Jax Hgts songstress drops dazzling fantasy video
BY TAMMY SCILEPPI
A sultry, New York City siren
and sexy “night creature”
has re-discovered her darker
side.
Jackson Heights songstress
Virginia Marcs, is celebrating
the holidays and New Year’s
with “Wild,” her recently
dropped music video. The
song, which she wrote, is from
her debut record “Climbing
the Wall.”
Described as a deliciously
lush fantasy and dazzling generational
tale of self-destruction,
“Wild” features a young
woman who experiences a
crazy night of wicked excess
and chaos and Marcs’ unforgettable
singing will keep you
mesmerized.
The gods must’ve been
smiling down upon Marcs’
seemingly destined collaboration
with MTV VMA awardwinning
editor and director
Alexander Hammer (Beyoncé,
Lizzo). And, not surprisingly,
the video is already making
waves across New York City’s
music scene and beyond.
The artist’s metamorphosis
from “an opera singer going for
pure vowels and pure tones, to
jazz, swinging and jiving,” happened
when she got her guitar.
“I needed to rock sometimes,
to scream. Now I have a bit
of an in between, a balance. I
whisper, I coo, I wail, I scream
… all depending on the song,”
she said.
No doubt this is an exciting
time for the rising indie
art-pop star — who’s “a proud
member” of the Astoria Music
Collective — as well as a turning
point in her blossoming
career, which flourished here
in Queens.
Marcs said she often sings
solo, though sometimes with a
band, and she mostly performs
in Astoria at the Irish Whiskey
Bar, UKE Hut, The Quays, The
Shillelagh Tavern, Singlecut
Beersmiths, The Mad Donkey,
The Local, and three times
at Rockwood Music Hall (a
dream of hers), among other
locations.
“We rehearse a lot in what
is colloquially known as ‘The
Space’ underneath the old
Bakeway, and also at Astoria
Soundworks,” she added. “We
hang and perform at LIC Bar.
TIMESLEDGER | Q 36 NS.COM | DEC. 13-19, 2019
A huge part of my community
lives in Astoria, so I spend a lot
of time there.”
Marcs has performed at a
few Queens festivals, including
a Planned Parenthood benefit
and Shore Fest in Astoria
Park over the summer, where
she does many photo shoots.
So, what was filming “Wild”
like?
“It was so fun, but also so
much work,” she said. “That
corset! Ha, that was its own
job! That bit where the girl is in
the corset and someone assists
her with their foot on the wall
to pull … umm, yeah. That was
us she and Hammer in a freezing
basement last winter.”
“Alex is an amazing director
and knows me so well —
that young, wild and free part
of me; the part I don’t let out
so often anymore,” Marcs said
of Hammer, who was her best
friend from college. “He helped
me feel organic and authentic
in that again….
Looking back, there were
“a lot of years partying and
hanging with people to fill a
void, to forget things, to burn
things out of me,” she shared.
“One day, I was just like, whoa.
Would any of these people come
to lunch with me, in the sun,
and have a sober talk about
things that actually matter?
Like, do I wanna do that with
them? It was really fun a lot of
the time, but it left me standing
still emotionally and lonely
even in a crowd. The song is all
about that. Not just my life and
story, but also what I observed
around me.”
Talking about the many
weird, but amazing alignments
in her life, the singer explained,
“When I’m on the right
path, the stars align across my
life like a map. I couldn’t make
up something so bizarre.”
Marcs is currently running
her second crowdfunding campaign,
this time to fund her
forthcoming EP, “Reckoning,”
for which videos of all five
tracks will be created and released
over the course of 2020,
with the final EP dropping in
March 2021.
Jackson Heights singer Virginia Marcs. Photo by Alice Teeple
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