Known for her harrowing lyrics and mellifluous guitar melodies, Julien Baker is as poetic in conversation as her songs would suggest.
It’s 8am in Munich, and Baker is sitting down with her morning coffee. Despite being thrust into the limelight at the age of 19 following the release of her debut album Sprained Ankle, Baker remains humble about her fame.
“We played an incredible show last night in Munich and the kids were just really excited to be there,” she says. “It reminds me I’m just very lucky and it’s worth dragging your stuff through the airport and not sleeping much and driving five, eight or nine hours in one day to get to have that moment with the audience. I love touring abroad and I think Germany is one of my favourite places to play. Germany has got some really engaging crowds.”
Baker is no stranger to life on the road – she’s been touring almost non-stop since releasing Sprained Ankle in 2015. Although touring “comes with its own set of challenges”, according to Baker, she has had plenty of practice adjusting to the constant travel.
“One thing that’s important to me is trying to keep consistency with what I do when I’m on tour and what I do when I’m off tour, so that it’s not such a jarring step back into reality,” she says.
“When I get home I wake up pretty early and just enjoy quiet time. I just enjoy not having to be anywhere or having to get back into the car, and so I make breakfast and a cup of coffee and read and do all my work and just have peaceful time. I think what’s most important is creating places to be solitary and reset.
“I feel like that’s so boring, like, ‘What do you do when you’re home?’ and I’m like the Martha Stewart of music – I’m like, ‘Well, I make a nice French press and then I read,’” she laughs.
Baker speaks and sings with such wisdom that it’s easy to forget she is just 21 years old, though she attributes a lot of her perspective and growth to the time she has spent on tour. “I’ve had time to re-contextualise the lyrics, and by extension, how I remember the events that then formed the lyrics into something positive,” she says of Sprained Ankle.
“The songs themselves are like working through emotions and those things that were happening, but then when I had to think every night onstage – like, ‘I’m about to go out in front of audience members and scream about ruining everything I do and everybody running from me, and are those really the things that I believe?’ – I’ve reassessed my values, and now I get to go onstage and say, ‘This song is about thinking that you ruin everything and finding out that’s a fallacy and mistakes are just opportunities for growth.’ And that’s cheesy and it sounds like a birthday card but it’s true, trite or not.”
I’m like the Martha Stewart of music – I’m like, ‘Well, I make a nice French press and then I read.’
Baker’s second album is due for release towards the end of 2017. “We’re releasing it in fall and I’m really excited about it, I think mostly just because I’ve been touring Sprained Ankle for so long I’m just excited to have some new material out there,” she says. “The new songs are equally as autobiographical, but I’m going into performing them live and having that equipment to have a mental balance about coping with sharing very personal things live.
“It’s going to be interesting – there’s more piano and strings. It’s equally as sparse, it’s not like a full band [with a] drum kit and like eight guitars, but I think I took the time to be meticulous and make the best art I possibly could. At the end of the day it’s all I have to offer, so I’m really nervous because when it comes out I have this thing and I’ll be like, ‘I did my best.’
“It’s your baby, you put [together] this nascent idea and nurtured it into maturity and now you’re releasing it out to behave and interact with the listener on its own, and I hope it fares well.”
Photo: Nolan Knight
Julien Baker plays the Factory Theatre on Thursday July 20. She’s also playing Splendour In The Grass 2017.
