From last month, an episode of the Wheels Off with Rhett Miller podcast:
Singer-songwriter, musician, and indie rock icon Juliana Hatfield joins Rhett to discuss her creative process, the music she’s working on, and the balance between work and artistry. The two talk about trusting your instincts, allowing songs to develop naturally, and Juliana reflects on what her dream day job would be if she decided to do something other than music.
Last weekend saw the ‘Fort Nights’ celebration of Gary Smith’s life in Boston with events featuring many of artists who recorded at his Fort Apache studios. Juliana performed on Saturday night on a bill featuring Billy Bragg, Kristin Hersh, and many others.
Paul Robicheau has a review for The Arts Fuse:
If Hersh was a tough act to follow, rocker Hatfield benefited from the night’s introduction of the fine Fort Nights house band of drummer Chris Anzalone, bassist Ed Valauskas, guitarist Mike Oram, and keyboardist Elizabeth Steen.
Juliana’s set list:
Everybody Loves Me But You
Hole In My Life
I See You
Please Mister Please
Telephone Line
Sweet Is The Night
Out There
My Sister
Somerville Theatre:
The Gary P. Smith Trust will bring together artists from Boston and beyond to celebrate the legacy of producer, manager and friend Gary Smith, and the music of Fort Apache Studios.
The Fort Nights benefit will take place at the Somerville Theater on Friday, March 15 and Saturday, March 16th. Throughout his career, Gary Smith worked with an array of artists from the local and national music scene, with a keen ear for discovering and cultivating talent. He was an early advocate for artists such as The Blake Babies, Pixies, Throwing Muses, Polara, Bill Bragg and many others. And his Fort Apache Studios, also known as The Fort, was the location of seminal recordings from Radiohead, Weezer, Superdrag, Uncle Tupelo, Dinosaur Jr, Lemonheads, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Morphine, Buffalo Tom and more.
The first night, Friday March 15th, is an intimate evening at the Crystal Ballroom with performances from Fuzzy, Tanya Donelly, Buffalo Tom and special guests.
The second night, Saturday, March 16th, will be an evening of celebration at the Somerville Theatre featuring music from artists and friends including Bill Janovitz and Tanya Donelly duo, Kristin Hersh, Arc Iris, Billy Bragg and very special guests.
Juliana is confirmed as one of the very special guests for the Somerville Theatre show taking place this weekend on Saturday March 16, 2024.
American Laundromat Records have confirmed details of the 2024 vinyl editions of Juliana’s 1998 Bed and Blake Babies’ 1989 Earwig albums.
As ever there are colour variants and in the case of Bed an alternative artwork variant too, with 3 new t-shirt designs in the mix as well.
Orders are up now and shipping is estimated for May 2024:
Here’s video of Juliana’s solo show last night at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC as live streamed by the venue.
Juliana, interviewed by Michael Christopher for Vanyaland ahead of this week’s run of solo shows on the US East Coast, giving a recommendation:
I think people should watch this movie called Fair Play. I saw it on Netflix. It’s about this young guy and a young girl, well, young man and a young woman, who work together in this really high-pressure finance industry in New York City, and they’re also a couple, and it’s about these sort of power dynamics and how they develop. I don’t know if men will like it as much as I did as a woman, but I mean, I think that it will be an enjoyable viewing experience for anyone. When it gets to the end, it’s kind of intense. It builds into this crescendo denouement, it just kind of really distills a problem that exists in society, I think, between men and women. It’s really amazing. I loved it so much.
Ahead of 2024’s scheduled reissue of the Bed LP, American Laundromat Records have announced a bonus single:
We are thrilled to release these two outstanding tracks on vinyl for the first time ever. "Anemia" and "Mean and Evil" were originally included on the Japanese CD edition of "Bed" as bonus tracks. This exclusive 7-inch is limited to 500 copies worldwide on red opaque vinyl with original artwork by Juliana. Spins at 45 RPM with a large center hole. Includes high-quality download card.
www.alr-music.com/collections/out-now/products/juliana-hatfield-anemia-b-w-mean-and-evil
WNYC:
The singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield made a name for herself writing and recording her own work, but in recent years has amassed an impressive collection of tribute albums to some of her favorite artists. Following 2018's Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and 2019's Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, she's now out with Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, a 10-song album of songs originally recorded by the Jeff Lynne-led outfit. Hatfield joins us for a Listening Party.
Today's episode is about "X: The Unheard Music", a 1986 doc about the LA-based punk legends X. The movie was directed by W.T. Morgan.
Our guest for this episode is another legend: Juliana Hatfield!
Juliana is known for her many solo albums along with her work with the bands Blake Babies and the Lemonheads. Her new album, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, is out now. We can't get it out of our heads.
X: The Unheard Music features the band performing many of their classic songs (along with their cover of the Doors' "Soul Kitchen" featuring a very dadcore Ray Manzarek). In between, we get to spend some time with each of the band members as they discuss their lives and the evolution of the band.
Juliana, on Nirvana’s Bleach LP from an article in Uncut Magazine:
Another album that blew the minds of me and the Blake Babies when we were all living together in the late ’80s. When we went on tour, we had the cassette of Bleach and we put it in the van and we would all just bliss out on it. Just the relentlessness of the disillusionment, I found so pure. It was there from the very beginning; you could almost predict his suicide because it was like he was almost defeated before he started. He really was the voice of a generation, although I hate that expression. He spoke to us and he spoke for us. But at the root of it he was a great rock voice – and a genius, really.
The feature is a list of Juliana’s favourite albums by other artists. No surprises if you’ve read similar interviews over the years. Jules is consistent with her picks in these things!
Juliana, interviewed by Warren Kurtz for Goldmine about the new album:
I am drawn to the ELO songs that are about alienation and difficulty connecting with other people, like drifting through space.
…There is a lot of room in Jeff Lynne’s songs to be able to add interesting bits and pieces of sounds, not copy what they did but add them in like spices.
Julians’s new ELO covers album is out now, available on the major streaming services with further physical options via American Laundromat Records and Bandcamp.
A selection of the reviews:
…her strongest tribute album yet; it may be one of her strongest records ever
Ray Chestowski, stereophile
The one-woman production preserves Lynne’s style yet dials down the theatrics to not quite garage band levels, making it one of the most successful outings in her ongoing covers project series.
Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter (3.5/5)
The brilliance of choosing to cover a band like ELO, familiar to millions across generations, is that simply by taking out the synthesizers, an instrument synonymous with the band, and replicating those parts with guitars and bass (with a little piano added in here and there), the sound is still vaguely familiar but redefined for another genre. The result is impressive.
John Moore, Glide Magazine
The indelible guitar hooks and high-gloss melodies of ELO shine through most on “From the End of the World,” though. Hatfield nails that deeper-catalog track and a few other career earworms from ELO, but her overall style is locked down and less theatrical than even her own recordings.
Kyle Lemmon, Flood Magazine
Juliana is scheduled to play solo electric shows in the New Year:
Note: The initial date for the Washington show was given as Jan 25, but the Kennedy Center’s site now shows Friday Jan 26, with a livestream also available.
2024:
Jan 26 The Kennedy Center, Washington DC
Jan 27 Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA
Jan 28 City Winery, New York City, NY
Jan 29 City Winery, Boston, MA
Following last week’s solo electric shows, there’s a review and some photos of the October 9 performance at Turf Club in St Paul, MN at We Heart Music.
From earlier in the month, Juliana was interviewed by Grant Walters for Columbus Underground. She revealed a collaboration on an album that we may never hear:
GW: The last time we spoke was when your last studio album of original songs, Blood, was released. I guess that’s about two years ago already. Are you in a perpetual state of writing your own music – or where you’re maybe at least sketching ideas for the next project?
JH: Yeah, I’m always at least thinking about it. Usually when I finish an album or a tour, I’ll take a little bit of a break and I’ll just kind of laze around. Or I’ll be drawing and writing other things. But I’m always on to the next thing. After I finished the ELO record, I took a little time to not work on anything. But then I started working with this new friend of mine who is a contractor and a carpenter – and he’s also a musician and a songwriter. He had all these songs recorded with no vocals on them, and I ended up writing and recording a whole album worth of songs with him. So, I don’t know if it’s ever going to be released, but there are, like, 12 songs that I wrote lyrics for and sang. And now, I’m working on writing a new album of originals. I have about 10 songs in the works – just the guitar and form right now, but no words yet.
Juliana, interviewed by Dave Rayburn for AMPED on the upcoming ELO covers album:
DAVE: ELO is well known for its incorporation of orchestral elements in addition to elaborate production aesthetics. Can you talk about the challenges and creative choices you faced when reimagining their iconic songs in your own style?
JULIANA: I did have a few worrisome moments, wondering, “How the heck am I going to deal with the string parts?” I didn’t want to piss off any ELO fans in any way, by neglecting important elements in the songs. But I also didn’t want to just copy anything just for the sake of being pointlessly faithful. Instead, I thought about what each particular song needed or didn’t need, and then I worked with what I had and didn’t have, and made adjustments. On some songs I played certain string parts on guitar, or on keyboards. In others (“Bluebird is Dead” and “Showdown”), I sang the string parts, or parts of them. On some songs I chose to reinterpret in ways in which the strings were not necessary (for me) and would not be missed (I hoped). When I record any cover song, I like to play around with it at first, going over it and over it on an acoustic guitar until it starts to feel like mine, and in that process it becomes less intimidating to think of the original looming over me, and the song starts to organically become something that feels natural in my own hands, with my own style and personality. If anything feels awkward or forced during this early getting-to-know-the-song-vibe-in-my-hands period, I will let it go; I won’t force any song to be recorded by me unless it feels real.
DAVE: Who joins you on this record, and how was it recorded?
JULIANA: Ed Valauskas played bass and Chris Anzalone played drums (both are from the Boston area). I recorded everything else, on my laptop, in my bedroom at home. Ed recorded his parts in his basement home studio and Chris recorded his drums in his rehearsal room/makeshift recording studio. The three of us got together a few times in that rehearsal room to run through songs together and to get a feel for arrangements and for bass and drum parts. Ed and I were there when Chris recorded his drums but Ed and I both recorded our stuff at our respective homes, individually, after the drums were done. There was a lot of file-sending going on. After recording was done, we sent all the songs to Pat DiCenso to mix at his place and he did a brilliant job. He’d sent me first mixes and I had him tweak a few things but mostly he totally nailed it right away.
Juliana, interviewed by Jon Calderas for Cincy Music on many topics including the upcoming solo electric tour, recording at home, and here regarding the ELO covers LP:
JC: I wanted to ask you about that, especially in regards to the ELO material. I was listening to some of your [released] tracks and then I was listening to the original ELO tracks [that she’s covered but are not released yet]. I wanted to ask you about adapting them for a solo show. If I look at a song like “Bluebird is Dead”, that seems like, okay, that's a pretty straightforward one, but something like “From the End of the World” is lush and layered and very, very different on record. And I guess obviously on your laptop or studio you can overdub and layer as much as you want, but how do you go about reconfiguring those for a solo stage show?
JH: Well, I go back to just, I'm playing through them all, and you're right, “Bluebird is Dead”, does work really well in that context of “no band”. Yeah, “Bluebird is Dead”, that works well with just guitar and vocal, and… others, I'm figuring it out right now, which ones are going to work. It's just a process of playing through them all and seeing which one holds up without all the instrumentation. And the songs are generally, I mean, they're all so well- constructed that they would all conceivably work on their own with just one guitar, but I'm just going to choose the ones that I think sound the most complete on their own in that stripped -down version.
There’s this thing I found on YouTube, it's Jeff Lynne and his piano player playing through a bunch of his songs in his, I think it's a room in his house, like a gigantic room in his house with hit platinum records all over the wall. But he's just playing through a whole bunch of his songs, his hits, he's playing a guitar and his piano player's playing and the songs sound really good in that stripped- down atmosphere. It's just a testament to how well-written the songs are and how solid they are, how solid the constructions are. That's when you know a song is a good song -if it can just be played by someone on a guitar and played on its own and it sounds good.
Juliana appears on Episode 134 of Al Melchior’s You, Me and An Album podcast:
Indie rock icon Juliana Hatfield pays YMAAA a visit to talk about the soundtrack album for the 1980 musical motion picture, Xanadu, which features Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra. Juliana talks about being a fan of both artists growing up, her Olivia Newton-John covers album and her upcoming ELO covers album and the difficulties involved in covering other artists’ songs in general.
