Just Janie & Sig Wilder | Sylvia Tour

Two modern day troubadours brought together by the poetry of two Sylvia’s.

Just Janie and Sig Wilder are banding together to tour their new double single ‘Sylvia’. Fusing nostalgic Laurel Canyon folk and alt-country grit onstage in a ‘songwriter rounds’ format, they will be sharing the songs and stories of the music that made them.

Sig and Janie met earlier this year in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and realized they’d both written songs titled ‘Sylvia’, influenced by poetry collections from Sylvia Plath and Sylvia Legris. After performing together, the duo knew there was something special when their voices merged. Now they’re bringing that magic to the stage.

‘Sylvia’ includes two tracks, written individually and recorded together.

Sylvia I, written and composed by Just Janie, is a response to reading Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection Ariel. After picking up the collection at Scorpio Books in Ōtautahi and feeling drawn in from the two cover lines: ‘I rise with my red hair, and eat men like air’, Janie was flawed by the collection. This is a song to deal with the trauma of reading Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia II, written and composed by Sig Wilder, is a response to reading Sylvia Legris’s poetry collection Garden Physic. With each page Sig, who is also a gardener, discovered a wealth of complex plant references and botanical histories. He was inspired by the botanical glossolalia seemingly of Sylvia’s own invention and the collection’s ability to create music from language. ‘How to write about flowers without the nauseating sentimental phraseology?’ Legris writes. This is song is an exploration of the language of plants and the haunting relationship between poet and reader.

Drawing inspiration from the folk scene of the late sixties and early seventies, Central Otago-born artist Just Janie has a crisp and tender style, creating worlds for listeners to melt into. Raised in the American Midwest and now living under the Southern Cross, Sig Wilder’s music is a journey through the hills and plains of Aotearoa, weaving the nostalgia and sorrow of Americana into the fabric of Aotearoa’s musical landscape.