Inspired by the 1988 Bill Murray movie of the same name, we bring you the tenth in a series of interviews called Scrooged.
Past
One Thirty BPM: Was music something that you took an early inclination to in childhood or was it something that you took interest in later?
Julian Lynch: I didn’t grow up in a very musical family, I guess you could say. My dad used to tell me that he was forced to take piano lessons when he was a kid for ten years and he only learned one tune. My mom doesn’t play any instruments, but she told me stories about her father who I never met because he died before I was born. He was quite an active Ukrainian folk musician in this city in Pennsylvania, which is interesting. I’ve seen pictures of him in Ukrainian garb, I think he was a violinist but he may have played other instruments, too. Other than that, though, it wasn’t a very musical family.
My parents had an old crappy piano and I used to learn melodies on it, songs that I was hearing on the radio. And, at some point, my dad was like “maybe we should get piano lessons for him, because he seems to be enjoying that, whatever it is he is doing.” So, I took piano lessons for a little while in second grade and third grade. Then, when I was in fourth grade, my brother joined the school orchestra, and I was a year younger than him and got really jealous because I wanted to play a band instrument, too. So, I started playing the clarinet, stopped taking piano lessons and started taking clarinet lessons, and I did that throughout high school.
Then, when I was in eighth grade, there was this music shop in the town I grew up in, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, called Victor’s House Of Music. It was moving to a larger location and they were selling off a lot of the stuff they had in the store. So, I was in eighth grade and there was an electric guitar there, kind of a piece of crap Yamaha Pacifica and it was on clearance sale. Like, dirt cheap. And, I don’t know why, but for some I reason I was like “I think I want to learn how to play the guitar.” It was way cooler than the clarinet was. That instrument got me picked on and called a lot of names at school and everything. So, I asked my mom, “hey, can I have this guitar and learn how to play it?” And, my parents were really supportive.
So, I got that guitar and started learning how to play. Since then, that music store has been bought out by Guitar Center, which is kind of sad. But yeah, I’ve been taken lessons for long enough that it is hard to say if it is an inherent musical inclination or if it is just training, probably the latter.
Yeah, it sounds like you just got on the path early, and once it got going, you couldn’t really get off it.
Yeah, exactly.
So, your bio says that in high school you played in a bunch of bands with members of Real Estate and Titus Andronicus, what became of that experience?
I grew up on the same block as Matt Mondanile, who plays in Real Estate and also does Ducktails, and when I got a guitar, he was the first person I fooled around with it with, because he had a drum kit. So, I would walk my little amp and guitar up to his house and we would play music for two hours in eighth or ninth grade. We had our first band together, me and Matt, and then that band broke up and I started a new band with Alex Bleeker and Martin Courtney, two of the other guys from Real Estate.
Alex Bleeker, he is kind of prolific. He keeps coming up in interviews.
Oh yeah? He’s a good guy.
Mountain Man dropped his name, too.
Ahhhh. Yeah, he went to college with them.
So yeah, we played in a band with this guy named Dave Hancock, who doesn’t really do music stuff anymore. And, the Titus Andronicus guys were from the town beside ours, Glen Rock, and at some point in high school there was a sort of cross-pollination happening in ninth or tenth grade, where we didn’t really have much contact before that but all of a sudden we started going to each other’s shows and stuff like that. The earlier incarnations of Titus Andronicus, the first one was called Seizing Ellian, which was sort of a topical reference at the time, and the one after that, they invited me to play guitar and clarinet on some of their recordings. Then, Titus Andronicus started and the first 7″ that they had, I guess I played clarinet and I sang a little bit on it, and that was the first time I had ever participated in a recording that ended up on vinyl, so that was a really exciting experience for me.
As far as your personal recording, you did a bunch of self-released CD-Rs and then the two albums on Olde English Spelling Bee. When or how did the moment come where you decided to start writing and producing your own music and putting it out and thinking that it is something you want to pursue?
Well, I started writing music before I even started playing in bands and the bands I was playing in, I was usually contributing songs for those bands. I think the band I told you about, the one with Martin Courtney and Alex Bleeker, was the first time I was recording the songs myself, I guess I kind of produced those songs at my parents house. Then I went to college and I didn’t really have anyone to start a band with, pretty much right away when I went to college in 2003 I started recording stuff on my own in my dorm room or my apartment, just making CD-Rs and giving them to friends, which is sort of the model I followed when I started doing stuff under my own name when I moved out to Wisconsin with the CD-R series. For whatever reason, those recordings… the people that I was friends with became interested in them, which is awesome, and enabled me to put out real records.
What was the experience like, with Mare especially, of suddenly getting all this national attention to your records? Like, you probably felt that it was kind of small scale and then all of a sudden it was on a much bigger scale.
Yeah, that’s totally true. I was on tour at the time, and it was a pretty amazing thing to hear people saying these things on the internet about music that I had made, people that I had never met before. It was also a weird experience to see people talking about how much they hated me or hated my show when I was on the road. But, that comes along with the whole thing. But, it died down really quickly. With music that gets passed around on the internet, it is easier to see it as a bigger deal than it is. I get home and realize that I’m still sitting on half my copies of Mare. It’s not like physical copies were flying off the shelf or anything like that.
Present
So, now you’ve switched labels to Underwater Peoples.
Well, I had put out two 7″ records that I did concurrently with the two LPs on Underwater Peoples and those guys all went to college with me and I’ve known them for a long time. One of the guys grew up on the same street as me and Matt Mondanile. I just alternate between the labels, I guess, since they are guys that I work with anyways.
Is it difficult with Terra coming out and being in school right now, you’re in school for your PhD, right?
Yeah… it’s more of a process than it may seem, though. It’s going to take me quite a few years, but yeah, I’m in school right now.
How is it balancing the time that is needed to be a musician, a touring musician who is recording regularly, and being a student?
Well, it’s getting increasingly difficult for me to do that. It’s always been the kind of thing where I can’t tour during the year, so, I really only make records. I can do basically a month of shows during the summer and scattered shows the rest of the year, which is very different than most of my friends who are on tour half the year.
It kind of sucks because the last three LPs I’ve put out have all come out at the end of my school year, which if you are a student or have been a student you know is pretty crappy time of year in terms of work. I’m in the position where I want to be celebrating the fact that my record is about to come out on April 26th, but I have papers to write and stuff like that.
So, the summer time, is that your busy time where you sort of focus more on music?
Yep. Typically so. Summer and winter break are usually when I get a lot of recording done. I go and I usually visit my family in New Jersey and my friends are all back there and they usually have more instruments and I can record at their houses. So, I get a lot of recording done.
So, tell me about your perception of Terra. I’ve heard it and I really like it. Is there anything that you find strikingly different from your previous recording or anything you are particularly proud of?
Well, when I started, I wanted it to have some sense of continuity with Mare, where I kind of wanted it to be the second part of that. I see them both as part of a series, I guess. So, I wanted there to be stylistic continuity and lyrical continuity, and I think there is.
In terms of production, it is a little different. I broke the machine, the eight-track I was using, while recording it. So, my friend Sam sold me a new one, and I think it is actually better, so I think there is maybe a little less hiss on it.
Yeah, it sounds cleaner, for sure.
Yeah. But, my approach to recording was pretty much the same. People who have been writing about it seem to think that the songs are structured more like conventional pop tunes, I guess, which may be true. It wasn’t really my intention to do that.
Yeah? I didn’t really get that. There are elements, particularly “Back.” But, I wouldn’t call it a pop song, it has a strong melody to it. But, I thought Mare had strong melodies, too.
I think there is more singing overall on the new one. With Mare, and particularly with Orange You Glad, there were songs where I only wanted to write two lines to encapsulate what I wanted to say, which as you know, I record vocals in a way that is incomprehensible anyway. -laughter- So, I wrote a lot less words for those records and this one, I think there is a lot more words that I am singing per song.
Ethnomusicology — can you explain that to me and do your studies come across in your music?
Not in a direct way, I don’t think. I did my masters in Ethnomusicology and I’m doing my PhD as a joint thing between Ethnomusicology and Anthropology. Ethnomusicology is basically like the anthropology of music. It’s the study of social and cultural contextualizations of music. The stuff I’m doing for that as not entirely related to the stuff I do musically. I think people sometimes when they hear that I am studying that they get the impression that it is cataloging music, which isn’t really what I do. The major project that I’m working on, it’s almost a historical project, is a series of riots that colonial India in the early 20th century that involved music processions. In terms of musicality, there is not really much of a relationship in the violence that I am writing about and the music that I record at home.
Future
Would that be something you would be interested in, turning your studies into concept albums or something?
No, probably not. -laughter- But, obviously because I am studying that, I am thinking about music a great deal of the time. So, in an indirect way, I think it has probably influenced the way that I think about my own music, generally.
What does the support of Terra looking like for you now? School is going to wrap up pretty soon, so what is your summer looking like?
Well, I wish that I can say that I am doing a U.S. tour, because I’ve done those in the past, but it doesn’t look like I am going to be able to this summer. What I am going to do is finish up here on like the 16th of May and then head back immediately to the east coast and practice with the guys who help me play the songs live and we are going to do two shows in New York and then do about a month-long tour in Europe. Then I’ll come back to Madison and continue my work.
Is there ever any thought to taking time off of school, or if you had to choose, I mean, obviously it seems like school is the bigger focus for you right now, which is good, but have you give thought to taking time off of it?
Well, here is my approach to that. Have you heard at all about what is going on in Wisconsin in the past few months with the government?
Yes.
Well, the way I see it, the stuff I am doing for school is what I want to make a career out of and it is definitely the stuff I am focused on more. But, grad students here are kind of in a state of jeopardy with their futures. If I can’t get funding for a year, then I don’t have a way to pay my rent or pay my bills, in which case, if there was a year when I just can’t fund anything, I can’t get funding, like, I have another year of coursework and I just got funding for that. So, I’ll be able to finish my coursework. But, if I can’t get funding for my archival research or something like that, in that event, I think I might split time between recording more music and writing my dissertation.
But, while you have the funding, you have to keep hard on the coursework, because you don’t know how long you will have it.
Yeah, exactly. I guess, if you see me start to play more music and start touring in a year, then you’ll know my life isn’t going too well.
Do you mind talking a little bit about the experience of living in Wisconsin right now? I mean, I live in California, and I hear about it through the news and I have friends who live out that way who tell me things. They are maybe more passionate about the cause.
Yeah, sure. Did you say you live in California?
Yeah, in L.A.
Yeah, it is kind of a similar situation with the state schools over there, too. In the two disciplines that I am pursuing a career in, the U.C. system is kind of a cash cow for hiring musicologists. And, at this point, they aren’t really hiring anyone. Their funding is kind of in bad times as well. I think being as immediately affected by what happens in state government has kind of made me more involved in the democratic process generally.
But also, from my perspective, you can see the people that are clearly in a much worse situation than I am. I try to think about people who are grad students that have kids and they are losing their funding, that would be pretty terrible. Luckily, I don’t have kids or anything.
Especially having gone through all that work to get to that point and then you are almost shit out of luck.
Yeah, it’s awful.
I know in California, the tuition hikes in general, you buy into a school at a certain rate and take student loans and you are already in the system for years and all of a sudden they are asking for 50% more money. It’s incredibly unfair, but on the other hand, financially in this country there is so much that is up in the air. It’s complicated for sure.
It’s a frightening thing. And, even though it is happening at the state level, it’s a nationwide trend. It’s scary. Especially if you are a person who is looking for a career in a state funded job.
