Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, Pony Gold is the New Music Monday highlight!
Pony Gold is the moniker of local, modern-Americana artist Theresa Bromley, who has been gaining traction on Vancouver Island and across Canada since the release of her debut EP, Take Me Somewhere, in 2023.
Around the time this EP was released, Pony Gold had the opportunity to play some of Vancouver Island’s biggest stages, including SunFest, Filberg and Rifflandia. In addition to this, they have also been a part of The Zone @ 91-3’s Band of the Month program.
Bromley says that Pony Gold, as a project, began as a way to set herself apart from singer-songwriters who use their first and last names.
The music she writes for this project has been heavily inspired by her past and the struggles she’s faced through the years, such as getting sober, losing loved ones and fighting an uphill battle trying to have her music heard.
“I am almost four years’ sober now and I think that with sobriety you have this incessant need to constantly reinvent yourself and constantly improve,” she told Victoria Buzz.
“[Pony Gold] is almost like this thing that anchors me to my past in a way.”
Now, Bromley has released her first new single in two years, the first taste of what her new full-length album will sound like when it is released later this year.
The new single, “Big in the City,” and the forthcoming record were both recorded and produced by another well-known Vancouver Island Americana/roots artist, Leeroy Stagger.
According to Bromley, working with Stagger and the high profile musicians she got to work with for this album really helped her sound to evolve since Pony Gold’s last release.
“I think that meeting Leeroy was sort of a pivotal thing that happened to me. He and I really connected through songwriting and recovery and I think that he was sort of able to reach in, identify and pull out this side of me that I was maybe a little bit afraid of exposing,” Bromley explained.
“I get this feeling that I want to hide under a perfection bit—looking really polished, nice and pretty—and I think he was able to give me the space to help me be really okay with just being myself.”
Stagger produced the upcoming Pony Gold record in December at HippoSonic Records in Vancouver with what was essentially City and Colour’s rhythm section and a couple other well-known Vancouver session players.
Bromley says “Big in the City” was written about her journey to living in Vancouver and Victoria, trying to make it as a musician.
“The song is about growing up in this small town in the middle of nowhere, northern BC, and having this dream of being a musician or having a music career—whatever that dream was when I was much younger,” Bromley explained.
“You realize you have to leave, which is really hard to leave my family and my horse and all of that.”
She added that the song speaks to the fact that the path of a musician is a sordid one which leads to burnout, rejection and hardships that an aspiring youth would never imagine.
Bromley had written three versions of this song, but in the latest rendition she was able to really make the way “Big in the City” sounded in her head, a reality.
“The way it’s recorded is the exact way I hear it in my head,” she said.
“When we started playing it live off the floor in the studio, without rehearsing at all, it kind of felt like a gut-punch, like woah, this is actually happening.”
Listen to a preview of “Big in the City” below:
To listen to “Big in the City” in full as well as the rest of Pony Gold’s catalogue, visit their Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube pages.
“Big in the City” is just the first taste of what Pony Gold’s new album will sound like. Bromley says fans can look forward to a few more singles being released before the full 11-track album comes out.
For those that want to catch Pony Gold live in and around Victoria, there are plenty of upcoming shows.
This Friday, June 20th, Pony Gold will be playing at the Mary Winspear Theatre for Seaside Festival as a duo with her partner and guitarist Matt Bromley.
Additionally, Pony Gold will be playing Wheelies Motorcycles on July 6th, Hermann’s Jazz Club on July 25th, and has a short festival lap of the island between July 30th and August 3rd.
Those going to SunFest and Filberg this year, can look forward to Pony Gold being there once again.
For more information on upcoming Pony Gold shows and releases, follow them on Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Earth Freaks try to ‘capture a feeling’ on sophomore album
- New Music Monday: Frances Hope uses music to navigate trauma in new single ‘After’
- New Music Monday: Elbow Kiss revitalizes the harp in new single and music video
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“CFUV is great for supporting local music. We were able to kind of use their charts in our bio, which is great visibility and increases our credibility,” said Bromley.
“It’s great to have a local radio station that we can use for support and playing our music.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Pony Gold in the comments below!
