a crossroads with my fear, and all the fears that I'd been given growing up in the Southern evangelical church, growing up a black girl in Piedmont, of just...running from myself.

And that song to me was like, it feels like a homecoming.

Hearing these women's stories, the delicacy and the determinants that Nina had in telling the specifics of these women's lives.

I could see myself in them.

I could see the pain that I had to put a mask and armor over.

So that song just was like, it was like a callous was being removed from me.

And I just remember sitting at the table in absolute silence just punched over.

And I remember asking my host, "Est-ce qui ça?

"” And she was like, "Adia...Nina Simone."

And I was like, this is Nina!

'Cause I knew the name.

- [Rhiannon] Right.

- But I didn't know the voice.

So that song found me, and then I started researching her and I was like, Tryon?

Tryon?

- Like what are you talking about?

- Yeah, so it was just like, I felt like I found this musical auntie.

- Wow, were you doing music when you were younger, or was it a different...you know?

- Well, so I started performing when I was about five in my church's choir, and I was a ham, and so I would always sing the solo in church, and get up there and ha-ha-ha, but I didn't start playing an instrument until sixth grade, and I played the tuba.

(both laughing) I played the tuba.

- You played the tuba.

- I got bullied so hard.

- Of course you did.

- It was my first year in public school after leaving my Adventist private school.

And I like show up, this little emaciated ghost.

And I fell in love with the tuba.

It made me feel as big as the tuba was.

- Wow.

- So yeah.

- You were, like, you were the, there was no mistaking who was kind of... not in control, but, like, the tuba is like, if you're on it, you're carrying everything.

- Now there was confusion because you couldn't see me, actually.

My mom took a picture of it at the recital, and it just looked like the tuba was, like, holding itself up, and they're "Where's Adia?"

And they saw my little chicken legs in the chair.

- Oh my God that's hilarious.

- I was just like, every sound, and the song that we performed was "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion because the '90s.

- [Rhiannon] Of course.

- And I just remember thinking every sound that everybody is hearing is layered on me.

Like, I am the base of this, I am the foundation.

Like I'm holding, sustaining this, you know?

A flute player, whos a flautist, can play a wrong note.

If I play the wrong note everything was just, you know?

- Right.

- Celine stopped singing.

- Right.

- Yeah, so it gave me this sense of, like, presence, and, like, power.

I was grounded with that tuba.

Also, through performing in church in choir I saw the power that being placed before people singing to them that it gave me.

I could go up there and talk and no one would listen to me.

"little black girl sit down," but if I sing to you, it was almost like calming the beast.

I learned then how to transfix people.

- Right.

- And that made people safe for me.

If I can sing to you, I can make you safe.

- So you were learning how to communicate, how to escape, before you ever physically were somewhere else.

- Before I consciously knew what I was doing, I was already creating distance between me and the church through art and expression.

We finally got cable when we moved off the mountain into Greenville, the next county over, the big city.

- Right, yeah.

- You know, big city slicker.

So I got cable and I just fell in love with pop culture.

Britney and NSYNC.

"Bye Bye Bye."

I was just like, this is great, but there was also, I needed to be fed more.

I was like, this still isn't speaking to anything like I'm going through.

Like, this has nothing to do with me.

- [Rhiannon] Right.

- And I remember my brother Shona got into Stevie Wonder, and his song "Taboo to Love."

And I fell in love with the way that Stevie could tell stories and use sounds to evoke emotions And that was ninth grade, freshman year.

And then I slowly got into my Nirvana phase, which everyone must go through, and I went through it deep.

Deep.

Kurt was my boyfriend.

And then I found Fiona.

I found Fiona Apple in 10th grade.

I smoked my first cigarette to "Fast As You Can."

- Wow.

- And that for me was the moment where I truly started thinking that I can do this.

I can mix music with my poetry because I was still writing.

I was a prolific journaler.

- Right.

- And I engaged with words and the rhythm of words almost in a musical way.

Like, words had tones and shades like different notes that you use to write, compose a piece of music.

I did that with my poetry and I saw what Fiona did bringing her poetry into her music into her poetry.

That's why I hate when people ask me "What comes first the music or...?"

I'm like, that's the stupidest question.

They're coming into being together.

- Okay, let me mark that off my list, I'm just kidding.

- No, you would not ask that question.

- I wouldn't.

- You wouldn't ask that question.

"So why do you play guitar?"

But you see what I mean, I had the musicality of words, but I didn't have the music yet.

(soft guitar intro) ♪ My baby woke me on Christmas Day ♪ ♪ He said it's time for me to go my way ♪ ♪ I asked him why he wanna say that for ♪ ♪ He just packed my bag and put me out the door ♪ ♪ And now the snow is falling through the pine ♪ ♪ You used to tell me that your home was mine ♪ ♪ At first I was sad, and then I was blue ♪ ♪ And now I'm so mad I don't know what I might do ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ It wasn't long until I heard it said ♪ ♪ You got another woman in your bed ♪ ♪ And now I'm hearing voices in my head ♪ ♪ A flash of light and I am seeing red ♪ ♪ And now you've gone and broke my heart in two ♪ ♪ You got me in a black screaming mood ♪ ♪ I got it in me to burst into flame ♪ ♪ Let the whole world burn and let the ashes rain ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ And after all the pain you put me through ♪ ♪ You better hope that I don't catch up with you ♪ ♪ And if you see my shadows through the pine ♪ ♪ Babe, it's too late; it's killing time ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ ♪ You made me a mean-hearted woman ♪ I knew then that, like, music could be a place of freedom.

At that point I was just listening to it.

And a few years later, after I'd run off to Europe, I'd run to New York and came back down South.

I moved to Atlanta, and that's when I found the blues and the guitar.

And then it just clicked.

- But how did you find it?

- My best friend was trying to be a Mormon, and so she ran away to Utah for a few months.

- Okay, I didn't see that one coming.

- Yeah, yeah, that's the story of my life.

It's like, hmm, but it connects, so.

She ran off there to try and do whatever she needed, work out what she needed to work out.

And I was in Atlanta, high school dropout.

I was working as a telemarketer at a call center.

And she left with me her car, which I didn't have a license to drive, not even a permit.

And she left me a guitar and she was like, can I park my car here, and, like, leave the guitar?

And I was like, sure.

And she had recently gotten me into Johnny Cash, and, like, Merle Haggard, and just, like, classic three-chord country.

- Right.

- And I fell in love with Johnny.

I fell in love with his ability to tell these stories about the South that looked like the South that I came from.

It was like, this reminds me of my mountain, and the simplicity of it just like the bare bones, but the poetics and the depth was saying so much with so little.

So I started learning.

The first song of Johnny's I learned was "Big River."

And so I would bring my guitar with me to work at my little cubicle, and while I was selling people phone, cable, and internet (at a very reduced rate) I would be switching back and forth to learning these chords and learning these songs.

And I would practice the chord shapes on my hand, like, on my mouse.

Like I would just always be thinking like, I started thinking intensely about my hands.

Like I started to reclaim my body bit by bit by learning the guitar.

I had to stop fighting my body 'cause I had eating disorders.

I was anorexic throughout my teenage years.

And the guitar taught me how to listen, and cherish and respect and take care of my body.

And that same year I heard for the first time Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor."

I was simultaneously taken back home, and then launched into outerspace.

- Right, right, back to go forward.

- Yes, and then I found Victoria Spivey.

- Mm, uh-hmm.

- Oh her eyes, singing and watching her.

These people gave me my Southern blackness.

- Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

- In a way that I could live.

Like I can't live out hiphop, like, I can't do it.

I can't dance for á*á*á*á*, I ain't got no ass, like, I am what I am, you know?

But I can do the blues.

- There's a huge magnolia tree behind Nina Simone's childhood home.

- Yeah.

- And you have a connection to the magnolia tree.

- Yeah.

- So can you talk about that a little bit?

- So in the South, magnolia is iconic, it's a symbol.

I grew up underneath magnolia trees in my girlhood.

And I would gather there with my little neighborhood friends, my little sisters.

And magnolia was the one place where we could build worlds 'cause everywhere else we were so policed, but underneath the magnolia we could use our imagination, we could create, and it was sacred for that.

I wrote this song, "Magnolia Blues," in the middle of the pandemic.

I was in quarantine, living with my mother in North Nashville, and outside my window in our backyard is a massive magnolia tree.

It was all I could see.

And so I kind of entered into a spiritual relationship with what this tree has meant to me.

What this tree has meant for the South at large.

What lies has this magnolia, the symbolism of it, hidden, and "“moonlight and magnolias"” and all that And so I started to want to tell the truth about the South, and "Magnolia Blues" is this reclamation of the Souths-- one of its most, like, enduring standing symbols.

And I used that tree to stand as the heart of this black woman's tale of being led away, betrayed by a lover.

And then coming back home, and what represents home in her mind is planting herself under a magnolia.

I made it honest.

- I love it.

(soft guitar intro) ♪ I followed you into the blue and north into the cold ♪ ♪ You led me off my land and you led me far from home ♪ ♪ I tried to be the kinda girl who never needed á*á*á*á* ♪ ♪ I gave you all my light and I got nothin to show for it ♪ ♪ I'm going back south to Carolina ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let that dirt do its work ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ ♪ Magnolia, a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ ♪ I made every mile move beneath my feet alone ♪ ♪ I didn't have the dime to ride the blinds ♪ ♪ To lead me back to home ♪ ♪ Well I asked the conductor, sir, ♪ ♪ Now won't you let me ride ♪ ♪ He said, baby girl, this ain't my world ♪ ♪ Train ain't nothing of mine ♪ ♪ I'm going back south down to Carolina ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let that dirt do its work ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ ♪ Magnolia, a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ ♪ Now ooh ♪ ♪ It's something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ Something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ It's something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ Something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ Ooh-ooh-oh ♪ ♪ Something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ Something in the air tonight ♪ ♪ I'm going back south down to Carolina ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let that dirt do its work ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself under a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia, a magnolia, a magnolia ♪ (logo boings) (logo whooshes)