Questions, Answered

I didn't do them all but I did a bunch and we'll do this again soon

Q (Johnny):

I remember hearing you sing back-up on Susanna Hoffs’ first solo album with a song “that’s why girls cry” and you had a co-writing credit. That song strikes me as very “you” …. What was that collaboration like?

A (me): She was great, very low-key, very welcoming, so fun to hear her sing new stuff, and to sing with/to her. David Kahne was producer—he brought me onto the project and I was always up for working with him. I had worked with him before on various demos that were never released (he also mixed “Shining On” from my “How To Walk Away” album [its re-release is available now in a newly-mastered LP version from American Laundromat Records!]). He was a really interesting guy and he had made lots of hit records (including the Bangles) and it was always a learning experience with him.

Q (Kirk): Did you retain any of the livestreams, and if so, any chance they would be shared again sometime in the future?

A: Do you mean the lockdown livestreams? I have no plans to share them again, if they are even saved anywhere (I have no idea but I assume the Q Division people may have them archived). I never watched them back myself because of my phobia about watching/hearing my live performances. But once in a while I force myself to go back and look at or listen to something and I am not always horrified; sometimes it’s not so bad. So…all I can say is maybe I will share them again? But probably not. You had to be there! I do, in all seriousness, like the idea of keeping it as something special in the past for the people who saw it at the time it was truly exclusive.

Q (Chrissi): I remember us chatting before your Lee's Palace show in Toronto, Canada in July 1992, and I told you that I wrote my "Iggy" novel. You said you would love to write a novel, but you wanted to wait until you're older. So! Now that we're older, do you think you would like to write a novel? :)

A: I would still love to write a novel and I have tried, and I might keep trying. I always end up at a point where I abandon whatever fiction project I am working on, thinking it is just not working or that it is fully crap. I always start out with a lot of excitement and confidence but then the confidence fizzles along the way. It’s weird because with music I always feel throughout the process of making songs that I have the ability and the instincts and the guts to see it through, and that there will be some quality end results.

I may have been permanently spooked by my publisher’s rejection of my second book proposal (the book was never finished nor released by anyone)*. But that doesn’t really make all that much sense either because I was dropped from Atlantic Records and disappeared from mainstream culture and media and charts but none of that made me feel that I was no good at music.

*Also they pushed me to make my first/one book more palatable or cohesive by adding certain things and subtracting certain things and while I was amenable and knew they were not without expertise and I thought their ideas seemed to make sense and were even maybe good and I didn’t want to blow my first chance at having a book published, this—these alterations I made to my original manuscript and vision, which was largely plotless had no resolution at the end; it was just relentless angst and dissatisfaction, my version of a “Nausea”—this may have ultimately screwed up my instincts, or scared me away from the book world. For example, the original working title of my book was “If I Lived Here, I’d Fucking Kill Myself”. It was strictly a tour diary and it had a dark, clear, if ultimately pointless (no learning, no hugging), purity, I thought. But then once I added all the interstitial chapters about my past and my career arc and then tied it up with a mostly made-up happy-ish ending and a very blah new title and cover art, I wasn’t so sure about any of it anymore.

Q: Hi Juliana, thanks for being open to more questions. I've been listening to your music since I was a teenager in the 90s. I guess my question would be.. What do you like to do when you're feeling burnt out from music and art? Are there things you do to reset and center yourself to feel motivated to keep creating? Excuse me if this has already been asked. All the best.

A: When I am burned out or frustrated and tired of music and art, I GO SHOPPING! I am kidding, sort of, but not completely. I work on my experiments with healthy cooking and baking and frozen dessert creations (all of it vegan) and I bring the dog to run on trails and I watch TV and movies and I read and I do yoga and stretches and I scheme about how to save the world and punish the villains, etc. The normal stuff. I am not contributing much to society except for the veganism which I think benefits everyone and everything and if everyone did it the world would be that much less bad of a place but I don’t waste time trying to preach (am I preaching now? Is this preaching? I don’t mean to preach. Nobody likes a preachy do-gooder. And people don’t change, anyway.) .

Eventually I just go back to the work and I am okay. I have often felt like work is the answer. To pain, to agitation, to addiction and depressions and anxieties and bad relationships. Go and do the work and you will be healed, at least for the time you are engaged in the doing of it. I do feel like I am tethered to the work and I can’t escape it. But it also IS an escape; from life, from problems, from the reality that I am very alone and cannot seem to ever heartily engage in most of the human societal things, things that I never wanted or thought I could ever handle and so never worked toward; things like marriage and children and big-time success and security. I get obsessed with ideas I have and I can’t stop until they are done, realized, and proven, and until I believe they are done (or have been thrown out because they weren’t coming together or I realized they weren’t good enough) I am going, going, going on them, at least in my head, always thinking about them and on call for them all the time, and time flies in a way that it otherwise crawls when I am not engaged and absorbed in a work.

In this book I’ve been reading and keep talking about (“Septology”), the main character, a painter, talks about the paintings he has in his head—ideas, full visual scenes—and how he has to get these images out of him; he HAS to paint them or he can’t rest, is useless for anything else. He tried at one point in his teens to play second guitar in a band because he thought he needed another or a different creative outlet and needed to get away from the painting obsession but then he abruptly quit the band one day at a band practice because he realized that he had to go paint, that the paintings he saw in his head just wouldn’t go away and they were the most important thing and he needed to get them out of him and onto canvas and that was that.

Sometimes I feel like this. Like I can’t do anything but what I do. I always have to go back to the songs though more and more it seems like a foolish obsession, an unending endeavor with no future . That must sound really absurd coming from a woman of my age.

A woman who has a wonderful, thoughtful, solid and loyal fanbase—a position that she doesn’t take for granted. I know how lucky I am to have that in my life. Without that, I really don’t even know what…….

Q: What's the weirdest lyric mess up you ever heard to one of your songs? I like to sing "I got no eye balls" before I go to the eye doctor. (it is really I got no idols which is an amazing song)

A: I think it was Dean Fisher of the Juliana Hatfield Three who suggested “My car won’t idle” and sometimes I sang that to amuse myself (and Dean). I like your “eyeballs”. That’s a good one.

Q (Spike): Post-Covid I’ve talked to quite a few friends and work associates who were contemplating moving from long-time residences... some actually made the move. A lot of times they were leaving urban areas.

It’s in the air, people wanting to move (even out of the country after the election).

I was wondering if you could shed some light on the “moving out” phenomenon that I’m feeling all around me by sharing what was behind you making the move from a place you’ve long been associated with (Cambridge), a place that at least for a while you seemed to like.

An appropriate response that I wouldn’t hold against you would be: none of your frickin’ business. Maybe you’ll cover this topic in an upcoming song on the new album (you mentioned My House Is Not My Dream House in a previous post). But… if you care to share in this Q&A format, I’d be interested.

A: It wasn’t the pandemic that spurred me to move; I had been thinking about it for a while before that. I just felt that I was kind of stuck renting in Cambridge and that because of my inertia nothing was ever going to change and I would eventually die old and alone in my little apartment that I didn’t own, and didn’t want to own even if I could afford to, because all real estate is so incredibly overvalued in Cambridge and in the whole greater Boston area and the whole eastern part of the state, and nothing—no property here—is worth what anyone pays for it.

There was an older lady neighbor downstairs in my building and she had an old beagle and we would both let our dogs out in our shared backyard and we would say hi to each other when we crossed paths. Over time my neighbor became more frail and at one point she started letting her dog out but did not come out herself to pick up after the dog and this was when I realized that she probably couldn’t physically deal with the back steps and/or bend over to pick up the dog deposits so I started picking up after her dog for her. She thanked me and confirmed that she was not doing too well physically. Soon after that I heard that my neighbor had to give the beagle away and she herself had to move out and into an assisted living facility.

I was afraid that would be me. Not that there is anything wrong or shameful about what happened to my neighbor (life, and aging, aging alone, happened) but the idea of gradually becoming the oldest person in my building—which I had, over the course of about 15 years there—made me think. I had to make a change.

I wanted more space and more privacy but I couldn’t afford this in or anywhere near Cambridge so I started looking outside of the city and eventually ended up a couple of hours west. I also wanted to try and do something Adult: to see if I could; to see if I could do what adults do and buy a home on my own, to prove it to myself that I could be normal and do something normal people do normally. It was a pain in the ass—my song “Suck It Up” is all about the process I went through trying to get a first-time home loan as a self-employed slob, a “creative” -- but I managed to actually make it happen, twice (I wrote about the little former fisherman’s shack in Houghs Neck, Quincy, MA, that I owned for 7 months before I went west).

So, no, my homeownership journey was not inspired by Covid.

The song you mentioned— “My House Is Not My Dream House’ (on my upcoming album tentatively slated for release in November) —throws a couple of wrenches into the narrative we are fed of homeownership as a wonderful beautiful part of the mythological American Dream.

Q (Biscuit): Have you ever considered making a record outside your usual genre, like country, reggae, metal, punk, all synth or jazz standards, just for the fun/challenge of trying something different and messing with people's expectations? I'm betting you'd sound great backed by pedal steel.

A: Nah, I can’t really think like that. I don’t like to think about Genre. It would feel inauthentic for me to ape some other style that isn’t my innate one. Or to mess with expectations just for the sake of messing with expectations.

Q (Sumner): Hi! Big fan. What was the process like for your song on Ciao My Shining Star? Actually, you have a lot of tribute work to people that I also love, Elliott, Kerouac, Big Star, Wes Anderson, Gram Parsons (Favorite!), ect. Are there other people you wish you couldve/could worked on something for in that way?

A: I have absolutely no memory of recording that song! Sometimes my brain has holes in it and whole things just disappear. I mean, it’s definitely me on that recording (I just went and listened to it) but I can’t tell you what it was like to do it. It sounds like I did it at home on my 8-track digital recorder with built-in CD burner that mixed onto an inserted blank CD that it would spit out. I think maybe I blanked on this because I wasn’t very familiar with the material before I was asked to contribute something, so the song was never really strongly imprinted on my psyche before I learned it and recorded it.

I like the way this song is about the words. The verses. The very simple few chords just kind of lay back and let the voice do the talking, breezing by like a car in summer with the windows down. Kind of Dylan-esque but more relaxed .

Q (Holly): What are some of your favorite books you've read lately? And what is some of your favorite music you've listened to lately?

A: This isn’t exactly a book to read but it’s a recently-released book of drawings (with and without captions) by my favorite cartoonist working today, Edward Steed: it’s called “Forces Of Nature”.

Q (Estanis): Hi Juliana and thank you for answering our questions.

I came across a quote from a typically provocative review of "Made in China" from Pitchfork that read: "Hatfield's going on 40 but still stuck in adolescence, complaining, "I don't want to go to school today / I just wanna play guitar all day" on 'Stay Awake'." I was reading articles and reviews of the album since it's the 20th anniversary and it's one of my favorites.

I turned 40 last year and I see that reviewer Rachel Khong was born in 1985, so she wrote this when she was around 20 and I think she was missing a lot of subtext in your lyrics. I certainly feel that in the couple of years leading to my 40's I experienced some kind of rejuvenation inside that I described many times to myself as feeling (silly and immature) like an adolescent, when in fact it had more to do with allowing myself to let go in a more carefree way, enjoying things differently by giving room to some kind of naivety that tends to get lost with experience. It felt like a rush that lasted for some time and, though I don't feel like that anymore, some aspects of this point of view have stayed with me.

I think nowadays we're more at peace with the idea that one doesn't have to live according to conventionalisms or expectations for being a certain age. So, my question is if you remember feeling something similar to what I was describing when you were in your late 30's that might have inspired the spirit of the songs in "Made in China". At the time you also talked openly in interviews about dating someone younger and collaborating with him, and it would be interesting to know what shaped the inspirations of an album that's so fresh-spirited but also critical with a culture that objectified women, even if a 20 year old girl judged it shallowly as a midlife crisis. Maybe we do have a midlife crisis approaching our 40's, but in a good way?

Thank you, Juliana.

A: When I made “Made In China” I was hanging around with a younger guy named Joe Keefe (he went on to be in a band called Family of the Year) who was a great guitarist and songwriter and singer and he played on and co-wrote some of the stuff on the album. I spent a lot of time with him and his gang of friends his age (he was 15 years younger than I was) and I felt so out of place sometimes like they had this whole other language, the kids’ lingo, like “shwag” was bad and “dank” was good, or maybe “shwag” was good, too, I don’t remember, I couldn’t keep it all straight. Young Joe was really talented, though.

“Stay Awake’ was co-written with him and either way, co-written with a whipper-snapper or not, it’s so dumb that anyone took the line “I don’t want to go to school today” literally.

Q (Bryan): Have you ever recorded or toured with Kim Deal? Is that something you would want to do?

A: I can’t remember ever recording or touring with her, which doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen (I am famous for my terrible memory). But I do remember playing a couple of shows with the Pixies when I was in the Blake Babies. There was one show at Nightstage in Cambridge and then I vaguely remember a show at the Rat, maybe? Yeah, no, our paths haven’t crossed much outside of those really early gigs, even though both our bands were pretty much “discovered” by the same guy, Gary Smith, who ran Fort Apache Studios and who recorded/produced both bands’ early albums (Gary produced “Come On, Pilgrim” and also BB’s “Earwig” and “Sunburn”).

Q (Brett): That Pussycat pic…was it taken election night 2016? I know it feels like wasted breath to even discuss the national nightmare of a president, but it was a very cathartic album for me (especially side 2). That album and Nightmary helped me move on from both elections, thank you!

A: Thanks! That photo was taken earlier, I think; it was on a tour with Dean and Todd (the Juliana Hatfield Three), after we had gotten back together to make our last album, “Whatever, My Love”, in 2014 (yikes, time flies). It was in a hotel room in Cleveland, after a gig, after I had I think been crying (not about politics) and smushed the tears out of my eyes (and up onto my forehead, evidently) and smeared the makeup with the tears. I can’t remember.

I liked how I looked at that moment and I liked how the makeup smears enhanced my eyes and made me look feral, or like I had stripes, or like I had been in a tussle in the dirt, so I took some self-portraits thinking maybe I would paint or draw from the images later. And then it made sense after I recorded “Pussycat” to make it the cover image.

Q (Simon):

Are you Australia-bound anytime soon? Lot of fans down here, of both old and new music.

A: No plans to come back anytime soon, sorry! I like it down there. Touring has become harder for me to manage. But I won’t say it’ll never happen again.

Q (Gerard): How do you deal with pets after 30+ years of touring? Bring'em along? Family? Friends? Dog sitter service?

Do you read more library books or personal books?

A: I brought my dog Betty on tour when we did the inaugural Lilith Fair festival. Sarah (McLachlan) had her dog on tour with her, too. It was a pretty casual scene backstage at the outdoor venues. There was usually grass and space for the dogs to be comfortable away from the crowds. It is usually really stressful to have a dog on the road, though. I don’t tour in tour buses anymore and it is a van situation or a car sometimes so it isn’t really so great for a dog. For many years I left my dog with a couple of wonderful friends when I went on tour. My dog loved them and they loved my dog and I knew she was safe with them.

As for books, I probably buy too many of them. I buy used books and I buy new ones, too but sometimes I try to wait for the paperback versions to come out so I can save a couple of bucks. And I also check books out of the library. I donate books I’ve read (the ones I don’t love enough to want to keep) to Goodwill or to the town dump’s little donation library shed.

Q (Akihiro): Hi Juliana. Hope you are keeping well. My question is if any special meaning or what you want to say the lyrics ‘I’m back from Japan like Jesus risen’? By the way, I always thought you were singing ‘I’m back from Japan like JESUS LIZARD’

A: Which song is this? I don’t recognize it! But it sounds like something I might’ve written--obscure to everyone else but meaningful to me. And yet it has no meaning right now because I don’t remember writing it !

Q (Fernando): are there any plans to have Bed, Beautiful Creature, and Juliana’s Pony available on streaming? Hugs!!!

A: They should be! I will look into it.

Q (Grimoaldo): Hello! I would like to know what you use for Mellotron sounds? Is it a specific plugin? Also Do you have certain “go-to” keyboard or synth sounds you love?

A: That particular Mellotron flutes sound is the go-to keyboard sound I love, and I use it all the time these days. It is from a Korg microkorg XL+ keyboard that I plug into my interface that goes into the laptop. It is the “Tape FLT” (flute) sound which I get by switching the lever to Bank Select A (as opposed to B) with the dial on the left turned to #1 (“70’s vintage”) and the dial on the right turned to #6 (“keyboard/bell”)

p.s. I am not paid by KORG for this endorsement ...unfortunately!