Anima

In kindergarten, Raina Gravatt and Jaia Wilbour formed a friendship. Around a decade later, they formed something new—a band called Anima, a Latin word that the two young women collectively defined as “life, breath, spirit and existence.” They can pinpoint the naming of the band to a single phone conversation. One of them was on the east coast, one on the west, and somewhere in the middle, they came up with the name. With the two of them now on the cusp of graduating from high school, they are poised to explore such existential concepts in what they have set to be a seriously epic summer.
The band itself is relatively new, although the girls have been writing, playing and performing together for a number of years. They classify their music under the expansive umbrella of modern folk. “People tell us we’re part of the transcendentalist movement,” says Gravatt.
They also report that they are experimenting with the interplay of their voices and with their instrumental work (acoustic to electric, guitars to keyboards to drums). Their voices blend and move over lyrics like water smoothing stones. You can almost hear the layers of their years together expanding through song.
Anima’s growth springs from the girls’ Driftless roots in Viroqua, an area rich in musical talent, inspiring landscapes, songwriter jams and backcountry fests. Anima got pulled into the scene rather easily. “We’ve been lucky. We’ve been asked to play rather than asking to play,” notes Wilbour.
They are a quietly dynamic pair, passionate and youthfully fearless—busking together on the streets of Chicago and St. Louis, regularly opening for Natty Nation, hanging with members of Cloud Cult—not to be dismissed as the frivolity of youth.
You can sample their work via the Internet, but to experience this mystical, uplifting, inspirational, up-and-coming band, a live performance is the straightest shot. Anima will play a number of upcoming Midwestern fests: Bonfire Music and Arts Festival, Larryfest and Venus Fest. But their grandest summer endeavor is a cross-country road trip and tour through Colorado, lingering in California and ending in Oregon—all in an as-of-yet-unobtained van. The duo plans to have a benefit concert to raise money for the vehicle, and then off they’ll go, laying new tracks—physically, musically and existentially. - Seven Magazine

Anima, a local two-person band in Viroqua comprised of Jaia Wilbour, 18, and Raina Gravatt, 18, is moving on to bigger things traveling to the west coast this summer.

Both girls grew up with dreams of being musicians, and they have been friends since kindergarten.

“I can’t even remember becoming friends because it happened when we were so young,” Wilbour said.

They both started playing music separately at slightly different times, but in high school they decided to try doing some covers together. They built up a repertoire performing at open microphone shows in La Crosse, those being their first public performances.

“That’s when we started to busk at the farmer’s market, and write a little bit of our own original stuff, and it all sort of just snowballed from there,” Wilbour said.

The pair were musically influenced early by what they heard on the radio — modern pop. But more importantly, they were interested in the Viroqua music scene including Cloud Cult and musician Sandler Waggoner.

“We listened to a lot of 1960s music including Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead,” Wilbour said. “We’ve listened to a lot of modern folk music.”

Gravatt and Wilbour have had difficulty classifying what genre their music fits into, but Wilbour said it’s best described as “original alternative folk.”

The duo have 16 songs on their play list with more always in the works.

Just two weeks after their high school graduation and they’re ready to make a major musical leap. They’re going to tour and have plans this fall to get started on recording an album. They are excited to have the freedom that comes with high school graduation. Balancing high school and music was the biggest challenge for both of them, they said.

“It got really hard at the end of the school year when everything was so busy with school and music and trying to juggle the two, and it kinda made it feel like we never had time for anything else,” Wilbour said.

Both girls are excited to have the next foreseeable amount of time available to dedicate to their creative sides. Their plans for the fall are to find a space to live in Viroqua and work full time on an album, something their fans are eagerly awaiting.

“At this point we have almost no recorded music, and it’s really hard as a musician to have no recorded music because people want your music,” Wilbour said.

This summer they will be heading off on a tour of the West Coast to spread their music farther. They are raising money for a tour vehicle, and for the past few months they have been reaching out to people, promoting themselves and asking to play. They have been doing all of the work themselves with only a little advice from people to help them along.

“We have five shows so far, and they’re all on the 101 Highway going north,” Gravatt said.

Their parents, wary at first, are getting more confident about the tour. Musically, their parents have been nothing but supportive all of their lives. They were the ones who bought the girls their first guitars, the ones who drove them everywhere when they still needed that and then started lending them their cars to go to shows.

“My parents have been inspiring to me musically because some of my first memories are of my mom or dad playing guitar downstairs as I fell asleep or singing me to sleep,” Gravatt said. “I grew up with the sounds of guitar and it almost feels nostalgic sometimes. I think this is part of the reason I’m a musician, like it’s in my blood.”

Having their parents worried about them has made the girls feel more prepared than would ever be possible without them.

To date, the highest profile gig they’ve had the opportunity to play was Bonfire Music Festival in Hillsboro a couple of weeks ago.

“The lineup included so many amazing musicians from all over the mid-west, and we met so many people in the music industry and what not,” Wilbour said. “And it was by far the biggest stage we’ve ever played on.”

After their tour they’ll be back to play Larryfest in August and then focus on the CD come fall. They are both grateful about the way things are happening. They are surrounded by “All the opportunity they could possibly want right now,” as Gravatt put it, and they are excited to be able to focus on their music together.

They see themselves relocating to a bigger city as the eventual plan, but for now they are “Hopefully getting an apartment together, getting a kitty and naming it ‘Wumpus,’” Gravatt said.

As two talented musicians and two good friends, they have a bright and shining future together creating art and it started in Viroqua. - Vernon County Broadcaster