When Julien Baker comes to the Scene office to shoot photos for our Year in Music issue, she’s all smiles. Chatting between shots, the 23-year-old songwriter joyfully muses on vegan barbecue, Carly Rae Jepsen and the beauty of cicadas before sitting down to discuss what has truly been a whirlwind year. Baker is happy to have a little time at home — she’s a recent Nashville transplant, having moved here from Memphis earlier this year — and looking forward to trading rock shows for grocery runs for a bit.
“When you tour nine or 10 months out of the year, when you’re home you need to be where all your loved ones are,” she says. “I crave wholesome mundanity.”
Just two days prior to our conversation, Baker performed the final show of her first run as part of boygenius, a trio rounded out by Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. Rapturous acclaim greeted boygenius’ self-titled debut EP in November, not unlike that inspired by Baker’s two previous solo releases, 2015’s Sprained Ankle and 2017’s Turn Out the Lights. After three intense but gratifying years, she knows a thing or two about being an artist in an ever-changing industry, which she graciously shared with us.
You just wrapped up the boygenius tour. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to sit down and process it yet, but what are you feeling right now?
I can, with confidence, say it was one of the single most — if not the most — fulfilling musical endeavor I’ve ever been a part of, both creating it and touring it. Seeing each of us play our individual sets and then at the end coming out and performing all together, it felt very pure and genuine. ... I think the collaborative element makes me feel more like a participant who’s able to fully reap the joy still as a listener, because I’m a fan of Lucy and Phoebe. When I see them do amazing things, I can just be excited. I can watch the crowd respond to them, and I can feel proud that I get to be there for that moment.
Do you feel like performing with boygenius gave you the space and freedom to be more present in the moment when you’re performing than you’re able to be when you’re performing solo?
The first show in Nashville, I was so nervous during my own set. And the boygenius set, I know it wasn’t perfect — we made a lot of mistakes — but it was fun. I did have the space to allow myself more grace and to open myself up in a different way. I feel like I’m very vulnerable and transparent, obviously, with my solo set, just broadcasting some of the most intimate details of my life. But then in the boygenius context, it’s almost like it gives me the security to be transparent with a more dangerous or precarious emotion, which is joy.
Do you think resonating with that sense of joy is reflective of where you’re at right now? It seems like, both personally and professionally, the past couple of years have been good to you.
Absolutely. I was talking to one of my friends recently about how it’s difficult to write [when you’re] content, because when you’ve been given so much and you understand the responsibility but also just the gift of it, it’s difficult to express that in a way that doesn’t seem like bragging. But also you don’t want to obscure your joy in a way that makes you seem like you’re martyring yourself or you’re minimizing what amazing things have happened. I think the past couple of years, as things have gotten progressively more insane to me, I want to remember to approach everything with an attitude of gratefulness and really be able to savor what’s happening and take it in with joy, but also understand the privileges that those experiences have afforded me and to utilize them for specific, positive purposes.
boygenius at the Ryman in November
To that point, it seems like even with the name “boygenius” you guys are making use of that privilege by nodding to gender inequity and some of the bullshit you have to put up with as a woman in the music industry. What did it mean to you guys to get to come together around a concept like that, and then to be so celebrated for the work you’ve done?
It was cool because I think it wasn’t something that was spurred on by our management or constructed in an artificial way. So there was no real expectation or pressure around it. We just made this thing to release it. We were all going on tour together anyway, so we thought, ‘Why not make this a thing where we collaborate and truly follow our ideas, with no hovering awareness of what people expect from us or the parameters that are imposed on artists when they’re pigeonholed into the kind of music we make?” “Sad-girl music.” Which is unfair and reductive, but that’s a total other conversation.
But I think it afforded us all a lot of confidence, not only in a writing and performing context but just in any professional context to have our ideas validated and to realize by comparison how much I had been — and I know they feel this way too — experiencing this bizarre power dynamic that made us minimize or defer our opinions to someone else who was exerting their ingrained superiority. Not having to deal with that has been really crazy. But I also didn’t think of this as, “We’re gonna do this for women!” And that’s sort of a tricky place to be, because, while it’s not explicitly a statement to align with rhetoric we wanted to support, but that being something that’s being talked about so much at this historical moment made it imperative that we did do something like this, that it was produced by us, and that it’s all females playing the instruments.
Yeah, we’ve seen a similar phenomenon play out here in the country scene, with women not being played on the radio or booked at festivals, so they’re like, “Screw it, we’re not going to compete with each other. Let’s do it ourselves.” So they started their own songwriting collectives. Or if you’re Brandi Carlile, you start an all-female music festival. It seems like if the needle is going to get moved, that’s how it will have to happen.
Precisely. Brandi is iconic. I think you just have to celebrate what incremental good you do see. Personally, as a person who reads a lot about activism and the sociopolitical terrain — and this is one thing that’s frustrating about being on tour, because I feel like I used to do a lot more tangible work being engaged with the community. Even with how the election went here and how disappointing that was, I think you still have to look at the trend that is more native and indigenous people, more women, more people of color now holding seats than ever were before. When you look at those large trends, I think it gives me hope for how things are moving. I think it’s more important to celebrate what good is happening because of increased awareness and see the larger trends, and how it is actually influencing the collective social consciousness, than to fixate upon the lack that exists.
Do you feel that same level of optimism when it comes to music? Do you feel like the needle has moved, even incrementally, in favor of women in the years you’ve been active as a solo artist?
It is getting better. Over half our crew are women. And bringing out Half Waif and Becca Mancari and artists I’ve had the pleasure of touring with that I’ve chosen but are also my friends, and also have merit and are worthy and are great voices and saying things. And all the women except for one that I’ve toured with recently are queer. It’s amazing to be able to see people respond to music that’s not just made by straight white dudes, and to see more people out there touring, and to do interviews with people who are not straight white men.
As you’re moving on from this first chapter with boygenius, do you have plans for a new solo album or any other projects coming up?
It’s crazy, because records take so long to come out. So when we finished Turn Out the Lights it was two Januarys ago, then it took all year for it to get pressed and released. All that time I was working on new music, save the month where we made the boygenius record. So next year I’m really excited to pull back on touring and just work on making a record. And also finding time to engage with my loved ones, to be present in a tangible way, which is something that I so crave and miss.
