Peter Chianca, writing for Boston.com:
You’ve heard about once-in-a-lifetime opportunities? This is one of those. Coming off arguably the most prolific and creatively productive stint in her long career, Duxbury native and Berklee grad Juliana Hatfield has scheduled “A Last Minute Local Tour Kick Off Show,” complete with her band, in the intimate confines of The Burren in Somerville.
The show is on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. Ticket info:
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.
Juliana will play a Hot Stove Cool Music benefit show at Metro in Chicago, IL on July 1 2022, appearing on a bill with Mavis Staples, Ted Leo, Kay Hanley, and many more.
Foundation To Be Named Later - ftnbl.org
Juliana will appear at Summerfest in Milwaukee, WI on the afternoon of Thursday, June 30, 2022.
American Laundromat Records:
We are stoked to reissue "Sunburn" on vinyl for the first time in over 30 years! This exclusive reissue is limited to 2,000 units worldwide.
Reissue artwork prepared by Aaron Tanner at Melodic Virtue from the original Mammoth art. Our good friend Sean Glonek at SRG studios handled remastering, Levi Seitz cut metal, and the fine folks at Furnace pressed the vinyl. It looks and sounds amazing! We are very proud of this reissue and hope you enjoy it.
For further info on colour variants and test pressing options head to American Laundromat Records order page.
John P. Strohm posted on Twitter yesterday about finding a Blake Babies tour diary he kept from 1989-1990, and which he’s now transcribing.
I’ll keep this post updated with links to John’s Wordpress as he publishes in parts.
A snippet from Part 1 (November - December 1989) :
12/7/89
Athens GA did not disappoint. Tuesday night we played the 40-Watt. We played an hour and two encores. It felt a little lackluster because Juliana is getting a cold. The staff at the 40-Watt are as nice as any club people I’ve met. The sound guy kept offering Juliana various cold remedies including slugs of brandy (which she declined – she never drinks and in fact none of us are drinking at all on this tour). Wednesday we drove to Sparta to a junk store and I bought some shitkickin’ boots and some hats. Freda got these amazing red cowboy boots, which she’s wearing with pride.
Updates:
Part 2 (January 1990) published April 3, 2022
Part 3 (February 1990) published April 4, 2022
Part 4 (February 1990) published April 5, 2022
Part 5 (March 1990) published April 6, 2022 (final part)
Erika Wolf, writing for Albumism on the 30th anniversary of Hey Babe:
Obviously, I liked Hatfield because she was wry. But on Hey Babe, her debut solo album sandwiched between the Blake Babies and her fame-fanning Become What You Are, she was vulnerable, too. Radically so. In 1992, she appeared on MTV’s 120 Minutes to promote the video for “Everybody Loves Me But You,” Hey Babe’s first single. I’m not sure if I saw it back then. Every summer, my family would fly to the states to visit my grandparents in Minnesota, and my brother and I would lounge around the basement rec room, bingeing on MTV for hours.
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
Available to order now from American Laundromat Records.
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
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.)
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.
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.
