A photo of Freda, Juliana and Peter Wolf taken at last Friday's promotion event for Freda's book, via Twitter.
There's another photo at The Boston Globe.
From last week in Chicago, Freda & Robbie Fulks playing a Blake Babies track. There's more from the show at hmc1410's YouTube page.
Also, from earlier this month here's a brief WCIU-TV interview with Freda as part of her book promotion:
thanks to Carlos for the info here
The Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA has announced an event for January 8, 2016:
Harvard Book Store welcomes Freda Love Smith and her former Blake Babies bandmate, local singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield for a presentation of Smith's book Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes.
The event is free. More info at harvard.com.
Speaking of Freda, there's a new Mysteries Of Life EP titled Bad Advice out now at Bandcamp.
The I Don't Cares (the new band featuring Juliana and The Replacements' Paul Westerberg) have released a new single.
Featuring Westerberg on lead vocal, King Of America is the 2nd track to be revealed from their forthcoming debut album Wild Stab.
So far it's only available from iTunes. (US and UK links).
Also, Amazon (US and UK)
The tracklist:
- Back
- Wear Me Out Loud
- Born For Me
- 1/2 2P
- Sorry For Tomorrow Night
- Dance To The Fight
- Kissing Break
- Just A Phase
- Outta My System
- Need The Guys
- Love Out Loud
- King of America
- Little People
- Whole Lotta Nothin'
- Done Done Done
- Hands Together
The artwork:
Juliana is selling "small number of customized (ink-embellished) Polaroid self portraits onto canvas" via her website.
There are 12 designs to choose from, available for $100 USD each including postage.
Check them out at Juliana's official site.
Brad Walsh:
My strongest songwriting influences have always been female, and I was lucky enough to be able to work on this EP with some of the artists I idolized growing up. To be able to guide a rock legend like Juliana Hatfield into the realm of dance music, to have her hear what was done and respond with marvel, was a dream come true for me.
The PopCrush post also has a quote from Juliana about 'Easy'.
There's a new band in town.
They're called The I Don't Cares.
Juliana Hatfield is in it.
Paul Westerberg is in it.
There's a single.
It's called 1/2 2 P.
You can buy it at Nimbit Music.
You can buy it at iTunes or stream on Apple Music in the US & UK and no doubt elsewhere.
It's on Spotify.
It's on Rdio.
It's from an album called Wild Stab.
Wild Stab is "coming soon".
There you go.
New!* Coming next month!**
Juliana features on a track titled Easy, which she has co-written with Brad. The lyrics are on Brad's site.
*As pointed out on the This Is The Sound Group, the words are a combination of lines from Don't Wanna Dance and Candy Wrappers, the former having been previously remixed by Walsh in 2011. So, sort of New!
** Update November 4, 2015 - the EP is now available on all major download / streaming services (in the UK at least - it's out in the US tomorrow - November 5). You can also hear it at SoundCloud.
NT: Many present day bands list Blake Babies as an influence and have even name dropped the band in interviews . For example, Bully comes to mind recently. How does that feel for you all and to what do you attribute your lasting sonic legacy?
Strohm: I’ve met the people in Bully before – they are a local band here in Nashville – and they’ve given me no indication that they know our band! But I do hear an influence, whether it’s direct or they are mining similar influences as us. I’ve seen the references in the press. When young bands or music writers acknowledge us as influential, that feels amazing. That’s the best thing, really. We felt at the time that a big reason we were toughing it out – and it was very hard to do this band for a lot of reasons – was to build some sort of musical legacy that could become more important over time. We didn’t necessarily expect it to happen, but I think we really hoped it would. Now that we’ve built our lives in other directions it matters less than I would have expected, but it’s still very satisfying. I can only really speak for myself, but I’m such a geek music fan that it just blows my mind to think that something we did as kids decades ago actually has a life and continuing influence today. The very best thing that could happen is to inspire young people to want to make music, or to influence the music they make. That sort of thing really validates the whole experience, and everything we put into it.
Smith: I’m proud of the initiative we took in the early days of our career. How when nobody would sign us, we put out our own record. Also, how we worked hard and worked together because we cared so much about what we were doing.
Hatfield: I am just glad no one got killed, that we didn’t kill each other, or kill ourselves.
Also of note at NoiseTrade there's vintage audio of a 1989 Blake Babies studio session for WERS.
Freda Love Smith, Juliana's colleague in Blake Babies and Some Girls, has a new book out - Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes.
You don't see enough of the memoir / recipe genre these days.
From the promo blurb:
Red Velvet Underground tells the story of how Smith's indie-rock past evolved into her domestic present. Loosely framed around cooking lessons she gives her older son, her story moves back and forward in time as she recollects how she got started in music, and how her career in rock eventually dovetailed with her passion for cooking and, later, the growth of her family. The book intersperses forty-five recipes with personal stories about her music career, cooking, eating, and family.
Here's a bit from TheTalkhouse, where you can read a fuller excerpt:
The Blake Babies and the Lemonheads had formed in Boston at about the same time, discovered each other quickly and become fast friends.
Evan and his Lemonheads partner, guitarist-singer-songwriter Ben Deily, attended one of the first shows the Blake Babies ever played, at an arty café called She’s Leaving Home. Evan stood front and center, enthusiastically rocking out, and Juliana was smitten from that moment, and far into the future. Of course, it was hard to meet that golden boy and not be smitten. Few people will ever gaze upon a human more beautiful than nineteen-year-old Evan Dando. And Evan wasn’t just a pretty face —he was an uncanny talent with a killer voice, a knack for melody and great taste in music. I will love him forever for bringing his copy of Big Star’s Radio City over to the apartment I shared with John and Juliana. “You guys are going to freak out,” he said. “I promise.” He was right. When Evan agreed to join the Blake Babies after we had unsuccessfully worked with two other bass players, we were delighted. As it turned out, it was only the beginning of a long cross-pollination between the two bands. John would later join the Lemonheads on drums, and years after that he would return as a guitar player. After the Blake Babies broke up, Juliana was an integral part of the Lemonheads’ classic record It’s a Shame About Ray.
Juliana, having read an advanced copy, has said:
These are sweet, unsentimental scenes from the ever-evolving life of a woman of many shifting and balancing roles: mother, wife, drummer, student, teacher, friend, daughter, food enthusiast. It’s all tied together with tantalizing recipes that have been lovingly improvised and tweaked into a life-affirming doneness.
The book is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon USA and Amazon UK
There's also an Apple iBooks version.
For those of us who missed the shows or didn't pick up merch at the time, Juliana's official site is selling T-shirts from the JH3 US shows earlier this year.
There are two designs to choose from and the sale is 'for a limited time'.
Here's a newly uploaded YouTube video of a vintage acoustic instore performance with Q&A from Repeat the Beat in Royal Oak, Michigan dating back to May 25, 1995.
The songs: I Got No Idols, Outsider, Universal Heart-beat, My Sister, Spin The Bottle, My Darling
I don't think I've seen this before. Thanks to Michael Thomas for uploading and Carlos for sharing it here.
Hilken Mancini, writing for Boston Herald's Boston 101 Guestlisted series:
I first saw Juliana Hatfield play at T.T. the Bears in the Blake Babies -- it must have been 1989. They had two nights back-to-back there and the first night she was playing guitar and the next night she was playing bass: same set, same songs. Right then and there I decided she was a totally badass. I could barely play guitar at that point in my life and I was totally blown away.
Hilken goes on to discuss how Juliana and others were influential in the formation of her bands plus an appreciation of Trying Not To Think About It.
It's all eBay news round here.
American Laundromat Records are auctioning a test pressing of the forthcoming vinyl version of the Juliana Hatfield Three LP:
Only four "Whatever, My Love" test pressings were cut. We gave one to our mastering engineer and kept one for our archive. This is one of two we're offering on eBay to the highest bidder. Ships in it's white paper sleeve. Good luck!!!
Bidding ends tomorrow (July 8) with shipping estimated for next week.
Regular orders for the LP are not due to ship until November 2015 (delayed from the original plan of August).
Juliana is auctioning more of her art right now on eBay.
Among the collection is this "Self-Portrait with Katy Perry's Body" - different from the portrait of the same title auctioned last summer.
There's also Liz Phair and Pamela Anderson as other subjects in this style.
The auction ends on July 11, 2015.
From an interview with Juliana by Melissa Giannini for Nylon:
Giannini: You still have an eternal youthfulness about you. Do you think that’s helped or hurt you?
Juliana: Immaturity keeps me young! A lot of people who do what I do, musicians or artists in general, hold on to that youthful nature deep inside of them. Friends of mine in their 50s who make music, they still have that childlike aspect. They’re mature in other ways, but they never lose that sense of hopefulness or openness to ideas. Art is about playing and experimenting. Plenty of people play their old songs without any feeling and make a lot of money doing it, but I never really made a lot of money doing this, so it’s not worth it to me to just go out there and bang out the songs and not care.
The photo is by Tony Luong. There's a higher res version together with another shot not used in the article at tonyluong.com