Locked in for Volta show

KICKING off her eight-date regional tour, Melbourne songwriter and visual artist Jess Locke is set to headline a set at Ballarat’s Volta on Friday, 12 February, supported by local solo artist Tim Currie.

“I’m very excited, it will be great to be able to play some shows face to face with people,” she said.

“I’ve played a couple of solo shows at the end of last year after being in lockdown for so long, and that was really nice so it will be really nice to get back on the road and be able to play to people.

“Ballarat’s great, it’s just down the road so it’s always nice to get a chance to pop in.”

Locke’s regional Victorian tour comes ahead of the release of her upcoming album Don’t Ask Yourself Why. It’s her third studio album and includes a collection of twelve heartfelt and raw songs.

Although her singles Dead And Gone, Destroy Everything and Fool have already been released, Locke said there’s “a mix of styles and feelings” still to come from the LP.

“We recorded it before COVID was a thing, but it’s funny lots of people have noted that the themes in the album reflect some of the cynicism and darkness we were all feeling throughout the year,” she said.

“There’s so many issues that relate to what we have all been through in the last year like isolation, looking at the political dividedness, looking at truth and the media, I went deep into a lot of these ideas because that’s what I was thinking about at the time but seems very appropriate now.”

“Musically, the album is a bit experimental in terms of the style, there’s some folkier, sombre tunes, there’s some grungy lo-fi ones and piano ballads as well.”

Although the album won’t yet be released before the regional tour, Locke said she’s excited to debut some of the songs and gauge how a live audience responds.

“We recorded the record in November 2019 and it was completed mixed and mastered by February, so it was really nice to have actually made the record before all the craziness of last year,” she said.

“These regional shows are just me solo, so it will be nice for me to play through some of the new songs and obviously I’ll play some of the old songs too.

“Being able to actually perform the songs I wrote, some of them even several years ago, is such a different thing than just putting them out in the internet.”

To buy a ticket for Jess Locke’s Volta show, visit bit.ly/2YL6RSN.