Can’t get it out of her head
Juliana Hatfield adds ELO tribute to the mix at City Winery
Juliana Hatfield changed acronyms at the last minute. Last year she began work on the third in her series of tribute albums, and the plan was to salute R.E.M. But her enduring love for the Electric Light Orchestra proved too strong to overlook, so R.E.M. were elbowed out by ELO.
The album continues a series of tribute albums that began with Olivia Newton John and the Police. “It seems I’m choosing things from a particular time in my life,” she said this week. “Not that I had a perfect childhood, but immersing myself in those songs and certain design elements is comforting in a way. The ELO songs were so important to me when I was younger, they say things I was feeling about alienation and disconnection from other people, things that I still feel. Music made my life so much better, I felt I was tapping into something that was going to be the most precious and protecting thing — and it was.” Even on a lighter song like “Don’t Bring Me Down,” she gravitated to ELO’s more bittersweet side. “We did record ‘I’m Alive’, but it was so upbeat that I decided it didn’t fit on the album.”
She also reimagined the songs musically — for starters, there’s not a single violin. “I just had this weird confidence that I could do it. But then I started thinking, ‘Are their fans going to hate me if I do this without strings?’ So it became like a puzzle — Sometimes I played the string parts on other instruments, sometimes I even sang them. I did what was necessary and didn’t worry about being exactly true.”
Some of the cover tunes will figure into her set at the City Winery on Monday. She’s playing solo on electric guitar, so any song from her extensive catalogue of original tunes could appear as well. “I have so much material now that it’s hard to gauge what is going to make people excited, so I pretty much do what I feel like doing. Fortunately my one hit, ‘My Sister’ still feels good and natural to play, so I probably do that one at every show. I don’t do a lot of listening to my older albums, because I think I would be really embarrassed. But sometimes I’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
The tour is part of a brief run of solo dates. She hasn’t done a full national tour in years and probably won’t for awhile to come. “I never say never because something really good and worthwhile could come along that would put me on the road for a long time. So I’m semi-retired, but I did want to get out and let people know that this record exists.”
That R.E.M. album is still likely in the future, but she lately alternates tribute albums with original ones. The next of the latter is currently in the works, and she hints it will be quite different from 2021’s “Blood,” one of her edgier albums. “I’ve been wanting to do a pretty acoustic album. At least it started that way, but now I’m thinking it might need some bass, drums and electric guitar.” Will the lyrics be more upbeat as well? “Sorry, but no. I have more sense of humor in real life and I feel less serious than my music seems. But happy music doesn’t really speak to me, I can find the sadness in anything. Even if I did something uplifting it would still be sad, I’m drawn to the darkness of people and the struggles. Music is a way to work through that.”