At 22 years old, hannah vig is making strides in the Ottawa music scene, releasing her first album what a way to pass time and performing at Bluesfest in July.
She’s come a long way from singing with her family for home videos and performing in front of small audiences as a teenager. vig — whose name is stylized in all-lowercase — was only 15 years old when she performed a cover with her friend of “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” by Meghan Trainor, featuring John Legend, at a local coffee house fundraiser in Burlington, Ont.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, vig picked up a guitar and began to play for the first time. Thus beginning her songwriting journey.
Supported by many of her friends along the way, vig performed for her largest crowd yet – some 200 people — at Club SAW in March 2022.
“I was so nervous but after three or four songs I was like, wait, ‘I’m kind of chilling. This is kind of fun,’” she said.
vig didn’t initially see herself as a musician. From a young age, a “good chunk” of her childhood was spent writing short stories and hoping to become an author.
“It’s kind of funny because I did end up being a writer,” she said, “just not the kind of writer I anticipated.”
vig’s debut album dabbles in numerous genres, both lyrically and sonically. Soft rock melodies and electric undertones heard in songs like “lose it” and “body bag” encompass the conflicting, frustrated emotions she faced while in a relationship.
In tracks like “least favorite goodbye,” vig leans mellower and acoustic folk tunes that represent the ache of letting go of someone special. The softer melodies at a slower tempo give vig’s vocals space to shine above soft instrumentals.
In many ways, the music vig produces allows her to share personal stories and experiences. vig said she first started writing because of the catharsis she found while dealing with “big feelings.”
“When I first came out in 2020, I started dating someone who was very unkind to me. When we broke up I realized the extent of how horrible things were and didn’t really find a lot of media that resonated with me on that front,” she said.
“I just found there to be a lack of media talking about really awful, toxic, unhealthy queer relationships, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna write about this.’”
vig is an open book, she said, and that transparency comes through in her music.
“My writing has always been a way for me to deal with things, and I do hope that people resonate with it,” she said. “I’ve had people after shows being like, ‘Oh my God, this one song made me cry,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I cried writing it.’”
“I find hannah’s strongest skill is her songwriting ability and her ability to convey her thoughts in a clever and unique way,” said Kieran Isley, a musician who worked with vig to produce her album. “Her words are very poetic in a way that not everybody can necessarily put their own spin on.”
vig added she hopes to be a source of inspiration for queer and women voices in Ottawa’s music scene.
“There have been a lot of shows that I’ve played where I’m the only woman or woman-adjacent person setting foot on the stage the entire night,” vig said. “It’s kind of a bummer, because I know a lot of really talented female musicians.”
Audience responses influence vig’s creative processes and how she structures her sound.
While she loves seeing the crowd pumped through her rock music, she also enjoys leaning into the acoustic folk genre where it’s just her and her guitar.
“I’ve never been someone who really likes boxes. I don’t like to limit myself,” she said. “I like to do everything.”
Off stage, vig frequently writes music on the side, finding inspiration in the wordly (like her trip to the South of France that inspired her album favourite, “french exits”) as well as the hyper-local (like her part-time job at the Ottawa Public Library).
“I’m always writing. I’ll be at work and I’ll think of a line and I’ll jot it on a post-it note and stick it in my jeans pocket,” vig said. “I’ll pull out my laundry and there’s loose post notes in the dryer trap. Sometimes I’ll be able to piece it together, and sometimes they’re gone and I’m like, ’Well, there goes a hit.’”
vig has collaborated with numerous local Ottawa artists while performing and working on her album. When organizing her own shows, vig said she looks for newer musicians as openers (“I really do like being able to give other artists an opportunity to have a stage.”)
Student musician and photographer Adel Manji has collaborated with vig and worked with her to shoot her album cover.
“She’s just genuine and honest, and everything she writes is very from the heart,” Manji said of vig.
But for vig, there’s always some room for improvement.
“There will be the occasional time where I wish I could be doing more or I wish I could be doing things on a larger scale like performing in Toronto,” she said. “But either way I’m relatively happy with where I’m at.
“Playing music with my best friends is enough for me to feel very proud.”
Featured image by Ito Umanah/the Charlatan
