Posts in interview

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, 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.

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.

goldminemag.com/columns/juliana-hatfield-and-emma-swift-discuss-covering-neil-young-for-record-store-day-black-friday

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.

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.

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.”