Juliana is the guest on episode 236 of The Hustle:

The last few years have been a blur of prolific activity for Juliana Hatfield. There was the anti-Trump album Pussycat from 2017, there have been side projects with Paul Westerberg (The I Don't Care's) and Nada Surf's Matthew Caws (Minor Alps), and there have been albums of new material (2019's Weird and 2015's Whatever, My Love), but what is a wonderful new focus for her are these albums of covers. In 2018 she released Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John to wide acclaim and this week she drops the follow up, Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police. This wonderful collection brings new depth to these classic tunes and presents them in a new light completely unique to her. We discuss all of this as well as her favorite albums and bands, her love life, her feelings about accolades, and much more. She's a total delight and full of great stories!

From Darryl Sterdan's interview with Juliana for Tinnitist:

Are you already writing your next album?

JH: I’m actually trying to write some other stuff first. I’m taking a few months to write a long-form prose thing. But I’m starting to get ideas bubbling up, and I’m writing down some lyrical ideas. So I have a feeling I’m going to start writing pretty soon.

Do you think it will be another introspective album like Weird?

JH: No. I think it’s going to be like Rage Against the Machine, but my style. It’s going to be a protest record. But I want to do something that’s really really simple, with repetitive choruses and not a lot of words so it’s deceptively easy to sing along with — but very definitely protest music.

From an excellent article by Justin Chadwick for Albumism where Juliana comments on each of the songs on the new record:

“Every Breath You Take”

This is another one of those deceptive creations that at first makes you think you are listening to a straight-up love song. But really it’s pretty twisted, sung from the point of view of a creepy stalker, a person who won’t go away, who is obsessed with an ex. The song structure—the way it moves and flows and builds—is perfection. It’s sonic ambrosia. I can’t get enough of it. This song is the gift that keeps on giving

From an interview by Katherine Yeske Taylor for The Big Takeover, Juliana on upcoming plans:

So you’ve already started working on your next album of originals?

JULIANA HATFIELD: Well, I am actually taking a little break. I’m writing other stuff, I’m working on a longer form prose thing. I wanted to step away from making music for a couple months, just to write this other stuff, and then I’ll get back to songwriting in the beginning of the new year. I have to be creative: I also draw and paint. I have to be doing something all the time or I just go crazy.

Are you going to do any tour dates for this Police covers album?

JULIANA HATFIELD: Yeah, we’re going to tour in January and February, about a month in the States. It’s going to start in Chicago and go down and West and all around and end up in New York around Valentine’s Day. We’re still finalizing the dates, but we’ll put them out there as soon as they’re all fixed.

Juliana, from an interview by Dave Rayburn for Discussions Magazine covering a number of area around the soon the be released Police covers project:

DR: ...Why The Police?

JH: I sort of did it on a whim. Actually, I was preparing to do Phil Collins covers, and then sort of at the last minute… you know what, I don’t really have an emotional connection to Phil Collins. And, there’s just not enough depth there. So, I just went sort of automatically to The Police because I do have an emotional connection from childhood. They were a big, big thing for me during my adolescence. Same as with the Olivia Newton-John record. It’s like I’m being drawn toward artists that were very important to me at a certain time in my life. I mean, I have a plan to do more of these albums and I think that in the future I’ll be able to look back and say, “Oh yes, these all had something to do with what I became.”

New US shows announced for January / February 2020:

Jan 16 Evanston, IL - SPACE
Jan 17 Indianapolis, IN - HI-FI
Jan 18 Nashville, TN - The Basement East
Jan 19 Birmingham, AL - WorkPlay
Jan 21 Dallas, TX - Granada Theater
Jan 22 Austin, TX - 3TEN Austin City Limits Live
Jan 24 Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom
Jan 25 Pioneertown, CA - Pappy & Harriet's
Jan 27 Los Angeles, CA - Echoplex
Jan 28 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
Jan 30 Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
Feb 1 Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern

Update - Nov 29 2019 - more 2020 shows announced:

Feb 5 St Paul, MN - Turf Club
Feb 6 Milwaukee, WI - Shank Hall
Feb 7 St Louis, MO - Blueberry Hill Duck Club
Feb 10 Annapolis, MD - Rams Head On Stage
Feb 11 Sellersville, PA - Sellersville Theater 1894
Feb 12 Somerville, MA - ONCE
Feb 13 Northampton, MA - The Parlor Room

These are band performances:

Juliana and her band will be performing fan favorites from her solo catalog and most recent album Weird, along with select covers from the recent Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police.

Juliana Hatfield shares another single from her new album "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police" due out November 15, 2019 on American Laundromat Records. Pre-order at www.alr-music.com

After premiering yesterday at billboard, Next To You from the forthcoming Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police album is now available more widely including Soundcloud and streaming / download services.

The second track to be released from Juliana's upcoming album of The Police songs is Next to You.

It premiered today at billboard, where Gary Graff has asked Juliana about the project:

"Next to You," the first track from the Police's 1978 debut album Outlandos d'Amour, presented a challenge for Hatfield, however. "It really was an intuitive reworking of that," says Hatfield, who abandoned "an awful '80s metal ballad" version of the song before settling on this version. "Their recording of it is so perfect in its imperfection. It's unpolished and raw; That whole album sounds like three guys bashing out a song in a room together. So I didn't even want to attempt to do a rocking version of it like that. I don't want it to be compared to the original. There's no way I could come close. So I just went in a completely different direction and slowed down to half time."

Juliana is interviewed by Steve Cooper for episode 749 of his podcast CooperTalk.

This is an hour long phone interview which begins with a chat about the forthcoming album of songs by The Police, and moves on to cover a broader discussion of Juliana's work over the years beginning with her childhood interest in music through to enrolling at Berklee College of Music, initially as a piano student.

Topics go on to include early Blake Babies, hearing her songs on the radio for the first time, working with Atlantic Records, running Ye Olde Records, how the 2008 memoir came to being, art, and much more.

Of note, Juliana mentions that there are plans to tour in January 2020.

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Juliana is releasing another covers tribute album, following the success of her 2018 tribute to Olivia Newton-John.

Scheduled for November 15, 2019 via American Laundromat Records, it's titled "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police."

The first song has already been released. Here's De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da:

Juliana Hatfield shares the first single from her new album "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police" due out November 15, 2019 on American Laundromat Records. Pre-order at www.alr-music.com

Juliana:

With "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police" I am continuing the project that I started last year with my "Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John" album. I hope to continue to go deep into covering artists that were important to me in my formative years. The songs I’ve chosen seem to resonate in the present moment. “Rehumanize Yourself”, “Landlord”, and “Murder By Numbers” explore ugly kinds of nationalism, abuses of power, and the mendacity of large swaths of the ruling class. And then there are the timeless, relatable psychodramas: “Every Breath You Take”, “Can’t Stand Losing You”, “Canary In A Coalmine”. In the Police, each player’s style was so distinctive, accomplished and unique that I didn’t even attempt to match any of it; for anyone to try and play drums like Stewart Copeland would be a thankless, pointless task that is bound to fail. Instead, I simplified and deconstructed, playing a lot of the drums myself, in my rudimentary, caveman style. Chris Anzalone (Roomful Of Blues) played the rest of the drums. Ed Valauskas (the Gravel Pit) and I each played about half of the bass parts, while I did all the guitars and keyboards. I listened to a lot of the Police when I was preparing and making this album, and their recordings are as refreshing and exciting as ever. I hope that my interpretations of these songs can inspire people to keep loving the Police like I did, and still do.

The Artwork

View fullsize

Artwork by Nicole Anguish of Daykamp Creative

The Track List:

1. Can't Stand Losing You
2. Canary In A Coalmine
3. Next To You
4. Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)
5. Roxanne
6. Every Breath You Take
7. Hole In My Life
8. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
9. Murder By Numbers
10. Landlord
11. Rehumanize Yourself
12. It's Alright For You

Availability

The release date is scheduled for November 15, 2019.

Vinyl, CD, and Cassette versions are available via a multitude of ordering options at American Laundromat Records.

Newbury Comics also have a limited edition colour vinyl version.

The Original Police Songs

Here are unofficial Apple Music and Spotify playlists of the songs Juliana is covering. (I made this using songs licensed for streaming in the UK so hopefully they'll work worldwide)

Apple Music
Spotify

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photo from @johnpstrohm

A post shared by @ julianahatfield on Jul 25, 2019 at 5:16pm PDT

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Juliana's solo date at London's 100 Club scheduled for October 2, 2019 has been cancelled.

Refunds are available at the original place of purchase.

Juliana performs backing vocals on three tracks from Long Fuse Burning - an album due for release in August 2019 by Magen Tracy & The Missed Connections.

One such track - Move A Crowd - is released today.

Speaking to Vanyaland on their collaboration, Megan says of Juliana:

“The parts she came up with are so cool, and not always the obvious ones; I love the way she heard and layered the harmonies on. There’s something about what she does on the last line on the chorus on this track – ‘like the way I moved with you’ – that makes me think of ‘Please Mr. Please,’ an ONJ song she covered on her album (and, more recently, live with Liz Phair!). We managed to get her to do the same with two other tracks on the album before she left that day, and each time she brought out something new.”

Magen has been a member of Juliana's live band over the years and now her own band will be supporting at Juliana's Boston City Winery show on July 22.

magentracymusic.com

UPDATE September 2019: The album is now released. Here's another track which features Juliana on backing vocals:

Here's a brief overview of Juliana's US shows this month, starting with Chris Sikich's Facebook post with photos from Philadelphia:

The set list for the Cleveland show is representative of the songs from all the shows:

• Wonder Why
• Everything Is Forgiven
• Everybody Loves Me But You
• Parking Lots
• Failure
• I Don’t Know What To Do With Ny Hands
• My Sister
• Lost Ship
• Social Control
• If I Wanted Trouble
• Everything's For Sale
• Suspended In Time
• Physical
• Rhinoceros
• Somebody Is Waiting For Me
• Feelin' Massachussetts
• Backseat
• Choose Drugs

Other songs played include Broken Doll, Bottles and Flowers, All Right Yeah, Everybody Loves Me But You and 2016's festive song Christmas Cactus also appeared on this tour.

In Evanston, Juliana played an outdoor show with Liz Phair also on the bill. They appeared together for Please Mr Please and Friend of Mine

There's a review of the Washington DC show by Mark Engleson for Parklife DC.

Thanks to spiketop for getting in touch with video from the New York City show at Mercury Lounge.

As spike says on YouTube:

I’d rather be out of JH’s eye line and further back (with audience heads in the fore ground) than up close with a camera right in JH’s face. I try to hold the camera directly one handed in front of me and use my body and head to block the screen image from getting in the view of the audience behind and around me.

Juliana will play Boston's City Winery on July 22.

Ticket info here:

https://citywinery.com/boston/julianahatfield72219.html

Ahead of her Detroit show this week, Juliana is interviewed by Jeremy Porter for The Pencilstorm:

JP: Weird feels like a natural transition from Pussycat and JHSONJ – not so much lyrically but musically. The guitar tones, arrangements and riffs have a nice growth but a consistent feel that sort of takes your natural pop vocals and vocal melodies and puts them above a musical bed that weaves somewhere between 70s classic rock and indie-pop-rock. Do you approach the writing process with a direction in mind? Or do you just sit down and whatever happens, happens? Can you expand on that a bit and how it might relate to the feel of this trilogy of records as compared to some of your previous releases?

JH: I never have a direction plan when I sit down to write. I have an open mind. But I do have habits and things that I tend to do over and over again. I can't change my instincts. I have a certain aesthetic preferences, and I have a certain natural, personal style that I have settled into and I produce all my own stuff which is why my stuff lately tends to have a sound and a feel. It's raw and unpolished but also really melodic. I am also in love with the mellotron flutes sound on my Microkorg keyboard that I acquired about five years ago so that sound ends up on everything I do these days. No matter how gnarly the guitars get, I always like to mix in some keyboard flutes. It sounds good with everything.

Juliana, interviewed by Scott Tady, for The Beaver County Times ahead of her show in Pittsburgh, commenting on Weird and the recent video for Broken Doll:

“I think (the video) came out really funny but also provocative. Another thing in it is physical comedy, which I’ve always wanted to do. I’m a big fan of pratfalls, so I wanted to do that. Like Chevy Chase in the ’70s on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ or Chris Farley. So I got to do some of those falls,” Hatfield. “But it’s also making a point about how women in our society are put out to pasture. And it’s making fun of glamor, which is based on such a lie.”

See also a separate interview with Jeff Niesel for Cleveland Scene, also about the lineup for the US dates:

For the current tour, Hatfield recruited Dean Fisher to play bass and has “two local Boston guys who I’ve never toured with before” in the band as well. They'll play songs from her 30-plus year career.

Freda, John, and Juliana are interviewed by Jack Rabid for Rock and Roll Globe to talk about the reissue of Innocence and Experience. It's an excellent read. They talk about an unreleased song ("Radiator") which they all seem to love and which any fan reading will now be very keen to hear! They also all speak in remarkably candid detail about the early 90s break up. An excerpt:

FREDA: Regarding our demise, it was indeed, as Juliana remembers, long and drawn out! What was hardest for me was that we agreed to break up but kept playing shows, mostly to fulfill our obligations. Being a dead band rocking was no fun, and on one long tour I was very depressed then got super sick and went home in the middle—to be replaced by Juliana’s brother—and then I opted out of our final tour of Europe because it just felt sad and pointless to me. I’ve always needed to feel like I’m working with a sense of hope and direction and forward momentum, and the Blake Babies had that in our early years, which was exciting, and when that was gone I checked out, disappointed and a little wounded. Now I wish I had rallied to keep my shit together for a strong ending. My regret about that was one factor in my suggesting the [2001 comeback fourth LP] God Bless the Blake Babies reunion album and tour—I wanted a happier final chapter for us! I’m not sure if it’s because of the reunion or because of time, or because of love and friendship, but I don’t have any bad feelings about the breakup now. I just feel lucky I ever got to be in a band with Juliana and John.