Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaia Wilbour.
Hi Jaia, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
Our story starts in 2003. I met my bandmate Raina Gravatt at the Waldorf kindergarten in Viroqua, Wisconsin after my family had moved there from the Twin Cities. We quickly became best friends, and remained close all the way into high school which is when we started getting into music. Both being self-taught, we started off playing covers of our favorite songs and performing at local open mics and various events at our high school. It wasn’t long before we started writing our own songs, and being best friends we had a very natural chemistry that bled into our music. Through the support of the abundant musical community in the Driftless region where we lived, we quickly became a well-established band in the area and were playing shows all around the Midwest.
By the time we were graduating high school in 2016, we were ready to dive head-first into being full time musicians. We threw ourselves a graduation party where we raised money to buy our first tour vehicle, a 2004 Pontiac Montana which we built a platform bed in with storage space underneath for our instruments, and we headed out on the road for our first cross-country tour which brought us to Colorado, California, Oregon, and back to Wisconsin. Once settled back in the Midwest we began preparing to record our first album, Out In The Woods, which we released the following spring in 2017. It was also around this time that Raina’s brother Lucas joined as our bass player and official third member. Following the release of our album, we embarked on an album release tour that brought us all around the Midwest, and back to the West Coast. Returning home after our album release tour, we realized we were at a cross-road. Having wanted to do nothing but music since our early teens, now as young twenty-somethings, we were realizing we needed to take some time apart and explore the world on our own for a while.
I decided to move out to Colorado and go to college, Raina went out to California, and Lucas held it down in Viroqua. However, best friends as we were it wasn’t long before Raina decided to join me in Colorado, and shortly after, Lucas followed along as well. Now, with the three of us out on the Front Range, we were excited to jump back into music and see what the music community in the Rockies had to offer us. Unfortunately, this was right around the beginning of 2020, and we all know what happened in 2020… Now closer to home in the heart of Minneapolis, we are finally getting a chance to reintroduce ourselves to the thriving music scene that is happening here, and are excited to see where it takes us!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
There are always challenges when working closely with other people, especially creatively, but we’ve had our share of other challenges. The pandemic seemed to come at the worst time for so many people. For us, it came right when we wanted to get back into performing. But as the restrictions faded away in 2021, we began missing the vibrant creative communities in the midwest and were called back home. Moving across multiple states also came with its fair share of challenges as one might expect. Financially drained and unfamiliar with the new scene, it was tough to get back to performing again, but like anything, it’s taking time and we’re doing it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
If we were to say there is something that sets us apart from other bands it would be how close we are in our personal relationships with one another. Having quite literally grown up together, we are very intuitive when it comes to collaborating with one another in our songwriting and the composition of our songs. We have received a lot of comments on our harmonies, as our voices meld together very naturally. The bond that the three of us share definitely comes through in our music and is very much at the core of who we are as a band.
What’s next?
As of right now our main focus is reintegrating ourselves back into the Midwest music scene and playing as much as we can. Due to the unfortunate circumstances, the pandemic has had on the music industry the future feels very uncertain for a lot of us, but the capacity that music has in bringing people together in trying times like these is something that keeps us hopeful and inspired. In the meantime, we plan on continuing to release a number of recordings over the coming months and are looking forward to the summer where we’ll be returning to some of our favorite venues and music festivals, including the Bonfire Music Festival at Driftless Music Gardens in June.
Contact Info:
- Email: thebandanima@gmail.com
- Website: https://thebandanima.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebandanima
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebandanima
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcnwh1WlsMSq15QOAZiV_gA
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thebandanima
Image Credits
Soul Exposure Photography
