There is something about Gigi Gold that feels completely considered. The music, the styling, the photography, the visual world around it – everything feels like it belongs together. I first came across Gigi through mutual connections after her drummer Elliot and, more recently, guitarist Zak joined the band. I love the music, but I was equally drawn to everything she had built around it. Reading her story made me appreciate that world even more, because behind something that now feels so assured is a journey that has involved repeatedly finding the confidence to trust herself.
Gigi grew up in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, in an old coal and steel town she describes with a mixture of honesty and affection. There wasn’t much for teenagers to do and the underground music scene that did exist was largely punk, hardcore and heavily dominated by men. At home, though, music was constant. Her dad played The Beatles relentlessly, while mainstream rock and alternative radio filled in the gaps.
“I remember being in preschool, watching The Beatles movies and imagining myself on stages performing,” she says. Singing followed early too, with Gigi joining choir in fourth grade and staying until university. The desire to be in a band was already there – she just couldn’t really see anyone around her showing her how that might happen.
That changed when she moved four hours across West Virginia to Shepherdstown for university. Newly single, knowing almost nobody and properly on her own for the first time, she found a tiny town bursting with the kind of creative community she hadn’t experienced before.
“I liken it to a hippie Stars Hollow run by college kids and Peter Pan types,” she laughs.
There were open mics, gigs in bars and restaurants, shows inside an old train station, a church converted into an apartment and even fields beside the river. More importantly, women were at the forefront of it. Gigi found herself surrounded by people making art without waiting for somebody else to give them permission. Soon she was going to potlucks, hunting for records at flea markets and performing at open mics herself. She met her first songwriting partner and, before long, formed her first band.
It was proof that the world she had imagined as a kid actually existed.
But knowing you want to make music and feeling confident enough to fully occupy that space are different things. Gigi is open about how difficult those early band years could be.
“I was so riddled with anxiety, imposter syndrome, and often I let that hold me back,” she says. “I would get anxious just going to band practices.”
That followed her after moving to the UK too. Therapy, coaching and actively working on her mindset eventually helped loosen the grip of perfectionism and self-doubt. Gigi had always written lyrics and melodies, but often deferred to the men around her when it came to bigger creative decisions. It wasn’t until those previous projects ended that she finally had room to ask what music might sound like with nobody else setting the boundaries.
Gigi Gold grew from that space.
Her sound now sits somewhere around Indie Americana Rock, pulling from classic rock, folk, blues and modern alternative music without becoming overly concerned with staying inside any one of them. She still questions herself – “I think that comes with being an artist” – but has learned to recognise when something belongs within the world she’s creating.
“The feeling I follow to determine what feels ‘right’ is a mixture of excitement and peace,” she explains. “There’s a certain comfort that comes after the newness wears off.”
Songwriting is similarly instinctive. Gigi describes lyric writing as “a strange mix of mathematic formula and black magic”. Ideas tend to arrive uninvited while she’s driving, doing the dishes or trying to sleep, with words and melodies appearing together before the more deliberate work begins.
“How do you tell a whole story, express complex emotions, paint a picture and make it all rhyme in like 100 words, many of them repeating?” she says. “It’s this really fun, sometimes frustrating puzzle.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, home has become one of the more complicated ideas within that writing.
Gigi moved to the UK at 21 or 22 after meeting her now-husband while he was touring America with his former band. Their relationship survived long distance, visas and an international move, but the reality of leaving West Virginia was harder than the romantic version of that story might suggest. She graduated university and was on a plane around a week later.
“I didn’t really have time to close it out in my head,” she says. “I just jumped in, feet first.”
Suddenly she was living inside somebody else’s hometown, family, friendship group, career and music scene. Unable to work or drive initially, she also lost some of the independence she had worked hard to build in Shepherdstown.
“It was like I undid everything I had built by moving there and starting fresh on my own terms.”
Slowly, she rebuilt. Moving from Hertfordshire to Northamptonshire and beginning Gigi Gold became particularly important, giving her the opportunity to form a band, find new songwriting partners and create what she calls her “own little corner” of the local scene.
That feeling of belonging to two places without ever completely belonging to either sits beautifully inside You Belong.
“No matter where I’m talking about – the US or UK – it’s both ‘us and them’ at the same time,” she says. “Both places are home, but you’ve never fully unpacked your suitcase.”
The song began years before Gigi Gold existed, with Gigi climbing out of bed at 1am to record an idea into her phone. Its verses largely survived from that original voice note, eventually developing into a conversation between her and the people she left behind. There’s happiness in the life she has built here, but an acknowledgement of everything continuing without her back home.
That push and pull makes the importance Gigi places on community particularly understandable. Grassroots venues, to her, remove the distance between performer and audience.
“The small venues, the intimate festivals, they just feel like community. They feel real,” she says. “These little venues are where you build the fanbase and remember we’re all real people sharing the experience of live music.”
Representation matters within those rooms too. Gigi remembers growing up without seeing many women participating in her local scene and feeling that unless she was exceptionally talented or lucky, there simply wasn’t a route for her. Now she consciously prioritises women where she can – photographers, videographers, designers and producers – and hopes to eventually add the right female musician to the band.
“Wherever we can lift each other up, I will do what I can.”
It’s remarkable, then, how much has happened since Gigi Gold properly entered the world. There’s been the Souvenirs EP, a record deal, shows across the UK and Europe and even singing live with Rise Against. Yet when Gigi reflects on what has meant the most, she doesn’t immediately reach for the biggest names or stages.
“It’s usually the quiet shared moments with my bandmates that stand out the most,” she says. “Most importantly, it’s the satisfaction I feel that I’m creating something I love with people I love.”
That philosophy carries into how she defines success, and it might be my favourite part of her story.
Gigi knows talent and hard work don’t automatically guarantee a conventional music career. Luck and timing exist. So rather than handing her sense of achievement over to an industry she cannot control, she measures it through the things she can.
“My version of success is measured by whether I’m happy with the songs I’ve written and the amount of effort I put into my craft,” she says. “As long as I’m proud of my work and the effort I put in, I can rest easy at night.”
Right now, there is plenty to feel excited about. New member Zak is being thrown straight into band life, songwriting is taking priority and studio time is booked for December. Before then, new single Easy Come arrives on 14 October, alongside shows supporting Jared James Nichols at The Craufurd Arms in Milton Keynes on 30 September and Liam Cromby at The Barfly in London on 8 October, before a Northampton show on 20 November.
After years of session musicians helping bring the project to life, Gigi feels something shifting behind the scenes too. “We’re really starting a new chapter where we’re becoming more of a unit and a true band.”
Maybe that’s why her story feels less like a series of reinventions and more like a gradual process of getting closer to herself. West Virginia, Shepherdstown, moving countries, different bands, anxiety, starting again – none of those versions have been discarded. They have all found their way into the artist she is now.
“The time will pass no matter what you do with it,” Gigi says. “So why not start now?”
There’s something wonderfully freeing about that, particularly from someone who once struggled to believe there was space for her at all. Gigi Gold hasn’t found one perfect box to belong in. She’s built something far more interesting instead – a world that feels like hers, and a version of success she can call her own.
Listen and follow Gigi Gold:
https://gigigoldmusic.com/
For upcoming shows:
https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15535700-gigi-gold
