Begonia Is the Winnipeg Singer That Continues to Rise
Photo by Calvin Lee Joseph
As Begonia’s star continues to rise, Alexa Dirks, the veteran Winnipeg musician behind the perennially flower-adorned alt-pop alter ego, continues to be a shining light amongst one of the country’s most vibrant and eclectic art scenes.
“Winnipeg is a bit of an underdog city,” she says. “There are so many wonderful creatives that come out of here. I think there must be something to the vastness of the prairie, the harshness of the winters. There’s just a lot of people that are willing to experiment and sit in their rooms for months at a time in the winter, just kind of whittling away at things. Everyone kind of just feels like they’re in this together.”
Known by fans for her masterful soul-filled vocal performances and her sometimes brutally honest, confessional lyrical style, the Manitoban musician started her musical life far from the lush alt-pop star aesthetic we know her by today.
Before Begonia, Dirks cut her touring teeth as an 18-year-old musician travelling across the country with her band Chic Gamine—a tight-knit five-piece folk band, whose even tighter vocal harmonies and sparse percussion arrangements garnered critical acclaim throughout its eight-year and three-studio-album lifespan. These early experiences with Chic Gamine gave a young Alexa Dirks her first taste of the life of a touring musician—which, she admits, she wasn’t initially prepared for.
After Chic Gamine had run its course, finding herself at a loose end but with that same insatiable hunger for getting back on the road, Dirks sought a stage name to affix to her new career as a solo artist (and to distance herself from the ever-growing association her Christian name has with Amazon’s Alexa). Flicking through a horticulture book belonging to a former partner, Dirks drew inspiration from rex begonia, the houseplant that happened to share Dirks’s childhood nickname: Rex. “I felt akin to it,” she says.
Dirks with her touring band by Alexander Chua
Powder Blue, Begonia’s latest album, arrived in 2023 packed with songs Dirks had meticulously crafted and reworked over the previous five years—interrupted many times during that period by creative setbacks and a global pandemic. Full to the brim with confessional, personal songs, set over a soulful alt-pop backdrop, the standout feature of Powder Blue is Dirks’s vocal talent, which remains ethereally delicate, blisteringly powerful, and utterly captivating throughout.
“That’s something that was always really instilled in me, that sense of harmony,” Dirks says. “That was always something that I had in me, from being a kid singing in church on my mom’s hip. Her singing me all the harmonies in my ear of the hymns and shit. It was a whole new language.” Dirks went to a small church with a motley crew of members, and she felt she was thrust into performance. Later on, she had “more flashy” evangelical experiences, with hands in the air, lights, and smoke.
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“I feel like that translates into what I do now. It’s a different sort of spiritual feeling now. That connection. But I still feel like that rings true. That was the truest part of it for me—that connection with people and the feeling that music can give you, whether it’s from God or not.”
Dirks’s efforts on her sophomore album, Powder Blue, garnered Begonia a place on the shortlist for the 2023 Polaris Music Prize and a coveted nomination for the 2024 Juno Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year.
Since the release of Powder Blue, Begonia’s career has spun off in multiple directions, from touring Europe and the United Kingdom with fellow Winnipegger Leith Ross to starring in a single-take concert film of the album, which led to the film’s director, Ryan Steel, being banned from every casino in Manitoba. “He is a pal of mine who I’ve worked on many music videos with and is just kind of one of those wonderful Winnipeg freaks,” Dirks says. “He’s such a guerrilla. He’s just like, ‘Let’s just go to the park—we don’t need a permit’, and I’m like, ‘We need five permits.’”
To capture the film, Steel took to the stage with Begonia and her band during their residency at Winnipeg’s Club Regent Casino, armed with a single camera—complete with a lens intentionally fogged up with hairspray—and a complete absence of thought for those looking on from the audience behind him. “Technically, he wasn’t allowed to film more than three songs, and you weren’t actually even allowed to use the footage,” Dirks says with a slightly maniacal chuckle. “He got in a lot of trouble.”
Photo by Calvin Lee Joseph
Begonia’s latest musical offering, Open Swim, arrived in July. A short but deliciously sweet EP, the three tracks that make up Open Swim offer a glimpse into Begonia’s entire wide-ranging musical career and artistic skill in microcosm.
The groovy synths, punchy drums, and signature soulful harmonies of “Get to You,” at points reminiscent of indie and alt-pop contemporaries Lianne La Havas and Jessie Ware, are juxtaposed against the silky soft piano and entrancing, understated vocal harmonies of “Stay Together”—which serves almost as a bittersweet lullaby to send you drifting off—before being abruptly awoken by the hard-hitting, guitar-driven chorus of the closing track “Get to You.”
Showing no signs of slowing down any time soon—with a raft of tour dates around Canada’s east coast over the coming months—Dirks has recently taken Begonia on a creative sojourn to Los Angeles, where she has bedded in with producing duo and frequent collaborators Deadmen to get back into the writing process. “I can’t pretend to know what this next record will be, or what this next grouping of songs will be, but I’m really trying to just let them be. I’m just trying to being as open as I can possibly be.”
As with any flower, for Alexa Dirks, some time spent in the Californian sunshine may prove to be all that’s needed to recharge, foster new growth, and help Begonia bloom.
