Julien Baker
Armed with just a Telecaster and a monster pedalboard, Julien Baker can take her songs to the kind of anthemic heights that normally require full bands. There’s no drummer on the two albums she’s released so far, so the songs feel like they’re floating, untethered to ground. While there is occasional support from strings, clarinet, and saxophone, on the whole Baker fills the entire sonic range with just a clean guitar and her stunning vocals.
The tone comes from a Fender Blues Deluxe and a Fender Twin Reverb run at the same time, often with shimmer reverb from a Strymon Blue Sky and Walrus Audio Fathom, and analogue delay from a Walrus Audio Bellwether. She gets phenomenal dynamic range from this ambient core tone, so that when songs like Turn Out the Lights hit their climactic crescendos, you don’t miss other instruments. This provides a bed for her to express her rawest emotions, singing with flooring honesty about growing up queer in the US Bible Belt, coming out to her parents, and her struggles with OCD and depression.
Live, she has both the Boss RC-300 and RC-3 loopers, enabling her to trigger sub bass and occasional percussion as well as layering her guitars. The Twin functions as the main amp, and the Deluxe can be brought in as a boost, or different parts from loops can be sent to each amp.
As well as her solo output she also performs with boygenius, a supergroup with fellow singer/guitarists Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Here, Baker employs grittier guitar sounds, drawing on the Zvex Fuzz Factory, Emerson Custom Paramount overdrive, and Old Blood Noise Excess distortion/chorus/delay for crunch sounds.
Her current main Telecaster is a butterscotch example with a P90 neck pickup. Her first touring guitar, a Mexican Tele in Lake Placid Blue, has Lollar pickups and a four-way switch mod. This gives the option of both pickups in series for a darker, fatter sound, or parallel for the classic Tele tone. This lets the guitar go from Tele spikiness to a much murkier affair, useful when the guitar provides all the musical textures.
She’s open about her depression, Baker took time off in 2020 for therapy. One of her few streamed performances in lockdown was for a mental health awareness event. With a new album scheduled for February, her return is welcome, and her guitar continues to express pain and hope in equal amounts.