Half Gringa has announced a new EP called Ancestral Home set to release on January 27, 2023, and the Chicago artist is previewing the forthcoming 5-song set with a music video for her brand new single “Miranda” today. Created by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Isabel “Izzy” Olive, the name Half Gringa stems from a childhood term of endearment as “la Gringa” in her Venezuelan family, as well as her bicultural experience growing up in the midwestern United States where she was “really into alternative rock, but heard a lot of country music in the supermarket.” While Half Gringa typically records as a full-band arrangement, Ancestral Home serves as a more intimate, remote collaboration between Olive, co-producer Nicholas Papaleo (Gia Margaret, Campdogzz), and drummer Abby Black (Lala Lala, Date Stuff).

Alongside co-director Robert Salazar, Olive structured the music video for “Miranda” as if the song was a play in order to illustrate “what it’s like to have multiple artistic roles – being the director, being the performer, being the writer, and then just being me.” The pair looked to John Cassavetes’ and Gena Rowlands’ Opening Night (1977) as the main visual inspiration for the clip due to the film’s portrayal of “past selves, present selves, doppelgangers, people you could have been, pretending to be someone else, and changing as you age.” Olive shares that these themes all feel relevant to the song’s central protagonist, adding, “This song is about many things: mirrors, perspectives, the past, the future, love, longing, homeland, identity, characters, and relatives. Basically, all the things I love writing about. Miranda is representative of who I am, who I could be, who I was, who my ancestors were, how I love, how I grieve, and all of the different versions of me that exist in between.”

Of Ancestral Home, Olive offers, “The process of writing and recording the last two records was way faster, partly because I had my full band collaborators learning and arranging songs I brought to them. But I wrote for so long on my own before I even started playing with a band, and I felt moved to revisit that. I love collaborating, but at heart, I’m very introverted. Having a rich inner life is essential to me, which I think can overlap with both collaboration and solitude. I sense that each project I work on demands something different from me, and I’ve been trying to listen to my own instincts for that more and more. Sometimes it needs to be a party and sometimes it needs to be small, internal observations…Some people have asked why I wouldn’t release this record as a solo project, which I think is funny. Without these kinds of songs, the ones with full band arrangements wouldn’t exist. At its core, it’s me and my creative work, which I’ve named Half Gringa.”

Half Gringa is on tour now along the east coast and throughout the midwest, including a run of dates supporting experimental Latin-folk trio KILTRO with a Chicago show at Beat Kitchen on November 8. Full tour details below.

Half Gringa On Tour:
October 6 – Madison, WI – The Bur Oak
October 7 – Champaign, IL – Nola’s Rock Bar
October 9 – Nashville, TN – The East Room
October 11 – Athens, GA – The Globe
October 12 – Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle
October 13 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
October 14 – Richmond, VA – Get Tight Lounge^
October 17 – Boston, MA – Middle East Upstairs
October 18 – Brooklyn, NY – TV Eye
October 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Dolphin Tavern
October 20 – Cincinnati, OH – MOTR
November 7 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry*
November 8 – Chicago, IL – Beat Kitchen*
November 9 – St. Louis, MO – Blueberry Hill*
November 10 – Davenport, IA – Raccoon Motel*

^with Deau Eyes
*supporting KILTRO