Growing Pains: A korero with Wiri Donna

Words by Hannah Powell. Images by Joe Roy Nicholson, and Chris Hines.

Yo Vocal talked to Wellington artist Wiri Donna. On a Friday evening over a scheduled Zoom, we yarned about her sound, the project, female solo artistry, and the upcoming festival Welcome to Nowhere. You’re in for a treat.

Meet Bianca Bailey. “I was playing drums in a lot of bands, and I’ve always played drums in bands, and I love it,” Bianca says. “[But] I sort of wanted to try out an indie-folk project, so I started writing those songs around the start of 2018”. Introducing, Wiri Donna. Her sound self-described as dinky riff rock, Bianca’s latest project is one to listen too.

It took off in April last year when she released a two-track EP. “It was sort of on a whim,” Bianca explains. “[I thought] ‘I think I just need to put something out there; otherwise, I’m never going to commit to it’”. Soon after, she had a slot at San Fran’s Eyegum and a VMorg gig, playing alongside bands Avant Glass, Ski Resort, and another one of her own, Lilith. Wiri Donna had her live debut.

But it wasn’t all easy. Scrambling to get a band together in the weeks before her gig, Bianca tells me it was a stressful launch. It was her support crew that saved the day. “My best mates, at the last minute, were like “we wanna do this with you”,” she said. They played the two shows together, aced it, and told her, “you’ve gotta keep doing this, you can’t stop. You’ve just gotta keep playing”.

Spending some time on Radioactive FM’s Top 10, Wiri Donna has been well received. ‘Sprouts’, an EP about plants, features Bianca’s singles Manuka Money and Wandering Willies. A live version of Manuka Money was released in December last year, the track mixed and mastered by Jasmine Rose Phillips. Having recorded a bunch of songs in September, including her latest release, she had HUMMUCIDE’s Ben Stewart film the live session. “He did a really beautiful job,” she says.

A song about making money out of manuka trees, Manuka Money, was cooked up in the car. After returning to the south Kaipara for the summer, Bianca was excited to be kanohi ki te kanohi with the local community helping them with their landscaping pursuits. When she turned up, her boss had her go down to the nursery for the week instead, repotting tiny manuka trees to sell for “a dollar fifty a pop”. Baffled by the fact he had acquired such a number of trees; she was further astounded by the profit he would be making from the natural resource. She put it into words on the drive back home. 

“[With song-writing there’s] this fun, whimsical aspect to it, and then also I’m like, this is how I’ve always gone to process anything in my life – to just write music about it,” she says.

 I go on to ask Bianca what it’s like being a solo musician, interested in her experience being a young woman in the industry. “There are some parts of it that are really magical, and really powerful, particularly in the Wellington music scene” she says.

“There are a lot of people who want to see you do that and are so supportive – they are going to do everything in their power to help you succeed. But at the end of the day, you can’t deny the fact there’s still a bit of a boys club around”. The biggest thing she’s learned in music? “To understand what you can control…and to learn to love [it]”. One thing Bianca is looking forward to is Welcome to Nowhere. “I’m going to Welcome to Nowhere, I’m going to be playing at the festival, and it’s going to be lovely,” she says.

Going to Welcome to Nowhere for the first time last year, she fell in love with the whole community and what it was about. “It felt amazing to be a part of something,” she said. “What I really love with Welcome to Nowhere is that there is no one massive headline act that everyone’s coming to see… it’s actually an amalgamation of small local bands. Not only is that a great thing for festival-goers to go and see, but it’s also a great experience for the [artists]”.

After Welcome to Nowhere, Wiri Donna will be accompanying DARTZ on their NZ tour. March will see a Wiri Donna and Friends extravaganza. She’ll be taking her time for her next EP. But never fear, Bianca let slip on plans for something else in March this year.