Julia's Song "How Many"

I stumbled upon that song and it gave me the idea to put this album together in the way that I did. I'm a productive procrastinator, so back in college when I was supposed to be working on something else, that just happened when I was messing around in my apartment in Boston.

I put it on Soundcloud and sometimes I would go back and listen to it. I'd be like, "This is fun. I should do something with this." I was listening to it when I was going through my first run of therapy, and I realized I've always been aware of these feelings, I just haven't paid them that much attention.

I've got a complicated family history. I cope with humor. These are deep things that I've always been able to take in stride with humor, and I just thought it would be a really good introduction to me and how I process things.

I didn't think about it that much when I wrote the song, but looking back at it now, it's like, Yep, those things have always been there.

Throwback Sound

Recently I played Bluebird On The Mountain¹, and somebody told me they felt like they were in a time warp when they were listening to me.

My mom is Filipino, and on the other side of the world in the Philippines, they're like a decade or so behind on music trends, so the karaoke tracks they listen to are also behind. Filipinos are big on karaoke culture - I learned how to read on a karaoke machine and I grew up singing old songs. I was introduced to old jazz at a really young age. I probably know way too many songs from the '60s and 70s and '30s and '40s and beyond for someone my age.

I attribute it to that culture. That started my fascination with it. My great-grandparents' favorite songs were really old Spanish songs like Los Panchos. They loved Nat King Cole and old romantic music. I feel like somebody injected me with a deep love for Ella Fitzgerald at a very young age. Then my stepdad introduced me to old country at a pretty young age, Charley Pride and all of those old greats.

Layering Sounds On The Album

I produced everything. I started it at my house that I was in prior, but I've been collecting little weird pieces from when I was in college. So some of the tracks have things that I maybe sped up and mashed and chopped a bit.

Sometimes I sit down and I'm like, "This is the time that I'm going to give to this song, and I'm going to go until it doesn't feel good anymore, then I'm going to stop and listen to it again." Then I'll take a week or longer and I'll come back to it.

I try not to overthink it. I try to just go for what feels good or what is fun. On one or two of the songs, I started them and then I completely redid them. I try not to overthink it or overproduce it because I think that is the worst thing that you can do. And you can tell if someone's just doing things because they feel like they need to fill space, and that's a slippery slope to get into.

It's really easy to feel like your music is kind of naked and that you need to do a lot to make it feel complete, but then I listen to some of my favorite albums. I listened to the first few Iron & Wine albums over and over and over again when I was in college, and that is like one mic in an apartment. That grounds me.

I like to watch YouTube videos of how things were produced and recorded. I was watching videos of Andrew Sarlo, who produced some albums for Adrianne Lenker from Big Thief, and he said, "We were in a parking garage and we used an iPhone."

Those kinds of producers and that mentality is where I try to come at it from. The performance is more important than anything else, more than all the tiny little elements. But it's a balance. I also want to challenge myself and try new things, but my main thing is, don't overthink it. Sleep on it, see how I feel about it later. But I definitely did things in little spurts. I'll overthink it, but I won't overdo it.

Songwriting

I usually will write a song in an hour, or I'll try to get it to a point where I can stop and then maybe come back at it with fresh ears, but I'll finish the entirety of the form and the bones, because it's therapy. I grew up in a loud household with a lot going on, everybody doing their best with like 20 people in a five-bedroom house sometimes. You weren't supposed to talk about your feelings.

For a lot of us millennials, our parents were doing their best, but I didn't have the vocabulary, so I learned how to get it out in song. And I think it saved my life like over and over and over again because I like to write about things that are difficult to talk about. Nobody will hear it if I don't want them to. Then I can brace myself for when people are going to hear it, as opposed to in the moment actually expressing the difficult thing.

The Song "All Along"

It was after college. I wrote it and then I asked Logan Kendell if he would sing on it with me. I love him. He's got a beautiful artistry in his own right. Great songwriter.

I wrote it about how after college I fell into this relationship that was like a whirlwind. We moved to Nashville together and it felt like it was supposed to happen. I'm not a religious person or the most spiritual, but it just felt like it was meant to happen, and I still believe I was meant to grow with that person. And we did grow with each other and are responsible for who we are today individually. So that's what that song was about, and then Logan just hopped on it.

Writing A Happy Love Song

I'm such a romantic. It is hard to write happy love songs, but I don't have a hard time with it. When I care about people I turn into a puddle of goo, but it's hard to get me to care about you. I'm a Cancer, so I got my shell, and once you get under my shell it's just all that soft white meat.

I just write a bunch of love songs. I write love songs for my friends. All the songs that I write that are gooey, they probably happen in like 30 minutes when I was just feeling it. 

Videos

The more professional ones I ask people to put together, but I like the idea of just being myself. I have a hard time trying to be cool or professional, and I think that all of the best things that have come to me have come through when I'm comfortable and vulnerable. 

I had to learn how to set a lot of boundaries because that comes across as being extremely available to people. I think sometimes, What if I was a cool, edgy girl? And I'm just not. I want people to see my cat when they're listening to my album. I love my cat. I have my cat at my desk with me.

The Song "Glow"

"Glow" is funny. I am an introvert and I love to give my energy to people in concentrated intentional increments of time, but there was a period of time right before Covid hit when I was spread thin and exhausted. It's hard because you want to support everybody and go to shows and be there, but I'm so tired all the time. So when Covid hit, I felt, like, happy. Obviously not, but it felt good to be able to slow down, be home and do the things that I wanted to do and catch up on my shows.

There's this weird game in music too that I finally left behind. I'm a mushy person. I feel like I give a lot of love, and some people have a different relationship with music and they may be trying to climb the ladder, play the game. When all that was away I just got to play music and see the people who I trusted the most. We were really prioritizing each other's safety and time, and talking about mental health. It felt really good, and that's what "Glow" is about for me. It was like, "Ah, I feel like the fullest version of myself because I'm not trying to be hyper-aware of who I can and can't trust and where my energy is going. Do I have enough time for this? Am I being a good partner?"

Bringing Pandemic Ethos To Current Times

I talked about it a lot in therapy. I just have to put my blinders on sometimes and be like, "These are my top three priorities right now: it's me and my health and the people that I care about... and my cat. I just need to take care of those things before I can slowly take my blinders back off."

Maybe this is a small-town person thing. I'm so used to a smaller community where I care a lot about all of the people within my community, and my community is now way bigger than it was before. So I just have to stop and be like, "Nobody's going to die if I don't go to this show. I can send a text, I can still buy a ticket and support. I can call that person later. If I don't get to these emails right now I can do them in the morning."

As an independent artist I get really overwhelmed, since I'm producing and writing and mixing my own music, all this stuff. Sometimes I just have to remember what's important and focus on the task at hand.

Learning Production

I went to school for it. I went to the Berklee College of Music and I studied writing and production. 

Boston was a lot. Oh man, it was a huge culture shock coming from south-central Alaska and Wasilla. I was born in Anchorage. You're not supposed to climb trees in Boston. You can't pee in the woods. You're not allowed to have access to every rooftop - I ended up breaking into buildings and going to the roof because I just needed to have elevation again. 

Also, Alaskan culture is different. There's less etiquette. It's kind of like it's the Wild West. There was an acre between my mom's house and any of our neighbors, so I felt like a wild animal learning how to be a person, what you can and you can't do, what is and isn't appropriate. Like being around some wealthy kids who have summer homes and people who had access to being invited to sing at Carnegie Hall in high school. I'm like, "I sang in the woods for a bunch of hippies!" So it was it was different. It was a challenge.

I grew up poor. I was working sometimes two jobs through college and I lived 45 minutes away, so it was hard. I had to take two buses and a train to get to school, and then I would take two buses and a train to get to work. Then I would take three buses and a train to get home after work. So it was really difficult but I'm really grateful for the experience. Not so grateful for the student debt.

What's Next

I've had some really fun co-writes. I wrote with Aaron Lee Tasjan recently - we wrote a really good song and I want to work with him more. I do write a lot of songs. I've written probably 30 songs in the last couple of months. That's the way that I process my feelings. It just happens.

I'm ready to put out more music and I feel like I learned a lot as a producer on this album. It's like, "How do I want to present myself? Okay, cool. I've covered those bases, now I want to present these other aspects of me and explore these other parts." So I'm ready to do that and I'm really excited about it.

Maybe I'll do a co-write album because I've had some really fun co-writes lately. Or, the trend now is just putting out singles and then maybe it turns into an EP, but I might be too much of a control freak for that, so we'll see.

September 25, 2023

Further reading:
Aaron Lee Tasjan
Liz Longley
Elizabeth And The Catapult

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Footnotes:

• 1] Bluebird On The Mountain concerts are held at sunset on the portico of the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory, which is situated on one of the tallest hilltops in Nashville, Tennessee. (back)

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