julianna barwick q&a

Today we unveiled two new records on eMusic Selects, our DIY record label. Dark Energy from Altair Nouveau and Florine from Julianna Barwick. Both records are exceptional. Altair is sci-fi disco, these shimmering soundtracks to weird hovercraft races and love gone technological. Julianna is towering stacks of vocal loops twisted and pulled every which way, meditative sound collages that stun us every time.

A couple of weeks ago I visited Julianna Barwick at her NYC apartment for an interview and a performance that we planned to film to show how her music is made. But, genius that I am, my camera battery was dead, and the performance is now lost to all but my memory. It was incredible.

Julianna and I spoke at length about her music, religion, fire ants, Bjork and all sorts of stuff. It’s a great conversation, and you can check out after the jump.

Yancey: Where did you grow up?

Julianna: I grew up in Louisiana from zero to five.

Yancey: Tell me about this ants story. [Before I started recording the interview Julianna started telling me about ants and I stopped her and said to save it for the interview. So here it is.]

Julianna: I was two or three years old and waving goodbye to somebody who had visited us and I was kind of kicking around this brick that was in the front of our house. And then all of a sudden my mom was like, “Oh, my God!” and I looked down and I had kicked a brick and underneath were thousands of ants! They started covering me all the way up to my head and she had to throw me in the bathtub and hose them all off. I didn’t realize they were all over me. All of the sudden I was just covered with ants.

Yancey: You remember that?

Julianna: Yes. I do remember that — and my mom freaking out. Another time, probably when I was about the same age, my mom’s best friend had three boys and they were always hanging out and they were always making me do bad things, just being my big brothers, basically. And one time they made me step in an ant pile, which in my mind — you know how when you’re a kid and you remember something and you remember it to be *this big* and you grow up and you look at the same thing and you realize it’s only this big? Well, they made me step in an ant pile that I remember being taller than me, but it was red ants and they totally covered me and were biting me. Just crazy. Now I can deal with a couple ants, but if there is — you know how when they sometimes get together and they start going really fast and there’s thousands of them? That just makes every hair on my head like stand up.

Yancey: And if you see one ant, all you can do is look for more. But anyway! So you grew up in Louisiana, from zero to five.

Julianna: Zero to five.

Yancey: And where in Louisiana?

Julianna: West Monroe. It’s pretty much as north as you can get. It was pretty. We would spend summers at summer camp. My dad was a director there, so we were out there all summer long. You know, the heat. We’d gather wild blueberries and it was lovely. I got chocolate milk every morning from the kitchen lady. And then at five I moved to Springfield, Missouri. So I was there from five to thirteen and in that time we had a farm and we had sheep. And I’d drive around in my Uncle Buddy’s old pick-up truck. Had friends over and stuff. And this place looked like — my sister was over it, you know, because we went out there when I was in third grade and she was older, so you know it was the perfect time for me. I’d get frogs, put them in a jar, take them to school.

Yancey: Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Julianna: Yeah, get a snake and take it to school. Bring a lamb to school. And go explore. We had 16-and-a-half acres. And a few different pastures and a barn and everything, but there were all these separate little areas with clusters of trees and each one had its own function and personality in one way or another, like one we called The Magic Place because it was one central tree but it was so big that there were almost different rooms, and so I spent a lot of time daydreaming and imagining out there. And there was another place, which was a dump, where people, for years and years, dumped all kinds of weird stuff out there. There’d be old baby strollers and jars and stuff. And then there was this cemetery right outside our land, teeny tiny. And there was this area where there was nothing but hay bales.

Yancey: You enjoyed your time there. It was a good place for you to be.

Julianna: Yeah. Totally. Helped my dad with the sheep and all that stuff.

Yancey: Was your dad a working farmer at that time?

Julianna: No. He was working for the church.

Yancey: What kind of church?

Julianna: Church of Christ.

Yancey: So, non-denominational.

Julianna: No, it’s very much its own denomination.

Yancey: Is it?

Julianna: Yeah. With its own set of rules. But he was a youth minister for that church for about 25 years, which meant he organized everything for babies to college kids. He wanted to see what it was like to have a flock of sheep. To see what it was like. You know?

During that time he was working full time for the church. He was working full time and he did the sheep thing and he was getting ready to go to medical school because he went to medical school at like 40. And that’s when we moved to Tulsa so he could go to med school. I was 13 years old. And then I moved here [NYC] from there.

Yancey: So you were there, you were in Tulsa for a long time — through all of high school?

Julianna: From like 13 to 20 or 21 or whatever.

Yancey: You went to school there too?

Julianna: To college? Yeah. I went to community college and then finished here at Hunter. I have a degree in photography.

Yancey: Got it. And so what was life like in Tulsa. Is it urban at all?

Julianna: Not really. I mean, it’s a big city. It’s very suburban. I mean it’s literally on a grid, you know? 61st, 71st, 81st, 91st. Lewis, Harvard, Yale, Sheridan. I mean it’s the way it is through the whole thing, and there are malls and it’s a nice place. It’s totally your typical, Mid-Western, pretty big city.

Yancey: How would you describe the culture there?

Julianna: It was very homogenous.

Yancey: Conservative.

Julianna: Yes. Yeah. Totally.

Yancey: What else about Tulsa? Do you think it’s more a Southern community or Midwestern?

Julianna: It feels more Midwestern.

Yancey: Do you have any ties to it now, beyond your family being there? Do you have friends or anything?

Julianna: I have my best friend and her husband and her baby lives there, and I have two other really, really good friends there. So it’s kind of awesome because, actually, the friend with the baby, she lived here [in NYC] for probably eight or nine months, and then she needed a roommate. She was like, “You should come move here and be my roommate.” And I just said, “Okay.” She was like, “Wow! Really?” Then I moved in with her, she’s since moved back to Tulsa, and my parents were in Arkansas when I moved here, and they’ve since moved back to Tulsa, so it’s just one stop now.

Yancey: And so when you transferred to Hunter and moved to New York from Tulsa, were you scared?

Julianna: Not at all.

Yancey: Not at all? You just felt confident about it? Like you felt like it was meant for you?

Julianna: Totally. I never felt intimidated by it at all, because I’d visited once. My friend and I were talking about it and then I visited for spring break or something. And I guess I moved here one year after that, but yeah, it felt totally, totally right. It’s felt that way ever since. I have friends here who say, “I can’t take it here” and then move to Portland, Oregon. I never could. I love this place. I don’t think I ever want to leave until I’m too old. I’d love to move to Paris or something, sure, but I love it here. It’s definitely the energy here that makes you want to do what you can, it motivates you to make things, and do things, and be things. There are so many people are out here doing the same thing, and I love that energy.

Yancey: Do you have any level of competitiveness in you? I’m just wondering if that’s part of the energy.

Julianna: Not really. I can get competitive, really competitive, when I play Scrabble or something, like tip the board over or whatever.

Yancey: [Laughs]

Julianna: Actually, that only happened with chess once. I don’t think I have that consciously in my mind, like, “Look at what that girl’s doing.” But maybe a little — a tiny bit, but in a totally healthy way, I’m like, “They can accomplish that? Awesome, I want to do that, too.” It’s not coming from a weird place.

Yancey: Yeah, and so you went to Hunter and what happened from that?
Julianna: Well, not long after I graduated was when I started making all those tracks, actually. I think that’s how it went. I worked for some photographers, here and there. I was already playing some shows and stuff. It was messing around a little bit, like playing the electric guitar and putting a ton of reverb on my voice and just kind of standing up there and making up stuff. Like not even singing in English, just making up stuff as I went.
Sometimes I would have things I would work out on the guitar, and then I would always just make everything up. I borrowed a little guitar pedal that was literally this big [small] and white. I don’t remember what kind of pedal it is, but you had to hold it down to make the loop, and you let go, and you just kind of… you know? [Laughs] A couple of times I would let go too soon, and it would just be over.
I started doing those all the time. I bought that when I got here, same time I got my electric guitar from Sam Ash or something. We were recording some stuff on there, so I just started recording all those things into the four-track, and that’s when it eventually became Sanguine.

Yancey: What was prompting you to just make things up versus structuring something or writing something down beforehand?

Julianna: I think in general that’s the way I like to work. If I draw something, I just want to do something and not come back to it over and over and over again. And also the looping thing just sort of lent itself to that. No, I guess I always sort of did that.

Yancey: What’s funny is that you said you don’t like to come back to it over and over and refine it, but I feel like that’s almost exactly what your music is.

Julianna: It never starts out that way, though.

I dunno. I’ve never really thought about this before. I don’t know. I think one of the things I can say about that, even when I was playing guitar and singing and so on was just the sound of it, how it sounded was more important to me than planning it out and making it perfect and writing the perfect lyrics. I’ve tried to write lyrics before and I can never commit to them, and it’s kind of a struggle for me. But that’s the thing about it, and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I love the way my voice sounds through this pedal or whatever. I love this pedal on the electric guitar. It sounds so good.” And I would just play, and no one really could tell what I was singing about anyway. It was heavily drenched.

Yancey: That first time, though, the first time you performed at the open mic thing or some house party or some little event on campus, you had an idea of what you were going to do, clearly. I mean, you didn’t walk in like, “I got my guitar, I got a suitcase full of ideas. Let’s see what’s gonna happen.” I mean, there was some amount of plotting or planning, right?

Julianna: Actually, the first time, yes, because I had never done that before. We had a Wednesday music night thing. And I did plan. I planned that one out, but pretty much after that one time, I would just do pretty stuff and make it up.

Yancey: It’s really interesting. I don’t feel like I’ve ever talked to anyone who has approached things that way. I feel like people do that when they become bored of what they are, you know? You have to get rid of this rational part of your brain and go where nothing is plotted, and just what happens, happens, work with this. It’s not exactly improv, because I know you have a structure.

Julianna: Yeah.

Yancey: What — this will be a weird thing for me to say — what I keep thinking is that, to me, the idea of just, of just insisting of making things up, it almost becomes a comfort thing and a wall between you and the audience. Versus if a part doesn’t go right, it’s okay because you’re just making it up. And it becomes a means of…

Julianna: Being a wuss?

Yancey: No, not being a wuss. I think it’s a thing you take confidence in. To where there’s a certain level of… I don’t know.

Julianna: I don’t know. I think I totally get what you’re saying because that’s kind of how….I never really got nervous, and I still don’t because I think part of that is just something that’s innate, but part of it’s just like, I was in every talent show growing up. I was in the high school choirs, I took voice. I had to do recitals, I did an opera-chorus thing, and I wasn’t like a crazy child performer or anything like that, but I would sing for people regularly, so I think that was not a big deal, and I think my approach, like I said, to playing was kind of like, “If I don’t plan it, nothing’s going to go wrong.” That is true, totally. I just messed around.

Yancey: Right.

Julianna: Usually it’s just blissing out and making something that sounds pretty and just enjoying the sound of it. I really think that’s what it’s about. I talked a few times about the way I love to sing in church and that sound. I’m just in love with that. It’s just fun to sing like that. You know?

Yancey: Absolutely.

Julianna: Also, I don’t take myself too seriously. It’s fun for me; I love to do it.

Yancey: I find that — I believe you — but I find that very surprising. Just based on the music that you make and sort of, everything you’re saying, a lot of my assumptions that I have made. When I was listening to your music, I heard intricacies and all these sort of things, and you’re saying there’s something slightly more spontaneous to it than that.

Julianna: Yeah.

Yancey: But also: what we were talking about in the emails, when I wrote that watching you perform is like watching you stack dishes higher and higher, just this sort of fragile thing that starts to exist because it’s starting to exist, it goes in a direction.

Julianna: Yeah. When I say I don’t take myself too seriously, it’s not that I don’t feel like it’s important. I feel it’s very visceral.

Yancey: Right.

Julianna: It’s pretty, okay? Everybody happy?

Yancey: You don’t want to sound flippant, right?

Julianna: Yeah. I don’t want to sound flippant or anything. It really is just like, it feels good to just sing and make something. Part of what the whole looping thing is, is that when I plug everything in, which I never practice, but if I plug everything in, I just make something up. It’s just fun for me. It’s good for my brain to not know what it’s going to sound like at the end.

Yancey: So is there any sort of rational, directive thought as you’re going through it? Is it almost like speaking in tongues? Is it like something comes out, and as you hear it, you can feel sort of this momentum and you just follow?

Julianna: Pretty much. I used to make music with friends back in Tulsa… I’m going to sound like a jerk, but it’s just something that’s sort of innate. They were playing this guitar thing, and I’ll just play it, and we’re going to sing over it. It’s not as if I’m thinking about it too much, or anything.

Yancey: Right, right, right.

Julianna: It kind of just flows. I don’t know how else to describe it. It may sound corny, but it just… harmonies and kind of knowing how a song or where it’s going to go, it’s pretty rational. It just always… it sounds stupid.

Yancey: You’re a natural. No, kidding.

Julianna: I know.

Yancey: I understand what you’re saying.

Julianna: You know? It just, it’s totally comfortable and it’s totally fun and that’s behind all the looping stuff.

Yancey: So when did you first get into weird music?

Julianna: I’ve kind of always been into weird music, I guess.

Yancey: But was there a record store in Tulsa…

Julianna: Yeah.

Yancey: Your sister, did she make the jump first and then introduce you?

Julianna: No. I think that it was friends I made in high school, basically. Actually, the way that I found out about Bjork was I was 14 or something and I saw at the mall the cover of Debut and I was totally drawn to it, completely, and I didn’t know anything about her. I thought, you know I am gonna buy this and I’m gonna take it home and see if this is something really unique, because you look at that cover, and you’re just like, what is this gonna be like? Up until that point, seriously, I was listening to Amy Grant and Pearl Jam and stuff like that.

Yancey: Like everyone else, you were listening to Amy Grant and Pearl Jam. It’s the early ’90s, that’s what we did.

Julianna: [Laughs] I had the Singles soundtrack and Pearl Jam and the Cranberries. And then I bought Debut and I was like, oh my God, I didn’t know that this could happen. What is this, you know? And I must have like listened to that thing a bazillion times. And it’s still totally one of my favorite records and I became mildly obsessed with Bjork and I had a gigantic, subway-sized poster of Debut and it was funny — when little kids would be over, like my little cousins, they thought it was Michael Jackson. Do you know what I’m talking about? Can you imagine that, like that’s Michael Jackson? They didn’t know the difference. So, there was Bjork and I’d also catch 120 Minutes occasionally I’d be like, “that Sunny Day Real Estate thing sounds rad,” and I went and bought that, too…

Another person introduced me to Tori Amos and I totally fell in love with her too. And I was just into people singing expressing themselves in this way, and it was so unique.

If you start at Bjork, you’re gonna find some good things along the way, and I was definitely more into the indie side of music after that. Radiohead was huge for me too. But I’ve always loved like pop, too. I love Rihanna and I love Boys II Men and Mariah Carey and things like that, too.

Yancey: And so when you, you were singing in the school choir at that point, and were you doing school musicals?

Julianna: I would do choir concerts, but I was never in a play or anything.

Yancey: And did you start playing with friends, like making your own music with anyone at that point?

Julianna: No

Yancey: In any sort of way?

Julianna: In high school in my senior year I was in a band.

Yancey: What was your band called?

Julianna: I don’t remember. I really don’t.

Yancey: Who else was in the band?

Julianna: Friends, they were like good friends of my sister.

Yancey: So they were older?

Julianna: A little bit, yeah, like three, four, five years older, probably. And we would just get together once a week and hang out and I would sing stuff. It was kind of like a rock band

Yancey: Yeah.

Julianna: It was sort of ephemeral, it didn’t last too long.

Yancey: It was fun.

Julianna: It was fun. As far as the first time I started putting stuff together myself… I can always remember making stuff up. Always when I was a little kid, sitting by the window and making up songs, you know and singing my made-up songs for friends at school and things like that. But I didn’t really start recording stuff or coming up with stuff on my own until a little bit after high school. I got a guitar and I got a four-track or I borrowed one or something and I started doing that then.

Yancey: And so what was that stuff that you were making, what was it like, was it like little songs, was it just a guitar or something?

Julianna: Yeah, it was just trying stuff out, like I have a four track, so I would do a chord progression then come up with the melody and then harmonize it with it, things like that. Put down a little keyboard track or whatever.

Yancey: Right.

Julianna: Play a clarinet over it, or something.

Yancey: So the form’s still fairly similar to what you do now.

Julianna: Kind of, just different equipment.

Yancey: And was there a point where you, where it felt different, where it was like, I’ve made something here and I like what I’m doing here in a different kind of way?

Julianna: That only happened a few times. I have tapes and tapes of stuff. There were a few times I was like, I really love the way that sounds. Where those things came together there, wow, it’s pretty.

Yancey: Do you every play those for people or are those just like personal things for you?

Julianna: I don’t know how personal it is, but I’ve never, I’ve never really dragged it out. They’re like ten years old now. I wouldn’t be really embarrassed or anything.
[TAPE BECOMES GARBLED. RETURN TO INTERVIEW 30 SECONDS LATER]
I was playing electric guitar. It’s kind of cool, but I’m not in love with it. I totally fell in love with the looping stuff, cause it was just all these different things that I like, it satisfied the immediacy, it sounds cool, and also the layered vocals are something I like so much. I love choirs, especially boy choirs, and, and the church that I grew up with was a capella, everybody sang and there were no instruments. So there were some beautiful, amazing songs where people are doing different parts and the men are doing something different from the women and there’s all these harmonies and clapping. That is pretty much where my love of that sound comes from because I totally grew up with that singing all the time, whether it was around the campfire at camp or singing in church, which was awesome because there wasn’t a band on stage, so all you could hear were voices, that’s it. You know that got planted firmly in my brain.
Yancey: How about live shows?

Julianna: My first big one was Bowery Ballroom. I had never played at a place that big. I’d only been really playing the way I was playing. By the time I went over to Europe to do shows in late-ish 2007, I hadn’t had my looper for very long and I hadn’t played that many shows.

Before what I had done had been so loose: Does that work? Does this? Oh, that doesn’t work. I’m just going to hope this all works out.
And then I got to Bowery and I had never had eight giant rock monitors pointed at me. I’m doing it all by myself. I don’t have band members or people going with me to everything. It’s been very trial and error so far.

Yancey: God, Bowery. That must have been petrifying. I can’t even imagine, I don’t think I could have done that.

Julianna: I don’t think I was petrified. I was totally psyched. It was a total dream come true. Because I had done so many shows and part of that is, since I’ve moved here I’ve seen so many shows there and I’ve had all these fantasies of playing there. I was doing some kind of music thing and then I was up there one day. And that’s what it felt like too: Oh, it’s rad that I’m here.

And then it didn’t go totally awesome. Everyone told me different but I knew what was up. A lot of people told me different. Even with all that, it’s kind of exciting. I mean I’m sure your gathering that, but for me it was like: It’s not just me sitting here playing my set.
Yancey: When and how did you decide to make a record? Like, when did it become a thing that you were really doing? When did you to jump to the next level of, “I’m going to record songs and it’s going to become a record. And I’m going to play shows”? The steps of accepting your role as an artist or pursuing that in a conscious sort of way?

Julianna: I made the Sanguine stuff and I had it for a year-and-a-half before I actually was like: I’m going to make a record. And there were a few different components of that. I made a MySpace after I made the tracks. So I had a MySpace for about a year or something before I made the CD. And I was getting some feedback on MySpace. I don’t really remember what, but nice things. People sending me messages saying this is really pretty, this is awesome. Oh, cool.

And then I had a job that shared an office with the Virtual label, so that’s how I met John [Allen]. One day I just kind of thought, after I had the track for a year or more, I was like: I think I want to make a CD. How much does it cost? Is it a big deal?

And I asked him about it and he said this is how it should be. So we got together and made it. And of course they are built to help people like me who don’t have a label but want to get stuff on iTunes and get stuff on eMusic or whatever else. So they got me hooked up with the people who made up the CD, they hooked me up with everything. I sent it out to a few people. That was two years ago, a little over two years ago when that ball actually really started rolling. Sanguine has been available digitally for exactly two years now.

Yancey: And at what point do you feel like it had its greatest momentum and where was that coming from? Or was there some? How has your process been?

Julianna: Well, you know, the first year was easy-breezy. I think that one of the biggest, the thing that kind of makes it happen was when Sergio asked me to do the Ma Fama show.

So I’m a big Panda Bear fan and Panda Bear was in Lisbon and performed and Sergio asked me to the do the show that Panda Bear was on. I’m just like, “Panda Bear wants me to do what?” We performed live and I was really psyched about it. And I found out that Sergio’s program had a MySpace. And I just added him as a friend. He was like, “I love your music; I want you to do my show. Can you come to Lisbon?” I was just like, “Yeah.” I had no idea how but yeah, that’s sounds great.

I sent him a CD and he played some stuff on his show and some guys in London heard it and they contacted me and asked me if I wanted to be part of this festival thing. They helped me get shows in London so I was playing three weeks where I was doing shows and radio and stuff in London and Lisbon.

Yancey: That had to have been amazing.

Julianna: It was incredible. It felt so good because I had a bag of clothes and crap and a bag of gear. It was seriously like planes and trains and cars and stuff and I was just doing it completely alone — I mean with the guys’ help of course.

Yancey: Was that the best moment in your life? I can’t imagine that not —

Julianna: That was the best. I was totally psyched. I’m dying to do that again. Part of that was like —

Yancey: Like you felt like you were in a movie.

Julianna: Yeah, it was pretty cinematic, completely. Especially when I got to Lisbon, which is like one of the most glorious places ever. I just wept on my last day, I did not want to leave. It was horrible; I felt like my heart was broken. I did not want to leave. I made such good friends.

Yancey: Could you go there and stay?

Julianna: Yeah, yeah.

Yancey: But you want to stay in New York forever?

Julianna: What do you mean stay? Like, live? I probably could if I wanted to do it. It’s occurred to me.

Yancey: Sorry I interrupted. So you had your incredible week in London doing radio, playing shows — just being in the scene.

Julianna: And Lisbon, yeah. I played probably three shows in London. And there was this amazing guy, like a stranger from the internet, who made it all happen. We were emailing a ton for months before I went there. He met me at the train station everyday and walked me to the venue, hung out while I was there early for soundcheck and whatnot and got me home at night. He’s the friendliest guy ever. And Sergio is the same way.

I stayed at his house and he helped me get shows and I did Portuguese national radio one day. All that stuff and I was just like, “This is all the stuff I love in the world. I’m doing this independently and that’s great. I’m playing music and that feels great and I’m meeting new people who are totally different from me and that feels good. And I’m seeing these totally amazing places.”

Lisbon is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen and I actually felt heartsick for it.

Yancey: Had you traveled much before then?

Julianna: A little bit. I went to Mexico a few times, South America once. I did one European trip with my dad and my sister. So really I think that helped me not be intimidated by passports and customs and stuff like that.

I thought when I went over there: I have no idea what I’m getting into. This is either going to be hard and it’s going to suck or I’m going to have the time of my life. I had the time of my life.

All these little surprises happened too. Like Guy Sigsworth and Talvin Singh were at my first gig ever overseas. [Laughs] I went out with them afterwards because Guy had found my music on MySpace. He had written me in August and was like: “This is Guy and I just think your music is pretty.” I wrote him and I was like: “Wow, really? I’m going to be in London in two months or in a month.” And he actually came.

Actually my first gig [in London] was like — I don’t know how to describe it. It was a little stage, it wasn’t too far out from the bar area. And there was this couch over here right in front of the sound booth which was on the stage. And [Sigsworth and Singh] were right there at my first gig. I can just feel them and I was like, “Ahhh!”

So that was pretty crazy. And the surprises kept coming. When I was in Lisbon, my London friend was like, “Hey, I’m in touch with the Upset the Rhythm guys and it turns out they need someone to open for Dirty Projectors. I’ve already told them about you, do you want to do it?” “Yeah!” And so that worked out.
So many things have happened from that trip. I do the radio thing were I recorded four tracks and did a little interview. Then one of them was reviewed on Pitchfork.

And I remember this super nice guy coming up to me from the Dirty Projectors gig in London and he was super nice and he bought a CD. Then this past September, which was over a year later, he said, “I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Matt and I met you at the show where you opened for Dirty Projectors and I bought your CD. Well I’m the director of A&R at XL and I was wondering if you could do a remix for our Radiohead thing?”

So many little things have happened from that trip.

Yancey: Do you feel like, with that trip, you just got lucky? It’s okay if you don’t. It just seems like everything fell into place ridiculously well.

Julianna: Well I think anyone who looks at this situation thinks: That’s lucky, that’s dope. That’s mega fun. But it was just something I really, really wanted to do. I’m just really thankful because the whole crew of people helped me do that. We’re friends for life now. People that are totally selfless: “I really like your music. Let me show you around Lisbon all day because I’m awesome.” Stuff like that. “I don’t know you but I like your music. I’m going to help you get to every single one of your gigs that I booked for you.” It was just so many moving things all at the same time. I can’t even tell you how many experiences there were about that time where it was just like: I can’t believe how nice all these people are! This is very special.

When I got back I wrote them: “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did. It’s just amazing.” And they’re like: “If I’m in New York I’ll stay with you.” Which has happened.

Yancey: We can take a break now or we can keep going if you want to do the song thing. Or I could keep asking questions. How are you feeling? Are you feeling OK?

Julianna: Uh huh.

Yancey: So what about the songs now? What is there to say about them?

Julianna: With the new songs I’m trying to advance basically from the Sanguine style. It’s not like I was sitting around going: I’m going to do this weird thing where it’s kind of not even songs, it’s just weird loops. But that’s just how I moved up and that’s how I play. I definitely want to move forward from that. It’s still loop-based, but I’m trying to move ahead.

Kind of like how I’ve been performing since I got this thing [motions to a keyboard], which has three loops instead of one. I did play a couple of shows with just the guitar pedal, like Glasslands or whatever. And then at the end I have deep red lines in my hands.

I still like the idea of the loops and them going in and out, you know? But I definitely love playing the piano, I love playing the guitar. I love instruments and all kinds of things. I want to go in that direction but part of that is learning how to efficiently record myself doing those things and having it sound good.

But you can barely hear that right? If I hadn’t even pointed it out to you, you wouldn’t have even noticed. I care now about what I didn’t care about before. I really care more about the clarity of things and just showing that it’s important to me how it sounds and that I don’t want to put something out there that has an obvious thing like a displeasing sound that I’m just leaving in there because I don’t know how to fix it.

So that’s where I’m going with it. I feel like there’s a lot I want to do and a lot that I’m interested in but it’s just going to be about learning how to do it all. Working with people who know how to do it, which hopefully will happen some time.

Yancey: So the songs were recorded in this room?

Julianna: Sanguine was recorded in that room on my bed. That’s usually where I set up camp. I don’t go there like this, obviously. I would start from my bed and just sit there making stuff.

Yancey: How often do you work on stuff?

Julianna: Not often.

Yancey: Is that once every two weeks?

Julianna: Well it depends. I’m not in the habit of dragging things out a lot when I don’t have an assignment or a show of any kind to work towards. But that’s kind of what life’s been like for the last year or more. I’ve had a show or I’ve had an assignment or something. That’s the reason why I’m bringing the stuff out. I don’t regularly bring all the stuff out to just kind of jam. Occasionally I will.

Yancey: You said the word “jam” in a funny way. So then do you have a totally separate identity? Is the fact that you record and make music, is that a significant part of your identity on a day-to-day, sort of like if a friend introduced you to another one of their friends, would you making music be something that comes up pretty soon or is it a compartmentalized part of you life?

Julianna: No, it’s pretty integral at this point. Because I usually had a show or something I just did. I’m not like a photographer and a musician and this and that.

Yancey: But what I really do is act.

Julianna: Right. Someone put it to me about a year and a half ago: “Yeah they make these illustrations and this and that. Also I like to take photos of this and I like to make music for that.” Jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe you should focus on something pretty seriously.

I had this thing for a while where I’d be like: What did I do for photography today? What did I do for music? Did I draw something today?

Yancey: Just to create; to have some form of expression.

Julianna: You owe it to your degree; do something with it. You take good pictures so why don’t you do something like that? You should be working for a photographer; why don’t you do something like that? Like this internal dialogue that was nuts.

Finally I was like, you know, it’s great to love to do all kinds of things, but I really need to focus. I’m a daydreamer anyway. I was like, good point. If I really want this, I need to focus.

It kind of worked out after I made Sanguine and traveled a bit and fell in love with it. Did I answer your question?

Yancey: Yeah, that was good. That was really good. I can’t think of anything else to ask. If you want to talk about something else, you can.

Julianna: I think we pretty much covered all the bases. I think one thing I could say is I don’t really know if everything will stay loop-based forever. I kind of doubt it; at least not solely. Because everything I make now is loop-based. And mostly vocal so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the future.

Yancey: Sure, OK. I’m going to turn off the recorder.