Zoe Boekbinder

Zoe Boekbinder (they/them) was raised by two scientists who only owned a handful of tapes and CDs, yet Zoe grew up singing —humming the songs that eventually began to form in their adolescent mind—and never stopped. Nomadic at heart and a creator at their core, Boekbinder’s career started in 2005 when they formed a band with their sibling, Max, touring and recording together under the name Vermillion Lies until 2009, when Boekbinder released their first solo album, Artichoke Perfume. That was also the year that Boekbinder started volunteering teaching music inside a maximum security prison. 

 Expectedly, Boekbinder’s songs tend to reflect the life they are living and the people in it. In 2020, along with the Prison Music Project collective and co-producer Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, they released the not-for-profit album Long Time Gone. Consisting of songs written in collaboration with nine men incarcerated in New Folsom Prison where Boekbinder volunteered, the album was described by Salon as, “one of the most hypnotically singular-sounding releases of the year.”

What naturally followed that period in 2021 was a move to the countryside in upstate New York—a rebalancing shift of scenery that would find Boekbinder surrounded by red-tailed hawks, families of foxes, forests, and the startling silence of Northeastern winter, and ultimately inform their next work.

Their newest album, Wildflower, is a product of this new peaceful life and the solitude that comes with it. Some songs were written by the wood stove or while perched outside on an old rock wall, while others tagged along from years before, finally finding a home in this collection. Produced by Megan McCormick (Jenny Lewis, Allison Russell, Nashville), this subversive creation was brought to life by an all-woman team led by Zoe (who is non-binary), and funded through a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.