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John P. Strohm, writing today for Talkhouse about "the 'demonic' 1970s Chevy cargo van that carried Blake Babies across America":

Juliana always drove, because she believed that she had a psychic connection with The Van and she could will it to stay on the road. We had a boom box that ran on batteries, but often we just rode in silence as Juliana looked straight ahead, jaw clenched, occasionally muttering insults to the van when it made its strange noises or if any indicator lights came on. The “check engine” light remained on pretty much always after we left New England.

talkhouse.com/the-van-from-hell/

Nicole Anguish's poster for Juliana's recent show at ONCE Ballroom in Somerville is available for sale at Daykamp Creative. There are three designs to choose from.

Michael Lello, interviewing Juliana for Highway 81 Revisited on the Police covers album:

[Juliana]...quickly dismisses the notion that performing songs written and originally sung by a man had any impact on her approach to them.

“No, not at all. I don’t think gender matters at all in these songs,” she says. “I did not change the gender because I think sometimes when a woman sings a man’s song, sometimes they change the gender and I always find that very jarring. It disturbs the song. It takes you out of the trance of song. I don’t think it matters what pronouns I sing. Plus it changes my perspective too. With ‘Roxanne,’ when Sting sings about it it’s a different story, it’s about a streetwalker, being in this agonized love affair with a streetwalker. When I sing ‘Roxanne’ I’m singing about a friend who’s a streetwalker.”

Juliana's US tour began last week in Evanston, IL and continues through to the east coast in February.

As trailed, fans at the Nashville show at the weekend were treated to a Blake Babies reunion.

Here's that moment and other highlights from some of your posts at the first week of shows:

Thanks to spike for getting in touch with video of this moment. There's more from Juliana's set on spike's YouTube page.

From an interview by Brent Thompson for Birmingham Stages ahead of the upcoming US tour:

Birmingham Stages: You have a large catalog of music at this point in your career. With that said, how do you comprise your set lists these days?

Hatfield: It can be really random. I made an album of covers called Juliana Hatfield – it was self-titled and kind of an obnoxious name for an album of covers [laughs] and I made it seven or eight years ago. Someone reminded me of the song I recorded by Teenage Fanclub called “Cells” which I hadn’t thought of for a long time. And I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll play that one in the set” because I remember how much I liked it. There’s no real system. I’m trying to pull things from lots of of different years – doing a bunch from the last few albums and then going back to the first and second albums.

Juliana is interviewed by Craig Rosen, talking about her Olivia Newton-John and Police projects as part of a feature at Tidal on the subject of covers:

Hatfield admits that she has done at least one ironic cover, in her earlier days. Earwig, a 1989 album by Hatfield’s band the Blake Babies, featured a cover of the Stooges’ highly sexualized anthem “Loose.” “That was a little ironic,” she says. “It was also kind of a joke, because I was a virgin at that time and I was singing this cock-rock song.”

These days, Hatfield says she’s no longer interested in being ironic. “What’s the point in belittling anything that was made with love?” she says. “Music is really precious, but it’s complicated because it’s all caught up in commerce. You have to be careful. If you’re going to knock something publicly, there has to be a real reason for it.”