Juliana, interviewed by Aaron Kavanagh for postburnout.com on her choice of artist for her upcoming Juliana Sings ELO LP:

“And I was going to do R.E.M. and I was listening – the process for me starts with going deep into the albums, and all the deep cuts, and relistening, and finding things I want to record – and I just became too overwhelmed with the amount of R.E.M. material that I had never heard, because I stopped listening to them at some point, and there were a bunch of albums after then, and I just felt there was too much study that I was going to have to do, and there were too many songs, and I lost my nerve with that one. And then, I don’t know, I just thought, ‘I love ELO, so let’s do that!’”

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From an interview by Warren Kurtz for Goldmine on Juliana’s cover of “Lotta Love”:

JULIANA HATFIELD: When I was a kid, I grew up on the Nicolette Larson version, which is what I heard first. For the longest time I thought it was her song and didn’t discover the Neil Young original until a bit later. I wanted to approach the song differently because it has already been successfully covered.

GM: Your guitar introduction and your solo remind me of The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” which gives the recording an added dimension.

JH: I wasn’t thinking of that, but that makes sense to me now. I wanted my version of “Lotta Love” to be a little tougher. I was trying to counteract the sentiment of the song which I think is emotionally demanding where one person wants the other to attend to that person’s needs which I interpret as, “It is going to take a lot from you to give me a lotta love.” I was fighting against that with my electric guitar.

goldminemag.com/columns/juliana-hatfield-and-emma-swift-discuss-covering-neil-young-for-record-store-day-black-friday

via Magnet Magazine:

Longtime MAGNET contributor Hobart Rowland takes a deep dive into the influential albums championed by the magazine over the years, with exclusive, in-depth interviews with the artists, producers and other key players. For episode five, Rowland gets the real story behind the making of Blake Babies’ 1990 classic Sunburn, college rock’s last great statement.

This one features contributions from Gary Smith and the Babies trio.

Available in the embed above or the usual places including Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Spotify.

From the latest edition of Paul Myers’ Record Store Day podcast:

Stars' Torquil Campbell looks into the rear view mirror at the events leading up to Stars' lovely and melancholic new album, From Capleton Hill.

All three Blake Babies - Juliana Hatfield, Freda Love Smith, and John Strohm celebrate a new reissue of their 1990 indie classic,Sunburn.

Bill Kopp talks about his new book Disturbing The Peace, which provides the 411 on legendary SF indie label, 415 Records.

Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton praises a new RSD reissue of Linda Martell's Color Me Country.

The 30 minutes Blake Babies section begins at around 25:30.

JPS, writing for Talkhouse on the legacy of Sunburn and “what it was like to be a “college rock” band on the verge in 1990”:

Happily, Freda, Juliana, and I have rekindled our friendship several times over, and we made what I personally consider our best album, God Bless the Blake Babies, in 2001. We’ve periodically done shows together and supported one another in all of our mostly successful post-band pursuits. It’s wild to think that was over 30 years ago. It’s even wilder to listen to the music with the knowledge of what indie music sounds like today, and realize it still sounds contemporary. With the exception of a few dated production touches, Sunburn could fit in with what we call Indie Pop today.

An excerpt from Juliana, John, and Freda interviewed by Warren Kurtz for Goldmine Magazine:

GM: That vocal blend is also on “Train” which I really enjoy and reminds me a bit of R.E.M.

JH: They have train songs too, “Driver 8” for example. It is an American tradition.

JS: I think with that song it was a dual lead vocal. I was struggling as a new singer, trying to find my voice. I was learning how to sing in front of a microphone in a studio, which is not the best place to learn. It is the quickest way to improve but most people who sing in a studio have sung in a school choir, at least.

JH: I was also a bit new. I studied piano at Berklee and then started studying voice, so I was also learning techniques on how to strengthen my voice.

JS: Juliana had already sung on two albums before this, so she had great experience, compared to me. “Train” has a pretty demanding vocal with an active melody. Juliana’s guide vocal helped me to nail the pitch. The lyrics were ambiguous, so having the male and female vocal was not a conflict.

JH: While this song doesn’t sound like the band X, John and my voice are so different that it reminds me of John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s voices being different in X. When we sing together it is a cool tension that blends well.

From Freda, John, and Juliana’s interview with Dave Rayburn for Alliance Entertainment to mark this month’s vinyl reissue of Sunburn:

JOHN: We have a couple more albums to reissue in the future, EARWIG and GOD BLESS THE BLAKE BABIES. We also have a set of demos for SUNBURN that are really strong. I don’t see why we wouldn’t make those available at some point as well.

JULIANA: There is one demo-ed song called “Radiator”, from the way early days, and there are maybe some live things we could share. As for other unreleased songs, I do remember one long multi-sectioned prog rock song we created and practiced, and I recorded us playing it live into a boom box in our rehearsal space in I think 1987 and I think I still have that cassette.

The LIFERS Podcast · 54. LIFERS - Juliana Hatfield 2: The Quickening

Local H, on Juliana’s return to their LIFERS podcast:

Second chances are rare, man. And you ought to take advantage of them. On the one year anniversary of our first episode(s), we get a second chance with our first guest — Juliana Hatfield. On this episode we try to truly nail down what makes Juliana the quintessential LIFER. It’s also just an opportunity to catch up and hang out. We tried really hard not to mess it up this time. Topics include: ELO, the crippling nature of being your own point AND counterpoint, Scott finally watches “Wolf Like Me”, sharing plumbers with Damon from Galaxie 500, colonoscopies, acting on “My So-Called Life”, Dinosaur Jr., Scott’s Evan Dando story, “Breaking Away”, and Ben wins the game of “Iron Maiden vs. The Replacements” once and for all. So let it be written — so let it be done.

As with Juliana’s appearance last year, this is highly recommended.

Among plenty of other discussion Juliana confirms that work has begun on a new album.

Put on the spot about songs from her career she’s most proud of, Juliana picks a couple you probably won’t be able to guess!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or via the SoundCloud embed above.

Laura Kidd interviews Juliana in the latest episode of her Attention Engineer podcast.

As many of you’ll know, Laura has recenlty released an excellent album titled Exotic Monsters under her new artist name Penfriend. She previously performed as She Makes War and supported the JH3 in London and Bristol on the 2019 UK tour.

Attention Engineer:

In this conversation, we discuss:
• writing about the truth, rejecting society’s expectations and demonstrating alternative ways of living
• finding creative freedom in limitations • sensitivity as a superpower
• home recording – Juliana’s tough transition from analogue to digital recording, and how her new album “Blood” is her most misanthropic yet

Sheroes Radio:

Now nearly three decades into her career, Juliana Hatfield is back with her excellent 19th solo album, Blood, and joins us this week as our SHERO in the Spotlight.

Another in depth feature with a guitar site, this time with Paul Robson for Guitar.com:

Hatfield has gone through quite a few guitars in the years since that Challenger, but very few of them remain in her custody now. “I have the new Yamaha Revstar 502 I’ve been playing on the most recent livestreams,” she tells us. “I like the simplicity of it and I like the P-90 pickups. I had never played a Yamaha electric before, so it was kind of an experiment for me, and it’s brand new but, so far, I like it.

“I only have two other electric guitars right now, and they’re both really different, but they’re great. I only used one electric guitar on the new album and that was my First Act Delia LS, which was made for me about 10 years ago, and my other guitar is a 1968 or ’69 Gibson Custom SG.”

Gregory Adams, interviewing Juliana for Guitar World:

In terms of the tangibles, then, and working outside of the box, what were you using in terms of guitars and amps?

(JH) Like I said, some of it started with me sending these crappy recordings to Jed. Some of that was on acoustic guitar, just playing into the built-in mic – I think on the song Torture I probably set up a mic to get a decent acoustic guitar sound.

Some of it me was videos of me playing an electric guitar. I was mostly using my first First Act electric, a Delia LS.

[For tone] I really pared it down, mostly using one sound from GarageBand, because I didn’t really like the others. I’m not comfortable making noise in my apartment, because of my neighbors, so I started off using this GarageBand sound, but later on I went into the studio and started using amplifiers.

There’s this one sound, it’s called ‘World’s Smallest Amp’ on my version of GarageBand. It’s kind of a cruddy sound, which I like. Not too clean, and not distorted in an icy way.

There’s a lot of that on the album, but there’s some choice, biting stuff on there, and for that I was using a tiny Fender Mini Twin. Smaller than a bread box, just a few inches across. It’s cute, but it makes really great fuzz sounds. I think I plugged that into my [ZZ.Fex] Fuzz Factory for a couple things, too. You can hear it in certain spots, like the bridge of Shame of Love.

Speaking of SPIN, they have just published a newly formatted online version of their Juliana cover feature from March 1994.

Writer Rob Sheffield:

Hatfield calls me a couple days later from Idaho, where she’s been skiing. She sounds much mellower, out in the open air and on the slopes, calling from a room of her own. She tells me about a particularly cool ski trip she once took with Dando and J Mascis. “We’re pretty equally matched—we all have the same ability, but different styles. J skis like he plays guitar, it’s really cool. Really reckless, but also really graceful.”

Juliana, on Pretenders' self-titled debut album:

It is immaculate and untouchable! It has tons of attitude but also subtlety. Chrissie Hynde’s voice is sublime, timeless, and unique, really one of the best voices ever in rock, or in women in rock specifically, if you want to be categorizing like that. She’s a model for how to be cool and a boss and good at what you do. I am always hoping to someday get to the place where I am as on top of my game as the Pretenders were at that moment in time.

Read Juliana's thoughts on 4 other albums "she can't live without" in the article at SPIN.

Juliana, talking about the track Suck It Up to Morgan Enos for a Grammys article:

"Suck it Up" is more specific to the idea of a creative person—an artist—going to a bank and trying to get a mortgage. This whole society is based on certain things: marriage, cohabitation, capitalism, consumerism, and also including homeownership. People are bred to believe that owning a home is something everyone should aspire to.

But it's not for everyone; that's one thing. If you're the type of person who doesn't have a weekly paycheck, no matter how much money you have, it's going to be difficult for the system to approve you for a big loan like that, because you don't have a steady weekly paycheck. That's exactly what the song is about.

It's kind of like "Mouthful of Blood" in the way that the system doesn't allow for nuance in speech or thought. Also, the financial system doesn't allow for nuance in ways of living. You can't just call and have a conversation. They punch your data into the computer, the algorithm feeds it back in numbers and you either cut the mustard or you don't.

The interview includes Juliana's thoughts on all 10 songs from Blood, and therefore well worth a read.

The Record Store Day Podcast with Paul Myers:

On Episode #42, Boston music icon Juliana Hatfield talks about her brand new album Blood (American Laundromat), while comedy producer Dan Pasternack talks about Jonathan Winters: Unearthed (Comedy Dynamics) the three-disc, vinyl-only compilation that he produced and curated for RSD Drops #1 June 12. And RSD's Carrie Colliton talks about the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, and the Almost Famous "Stillwater Demos" EP also dropping on RSD Drops #1.

From Warren Kurtz's interview with Juliana for Goldmine:

JH: I drew this female in a bikini with a black pen and Jed Davis colored it, including the blood bubbles coming off the hands in the background. I drew it from a photograph where the woman was actually in the sky with buildings in the background, so I don’t know if it was a circus or what the event was. She looks like a warrior, going through harsh times, but emerging victoriously, flying, and who needed those hands anyway?

GM: It is an interesting contrast, just like your music.

JH: Also, the pose she is in seems really joyful and playful as she soars.

Alex Green Online:

Hatfield is one of the sharpest writers around—she’s funny, smart, caustic, observant and deeply, deeply wise. In this conversation Juliana talks to Alex about being in a post-love state of mind, if she gets recognized at the gym and the reverse of seasonal affective disorder. They also talk about cupcakes and muffins….