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.

Albumism recently ran a readers’ poll for all time fave Juliana albums. All 19 solo LPs (including JH3 and Juliana’s Pony) were eligible.

The results are now in with nearly 3,000 votes cast of readers’ top 5 picks.

I won’t spoil it here so head to the post at Albumism to find out the choices.

I’m not too surprised at the ‘winners’ (the 5 I voted for are in the top 6), but there’s a few unexpected rankings in the middle (e.g. I wouldn’t have thought that #9 would get almost double the votes of #13.)

Coming in March 2022, Fire Records have announced a new edition:

Lemonheads’ seminal album ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’, lovingly reissued for it’s 30th Anniversary. The long overdue reissue includes a slew of extra material, including an unreleased ‘My Drug Buddy’ KCRW session track from 1992 featuring Juliana Hatfield, B-sides from singles ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ and ‘Confetti’, a track from the ‘Mrs. Robinson/Being Round’ EP, alongside demos that will be released for the first time on vinyl. This reissue celebrates their prestigious fifth album, these deluxe bookback editions feature new liner notes and unseen photos.

Pre-orders are now being taken at your local indie store or via Fire in the US, and the UK.

The KCRW track featuring Evan and Juliana (but mostly Evan!) is out now on the usual streaming services.

Kyle Meredith’s Consequence interview this week with Susanna Hoffs about her newly released covers album Bright Lights touches on Susanna’s collaborations with other artists. Towards the end (at the 24:13 mark) they discuss Susanna working with Juliana 30 years ago on her When You’re A Boy album, where Juliana performed backing vocals and has a songwriting credit on the track That’s Why Girls Cry.

JPS has added more background on Twitter as to how that came about:

Nice interview. To fill in the story, David Kahne wanted to sign our band Blake Babies to Columbia and we cut a demos w/ him on a tour stop in LA (Club Lingerie in 1990). Then later DK brought JH out to work with you, but we didn’t end up signing. We broke up instead!

— John P. Strohm (@johnpstrohm) November 18, 2021

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A post shared by American Laundromat Records (@americanlaundromat)

Available to order now from American Laundromat Records.

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promotional image by Stacee Sledge / julianahatfield.com

Livestream show! With a band! This month!

Juliana returns to her internet concerts on Wednesday October 20, 2021 at at 6pm EDT (that’s 11pm BST, midnight CEST 😬) on Q Division’s YouTube channel.

Writing on her official site:

I will play electric guitar and sing, Chris Anzalone will play drums, and Mike Oram will play bass and sing some harmonies. This is the lineup that was set to go on the road before we had to pull out of the tour with Soul Asylum and Local H.

We are all fine (thanks for asking!) and we will be playing an assortment of songs chosen from the buffet of my vast, decades-spanning repertoire.

So no full album show this time, but the pay what you want deal remains with donations being accepted at julianahatfield.com

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Juliana played an outdoor show for ONCE at Boynton Yards in Somerville yesterday. This was her first live gig since the before times.

Opening with Bottles & Flowers and finishing with Everything’s For Sale, Juliana’s set had many picks from the American Laundromat era, and some deeper cuts such as Daniel and Necessito. Thanks to Vicky for posting the setlist photo (on the Instagram post embedded below.)

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A post shared by Vicky S (@vsalipande)

photo from last night by joshua pickering pic.twitter.com/XTKkPzC4ah

— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) September 20, 2021

The poster as designed by Nicole Anguish is available from Daykamp.

There’s more chat from attendees on the Facebook fan group.

American Laundromat Records are having a further run of their Blake Babies t-shirt featuring John P Strohm’s classic illustration.

We’re receiving tons of requests again for this exclusive @blakebabies tee, so we’re doing a special run. We are only screenprinting against orders received in advance so be sure to place your order asap here https://t.co/iTIlPhhc9K@johnpstrohm @julianahatfield @fredalovesmith pic.twitter.com/71lJu73JeK

— American Laundromat (@laundromat13) September 16, 2021

Also, ALR have teased a 2022 single featuring Juliana covering Neil Young’s “Lotta Love”:

Oh, what’s this?! Just the test pressing for the @julianahatfield and @emmaswiftsings split 7”we’re putting out next year. Two @Neilyoung songs. Juliana covers “Lotta Love” and Emma covers “Give Me Strength.” They’re both OUTSTANDING!#45rpm #testpressing pic.twitter.com/qMNaQnBFoZ

— American Laundromat (@laundromat13) September 15, 2021

Juliana is scheduled to play at Boynton Yards, Somerville, MA on Sunday, September 19, 2021.

Tickets for this outdoors show are on sale at Eventbrite.

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American Laundromat Records are offering a new t-shirt based on the Blood album cover.

Orders are being taken now for shipping at the end of the month.

Freed from vinyl / download code exclusivity, Juliana's 2020 Record Store Day single is now available on streaming / digital download platforms.

From Juliana’s post on Twitter, August 6, 2021:

Hello, friends. I am very very sorry to have to say this but due to unforeseen circumstances I am no longer going to be able to take part in the upcoming tour that I'd planned on doing with Soul Asylum and Local H. I was really looking forward to it, and to all the music, and to seeing everyone out there, and I hope to be able to hit the road again before too long. xoxo, Juliana

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American Laundromat Records, on an unseasonal new pressing of Juliana's vinyl single, previously available during last winter's US Record Store Day event:

Juliana's "Christmas Cactus" gets a brand new pressing on beautiful Coke Bottle Clear vinyl. This fantastic 7" is a label exclusive limited to 500 copies. Spins at 45 RPM

Pre-orders (for end of July shipping) including signed copies and test pressings options are being taken now at American Laundromat Records' store.

Juliana will continue her full album livestreams from Q Division Studios with a solo performance of 2000’s Beautiful Creature on Saturday June 19, 2021 at 4pm EDT.

The pay what you want deal remains and donations can be made at Juliana’s official site: julianahatfield.com

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.