A Long-Gestating 'Egg': Live and Local with Riggings - Chapelboro.com

Posted by Aaron Keck | Jun 18, 2024 | Live & Local

Alex Riggs (Riggings) returned to Live and Local this week, ahead of the release of her new album “Egg.”

Follow Alex on Instagram.

Alex Riggs has been one of the Triangle’s most prolific artists for nearly a decade – but “Egg” is her first full-length album as Riggings, corresponding with her own gender transition.

“‘Egg’ is just referring to someone who doesn’t know they’re trans,” she says. “They’re an egg that hasn’t cracked yet.”

Recorded in 2022 but even more relevant today, many of the songs on “Egg” are explicitly political: lead single “Old Bones,” for instance, is a reaction against the current anti-trans backlash among right-wing politicians. But Riggs has always written in many directions – so the album also includes “The Birds Knew First,” about the experience of coming to a personal self-realization long after everyone else already figured it out. Or “Windshield Spider,” which Riggs describes as “a weird fantasy number about a bunch of angels in the forest on a boring Tuesday, rehearsing for the apocalypse.”

Riggs recorded it all at Betty’s, Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill studio, alongside producer Alli Rogers.

“It’s one of those amazing places,” Riggs says of the studio. “(Alli) went to the closet and took down this box of guitar pedals and (said), ‘Just find something that speaks to you.’ Something did – one of those DIY pedals, completely silver, unpainted, (with) one button to turn on, and one unlisted knob, and the only words on it were in Sharpie, and they read ‘STEELY DAN.’ And that’s the sound of the guitar solo in ‘Old Bones.'”

(Did she ever get the story behind the pedal? “Nope, and I never want to!”)

Click here to pre-order “Egg” on Bandcamp. The full album drops on Friday, June 21.

Alex Riggs stopped by Live & Local and played three songs: “Windshield Spider,” “High and Lonesome Racket,” and a Richard & Linda Thompson cover, “The Calvary Cross.”

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