Biography
Victoria Banks' debut album "When You Can Fly" made her the most nominated female artist of 2009 with an overwhelming six nods from the Canadian Country Music Association (Female Artist of the Year, Rising Star, Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Producer of the Year). She's been 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!"
Described by Nashville's Music Row Magazine as one of "the best songwriters in the business," Victoria made Billboard chart history by co-writing the highest new artist debut song ever released, Jessica Simpson's "Come on Over." She also scored the 1 most downloaded song on iTunes with Jessica Simpson's "Remember That," penned the ASCAP and SOCAN award-winning Sara Evans hit "Saints & Angels," and co-wrote Johnny Reid's smash hit "Dance With Me." She has collaborated with artists from Gretchen Wilson to Julie Roberts, and shared the stage with superstars from Randy Bachman to Alabama.
But some things about Victoria might surprise you. 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 across her calculus notes and spent the summers in a wetsuit studying fish at the bottom of the lake while earning a Zoology degree 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, playing guitar with gloves on and no money to spend on electricity. And that was just the beginning. It took ten years of hard knocks and the heartache of escaping an abusive marriage for Victoria to finally become an "overnight success".
Victoria pours every ounce of that joy and pain into her music. She is a master of her craft as a songwriter, 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. Sit in the audience at one of her shows and 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 self-produced debut OnRamp/EMI Music CD "When You Can Fly" is a masterpiece of songwriting from an exceptionally talented voice, securing Victoria a place as one of the most respected artists in the Canadian music industry.