The Julies was a barely-known indie pop band from Pennsylvania who released one highly-regarded EP for Flying Tart Records in 1996 and then disappeared for roughly 27 years. I caught up with the band recently to discuss their origins, their revival, and their connection to the Christian indie scene.
IVM: I’ve been a huge fan since Lovelife. It’s one of my favorite EPs. You guys had some clear influences, but at the same time didn’t sound like anyone in particular. You must have been pretty young when you recorded that. How did you manage the significant feat of simultaneously channeling your influences and yet not becoming a mere copycat?
Patrick: I think that we didn’t sound like copycats because of a few reasons. For me anyway, I never really learned how to play guitar so I could never play like the bands that I listened to. Secondly, I think that our influences were so wildly different that our sound ended up being a mix-up.
Alex: Yeah, I agree with Pat. I envision a Venn diagram of (1) our varied musical influences, (2) what we were able to actually play, and (3) what we thought sounded good.
Chris: I think we tried to copy our influences, but, as consensus has it, we just weren’t good enough. We were so dedicated to becoming the sum of our parts, that we keyed into writing originals from the start. Original originals, if you will. Let the record show: the Julies only ever covered one song. And that was in just a couple early live performances.
Patrick: I remember trying to listen to some of the stuff that John and Chris liked and was like, ugh. No. I’ve come to like some of it now but at the time I hated The The and The Waterboys to name a couple. But obviously the influences are there right?
Chris: One more reason we likely sounded unique from our influences was our delusions of grandeur. John and I were staring down the realities of post-graduate workforce decisions, so there was so much urgency to make it with our music and to not get swallowed up by some inevitable career path or other that we pushed ourselves to seem and sound . . . special.
IVM: I’ve always been intrigued at how you guys ended up on Flying Tart and/or in the Christian scene. I remember reading a retail description that said something like “songs about romantic love through a Christian perspective,” which never felt accurate to me.
Chris: Hehe, yeah, that is indeed a very convenient stretch of the reality.
IVM: How did the Julies end up in that space, and was it appropriate for you/something you strived for?
Chris: We had been drawing the attention of major labels and a couple cool indie labels of the era, and a few of them asked to hear what else, beyond our January demo EP, we could muster before committing to our signatures. So, as we were pondering next steps, enter Flying Tart with a 3-album contract. We negotiated that down to a 1-EP contract with the intention of shopping the band again. None of us really listened to “Christian music” at the time—although Alex had (and continues to have) a shameless dalliance with Stryper. But the “Christian music” scene found us before we ever thought to go looking for it. It was far from our first-choice career trajectory, but looking back, well, it gave us a lot considering we only dropped one small release on it.
IVM: Were you guys a part of a local “Christian” scene? I mean, I know you were on the Live at Drexel 7″ (proud owner right here!)
Chris: We were not part of any Christian music scene, but we did form at a Christian college called Messiah College. Outside of the occasional show on campus, we didn’t play anywhere (or with anyone) overtly Christian-related until we met Scott Hatch (of Burnt Toast Vinyl fame) in a Philadelphia parking lot. We were having a too-cool-for-school moment, abandoning our slot at a weird-ass battle of the bands having taken one peek in through the doors and getting instant not-worth-our-time vibes. Scott stopped us in the parking lot and we ended up talking with him and his then girlfriend Julie probably well past our would-be set time. We hit it off instantly. Months later we were playing regularly at his legendary Drexel showcases. That’s the story. Scott “converted” us. And now you have a 7″ of us playing one of our songs at one of those shows as an artefact of sorts.
IVM: Were you at Messiah when member/future-members of thrash metal band Believer were there? I went to Lee in Tennessee and a handful of my friends there had transferred from Messiah.
Chris: Totally remember the Believer guys. Those were the days—when the thrash metal kids sat at one table for lunch and us indie kids sat at another a couple rows over. They were more Garden Party era than The Julies. Very modest dudes. I’m not sure we would have been so quiet about our success if we were in their shoes. Delusions of grandeur and whatnot, wink wink.
IVM: Between Lovelife and Always and Always sits a span of 27 years. What was happening during that lengthy gap, and what prompted the return?
Chris: As The Julies, not a whole lot beyond keeping in touch and maintaining the friendships as best we could. Some of us kept a toe or two in music during those years in some form or other, but we didn’t consider making music together again until Lost in Ohio incidentally put the thought in our heads by reissuing Lovelife. So label owner/founder Bill Spry probably deserves some blame. Of course, the evolution of accessible technology that facilitated remotely writing together helped nudge us towards an on-trend unretirement.
IVM: Your new single “The Heartbreak Life” has a poignant line that says, “to the church, I forgive, though we won’t see eye to eye.” Would you be willing to unpack that for our readers?
Chris: Sigh. I know I’m far from alone in feeling bamboozled by the church I grew up in (and “The Church” in general). It’s likely to be a quietly recurring theme for me here and there as we continue to write songs as The Julies. But speaking only for myself here, it feels to me that the gospel message that was preached to me in my youth, that resonated with me throughout those years, was, at best, slowly removed from the evangelical church via a series of fire sales as it became less useful, less shiny. Which has been low-key devastating. And yet the church looms large as a sanguine and nostalgic force in my life. But I’ll leave it there as I do want listeners to interpret the lyric for their own realities as much as possible.
IVM: What can you tell me about Garden Party?
Chris: Oh, I see you’ve been doing your research. The Julies were born out of the ashes of Garden Party, which was probably the first alternative/indie rock band to come out of Messiah College. They played a mix of originals and covers, and were truly on their way to becoming something special. John Bada from the classic Julies lineup was one of the founders of that band and started The Julies with me immediately upon Garden Party’s breakup. We sort of picked up where they left off. I hitched my own star to Garden Party’s wagon and wrote some lyrics and ran sound for the band.
IVM: As I was listening to “Heartbreak Life,” which is a sort of lament about the church, I couldn’t help but notice a certain similarity–ironically perhaps?–to the Australian band, The Church? Were they ever a point of reference for The Julies?
Chris: That’s the beauty of oblique lyric writing, hehe. You can weave your own narrative into it, or conjure one instantly in mere minutes. But, without giving too much away, the song is more a lament about, well, living. And ‘lament’ might be the wrong word, because it’s not meant to be as sad as it is wistful. But seen through the lens of pre-grieving, and then mourning, someone close to me. Someone whose identity was almost inseparable from the evangelical church. Which I attempt to reconcile as I mourn and celebrate that special person, my dad actually, from whom I inherited so much, including said belief system. Man, I’m so grateful to have Alex and Patrick write such amazing musical canvases that often substitute as psychotherapy for me.
Amusingly, while I’m referring to my family church days in 1985 in that one lyric, I kept visualizing The Church’s classic 1985 Heyday album cover when singing the line. Maybe to keep myself from crying. The record is an absolute fave of mine. And they still rank in my top five all time bands. Not surprisingly, fans and reviews often referenced The Church in trying to describe the interplay of our guitars. Oh, and since you asked about Garden Party, The Church was an even bigger collective influence on them. They even used to cover “Electric Lash.” John Bada from the original lineup was also a die-hard fan.
Patrick: Despite the comparisons, The Church were not a huge influence for me but I’m excited to see them in a few months at The Colonial in Phoenixville, PA.
Alex: I’m a fan and definitely consider them an influence. I somewhat blindly ordered Gold Afternoon Fix and Priest=Aura from one of those 1 cent CD clubs and ended up loving those albums, though I know they’re probably not considered the best work from the church. Then I went back and become more familiar with their “hits.” Metropolis and Russian Autumn Heart remain some of my all time faves. These days I listen more to All India Radio than The Church.
Chris: Alex, Priest is absolutely considered both a fan fave and critical high point! Maybe not so much at the time though.
IVM: What’s next for the band–any plans for the near future?
Alex: Another single and then an album. We don’t have any plans for the near future beyond completing the album. But that’s something the three of us need to figure out. We have a couple of remixes, or reworks, out and coming out. One for shoegazers A Deeper Heaven and the other with a killer Lancaster-based duo called Memory Stitches. I’d love to do more remixes.
Chris: We have enough demos in the works for multiple albums but, to Alex’s point, we’re just trying to meet a deadline on the next album. The next one-off single will hopefully be out in June.
Patrick: Outside of the Julies, I play in a band called Tugboats and hope to have a single this summer.
Chris: We love us some Tugboats. And those Tugboats t-shirts.
Do you guys ever play live? Is that within the realm of possibility?
Chris: It’s been discussed often enough but never planned. We used to play out all the time in our day, and our identity was, to a large degree, being sort of legendary on stage. But we are at three-fifths our former operational status these days, so that, coupled with a fair amount of distance between the three of us, makes it tricky. Consequently, we’ve been focused on creating more than performing. In the meantime, we’ll just wait for that big live show offer.
The band’s latest single, “The Heartbreak Life” can be streamed or downloaded from The Julies’ bandcamp page here: https://thejulies.bandcamp.com/track/the-heartbreak-life. Album releases can be found at Lost in Ohio.
