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.
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.
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.
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.
Juliana is a guest on Episode 45 of Mike Hipple’s Lived Through That podcast, which focuses on influential artists of the 80s and 90s.
Juliana talks about her career and how the politics of the music business led her to almost quit entirely and how that journey led her to go back to school to try and get an MFA in fine art.
Available in the normal podcast clients including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast.
Juliana, interviewed by Brassneck for the September 2023 edition of Illinois Entertainer on the upcoming ELO album and here on the question of whether she’s been writing new material:
A little bit, yeah. Just little bits and pieces of stuff, but not really putting anything together. So that’s what I’m trying to do now — I’m working on originals more, in a more focused way. So folks can look at (the ELO album) as a palate cleanser or maybe a brain cleanser. And next for me is, I’m going to put together a new album of originals, which I’m writing, and it’s not gonna be uplifting really because I am not in that kind of headspace. So I’m in a place where I’m trying to figure some things out from my childhood and make amends and apologize, just trying to resolve things in my life and work through some long-standing issues. So it’s not really an uplifting moment in my life or a happy, content period — it’s more like a transitional period.
Juliana is interviewed by Steev Riccardo for the latest episode of his Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico podcast.
Juliana, interviewed by Aaron Kavanagh for postburnout.com on her choice of artist for her upcoming Juliana Sings ELO LP:
“And I was going to do R.E.M. and I was listening – the process for me starts with going deep into the albums, and all the deep cuts, and relistening, and finding things I want to record – and I just became too overwhelmed with the amount of R.E.M. material that I had never heard, because I stopped listening to them at some point, and there were a bunch of albums after then, and I just felt there was too much study that I was going to have to do, and there were too many songs, and I lost my nerve with that one. And then, I don’t know, I just thought, ‘I love ELO, so let’s do that!’”
From an interview by Warren Kurtz for Goldmine on Juliana’s cover of “Lotta Love”:
JULIANA HATFIELD: When I was a kid, I grew up on the Nicolette Larson version, which is what I heard first. For the longest time I thought it was her song and didn’t discover the Neil Young original until a bit later. I wanted to approach the song differently because it has already been successfully covered.
GM: Your guitar introduction and your solo remind me of The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” which gives the recording an added dimension.
JH: I wasn’t thinking of that, but that makes sense to me now. I wanted my version of “Lotta Love” to be a little tougher. I was trying to counteract the sentiment of the song which I think is emotionally demanding where one person wants the other to attend to that person’s needs which I interpret as, “It is going to take a lot from you to give me a lotta love.” I was fighting against that with my electric guitar.
via Magnet Magazine:
Longtime MAGNET contributor Hobart Rowland takes a deep dive into the influential albums championed by the magazine over the years, with exclusive, in-depth interviews with the artists, producers and other key players. For episode five, Rowland gets the real story behind the making of Blake Babies’ 1990 classic Sunburn, college rock’s last great statement.
This one features contributions from Gary Smith and the Babies trio.
Available in the embed above or the usual places including Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Spotify.
From the latest edition of Paul Myers’ Record Store Day podcast:
Stars' Torquil Campbell looks into the rear view mirror at the events leading up to Stars' lovely and melancholic new album, From Capleton Hill.
All three Blake Babies - Juliana Hatfield, Freda Love Smith, and John Strohm celebrate a new reissue of their 1990 indie classic,Sunburn.
Bill Kopp talks about his new book Disturbing The Peace, which provides the 411 on legendary SF indie label, 415 Records.
Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton praises a new RSD reissue of Linda Martell's Color Me Country.
The 30 minutes Blake Babies section begins at around 25:30.
JPS, writing for Talkhouse on the legacy of Sunburn and “what it was like to be a “college rock” band on the verge in 1990”:
Happily, Freda, Juliana, and I have rekindled our friendship several times over, and we made what I personally consider our best album, God Bless the Blake Babies, in 2001. We’ve periodically done shows together and supported one another in all of our mostly successful post-band pursuits. It’s wild to think that was over 30 years ago. It’s even wilder to listen to the music with the knowledge of what indie music sounds like today, and realize it still sounds contemporary. With the exception of a few dated production touches, Sunburn could fit in with what we call Indie Pop today.
An excerpt from Juliana, John, and Freda interviewed by Warren Kurtz for Goldmine Magazine:
GM: That vocal blend is also on “Train” which I really enjoy and reminds me a bit of R.E.M.
JH: They have train songs too, “Driver 8” for example. It is an American tradition.
JS: I think with that song it was a dual lead vocal. I was struggling as a new singer, trying to find my voice. I was learning how to sing in front of a microphone in a studio, which is not the best place to learn. It is the quickest way to improve but most people who sing in a studio have sung in a school choir, at least.
JH: I was also a bit new. I studied piano at Berklee and then started studying voice, so I was also learning techniques on how to strengthen my voice.
JS: Juliana had already sung on two albums before this, so she had great experience, compared to me. “Train” has a pretty demanding vocal with an active melody. Juliana’s guide vocal helped me to nail the pitch. The lyrics were ambiguous, so having the male and female vocal was not a conflict.
JH: While this song doesn’t sound like the band X, John and my voice are so different that it reminds me of John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s voices being different in X. When we sing together it is a cool tension that blends well.
