Victoria’s performances at the 2008 CCMAs in Winnipeg generated a huge buzz, inspiring praise from the toughest critics in the business and establishing her as one of the top new Canadian female artists to watch. She was labeled a “new sensation”, “Canada’s secret weapon”, and an “overnight success”. But tell that to Victoria, and she throws back her head and laughs. “Wow, ‘overnight success’? I feel more like a survivor!”

You would think life has been an easy ride for Victoria. Described by Nashville’s Music Row Magazine as one of “the best songwriters in the business”, she made Billboard chart history by co-writing Jessica Simpson’s “Come on Over” (the highest new artist debut on record)… she scored the number 1 most downloaded song on iTunes with Jessica Simpson’s “Remember That”… she penned the ASCAP and SOCAN award-winning Sara Evans hit “Saints & Angels”, the acclaimed “Arizona Rain” by 3 of Hearts, the title track from American Idol Kristy Lee Cook’s “Why Wait” and earned international songwriting awards for many more. She has collaborated with artists from Gretchen Wilson to Julie Roberts, and shared the stage with superstars from Randy Bachman to Alabama.

But there are some things about Victoria that might surprise you. For instance, as a child in Muskoka, Ontario the girl who now makes her living strumming a guitar nearly lost a finger cutting logs to survive the long winters in her family’s wood-heated cottage. She was raised listening to nothing but antique phonograph records. She scribbled song lyrics in the margins of her calculus notes and spent the summers in a wetsuit studying fish at the bottom of the lake while earning a degree in Zoology from the University of Toronto. She waited tables, washed dishes and painted houses to earn her way to songwriting mecca Nashville, Tennessee, where she spent her first winter living on band mate Deric Ruttan’s couch and playing guitar with her mittens on with no money to spend on electricity. And that was just the beginning. It took ten years of hard knocks in the music business and the heartache of escaping an abusive marriage for Victoria to finally become an “overnight success”.

Victoria pours every ounce of the joy and pain of that journey into her music. She is a master of her craft as a songwriter - from her track record you would expect nothing less – but you haven’t really heard a Victoria Banks song until you’ve heard Victoria sing it. She makes her music come alive with a uniquely passionate voice that can take you from elation to tears and back again with its raw emotional honesty. Sit in the audience at one of her shows and take a look at the faces around you, and you will understand why this woman was born to be exactly where she is. Looking like Canada’s answer to Sheryl Crow and playing the guitar with adept confidence, she is perfectly at home on stage. She’s a true entertainer.

Victoria’s much anticipated debut CD (scheduled for release on On Ramp records in early 2009) is sure to be everything that the CCMA buzz predicted it would be – a masterpiece of songwriting from an exceptionally talented voice which will secure Victoria’s place as one of the most respected artists in the Canadian music industry.


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