Dedicated mother and kindergarten teacher Virginia Fudge has blossomed into a versatile singer-songwriter with her new EP All These Little Games.
This all-female collaboration sees the versatile Fudge teaming with former Repartee vocalist and fellow Newfoundlander Meg Warren, whom Fudge shared helped fine-tune her work “through the amazing filter of her perspective right from the start.”
With her leadoff single Dragonfly landing on Spotify’s editorial playlist Indie All-Stars and Make Us Work hitting the CIOE East Coast Top 30, the sky is truly the limit for an artist who seamlessly blends catchy pop hooks with layers of grunge, art rock and folk.
Fudge caught up with The Herald to break down All These Little Games in the latest of our Herald’s album deep dive series.
DRAGONFLY
Dragonfly is about looking for freedom when life seems to get in the way of your happiness. When we recorded it, everything just seemed to come together in the right way.
Meg’s suggestion to hum the intro bass lines changed the game completely. That’s when I knew I was working with someone who had really great ideas and I handed the reins over to her in a way I never had in the past.
Dragonfly is featured on Spotify’s Indie All Stars playlist and I just couldn’t believe it when I found out! It also features Maggie Rogers, Fleet Foxes, Andy Shauf, Mac Demarco and many other acts I love. I hope I never get over the feeling of pride I have that this happened.
RELATED: DEEP DIVE Local Blues Rockers Beauwater Break Down latest album 'Who Works For Who?' Award-winning singer-songwriter David Picco breaks down sixth studio album Live It Down Award-winning musician Rosemary Lawton walks readers through new album 'Canvas'
RUN HIDE FALL
Usually, when I write I’m working through my own problems and joys, but this time I wrote for someone else. I wanted them to know that if everything else failed them, I would still be there.
I hope that folks will relate to this tune and that it makes them think of someone they love too.
I like that the vocals have a childlike quality and it was awesome that we managed to get such a lonely, perfect sound out of my childhood piano. This song sparkles and shimmers towards the end and I love how pretty it turned out.
SMOKING
I often write to process what’s happening around me. I was mad and hurt when I wrote Smoking. Like most of my tunes it was quickly written, but this time using Ableton.
I found this big fuzzy synth bass sound and it was kind of silly, but I think it allowed Meg to hear the song’s inner 80’s gloss/energy. In creating the track how she did she turned the song’s drama-filled skeleton into something fit for Stranger Things!
MAKE US WORK
I call Make Us Work a plea for resolution. In it, I am trying any way I can to lift the weight of a long and difficult relationship. This was the first single I released. I remember feeling so proud when I got the first mix of this song, I just cried and cried. I couldn’t believe that it had been elevated to such a beautiful place.
CHIT CHATTER
Chit Chatter was the first song that we worked on together. Meg had an interesting idea to run the voice memo for this song through a guitar amp to get this distorted, 90’s-reminiscent energy on the piano intro.
For me, this set the tone for the song and in a sense for the EP too. My friend thinks this song sounds chill and industrial. That makes sense to me, because I have a deep love for heavy music but my songs often come out as pop ballads.
I THINK WE’RE WILD
I Think We’re Wild is a love song for my partner. I had written Run Hide Fall earlier that day and was happy about how it turned out.
It seemed like my happy moments were stacking up in the best kind of way and I started thinking.
You know, if I just get 10 more years of this amount of happy … creative, loved, my family well … then I could walk out of my life and say that I had lived the way I wanted. So I sat at the piano to write my second song for the day, and this is the ballad I chose to end the album with.