Post-punk/psychedelic/glam-rocker VIVA explores the function of loss in the creation of art with in her new queer musical tragicomedy podcast I Love Olivia

Why is it so hard to tell happy stories? Why do sad songs win the Grammys? Why do people look at car crashes? What does this mean for the future of American culture and the current reality of two lesbian lovers calling it quits in modern-day New York City?

Post-punk/psychedelic/glam-rock singer-songwriter and guitarist VIVA's new podcast I Love Olivia (to be released this October 8) explores the answers to these questions as well as the function of loss in the creation of art by telling the stories behind the songs of her latest album, Living Well is the Best Revenge. It’s a rollicking break-up album unlike any you’ve ever heard, and with a companion podcast to match. 

When VIVA’s love affair with a female author fell apart, she didn’t expect the story of their relationship’s demise to be displayed in a novel. Much less, that it would be told so differently from the way things had really gone down. VIVA knew she had to tell the story her own way so, the self-titled ‘older, lesbian Ty Segall,’ turned once again to rock-and-roll to fill in the colors. 

For VIVA, rock-and-roll has always been about transformation and transcendence, and her way of processing the confusion and loss that came with the heart-rending breakup was to create some of the witchiest music of her career. She conjured alter egos with different genders, backstories, and names (Veronica Pierre and Charlie Columbine) and wrote songs about them, fictionalizing the reality to get to the truth through the music. The resulting podcast is a ten-episode narrative-driven queer musical tragicomedy filled with engaging storytelling and interspersed with soul-rectifying rock songs. Sometimes it is hilarious, other times, it will break your heart.

As a younger musician, VIVA moved to New York City in 1995 and honed her rhythmic and theatrical rock chops during a nine-year stint with legendary Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista’s percussion funk theatre group Beat the Donkey. She toured the world with the popular ensemble for ten years, before then falling into queer theater, performing with Taylor Mac on his ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,’ for which a New York Times reviewer gave a nod to the “virtuosity [of her] guitar shredding.

Throughout it all, VIVA has always committed herself to the craft of writing songs and she began releasing her own solo material around 2006.  Her first official solo-album Electric Cabaret came out in 2008 to high acclaim, with a stellar write-up in Guitar Player Magazine. In 2010, her second album Rock & Roll Lover earned her a glorious epithet with The Aquarian Magazine calling her “the musical love child of Little Richard and Joan Jett,” and her 2012 Rhinestones and Rust saw further praise when The Baltimore City Paper declared "Viva has a beautiful voice, solid songwriting chops, and she fucking shreds the guitar." and "Her cover of “Cocaine Blues” is the best we’ve heard, this side of Johnny Cash. "

“A lot of my music is theatrical, and my style of guitar playing is theatrical,” says VIVA. “So it made sense for me to apprentice with Cyro all those years ago because the Brazilians are very heavy on groove, and costumes, and the presentation of a complete spectacle, and that was a gateway into theatre and other experimental approaches to musical storytelling. Viva has continued to carry this flair for dramatic storytelling into new creative modes and platforms of expression, from rock-and-roll shows in dingy dive-bars to the avante-garde queer on metropolitan theatre stages ...and now into the digital realms of the podcast.   

This year, on top of her podcast and album release, she musical-directed Machine Dazzles's original music and fashion show Treasure, which just sold-out a three-night run at Guggenheim Works and Process Series the Sept. 5-7th.