“I just went in and said, ‘I wanna sing here!’”
When Julia Easterlin was 16, she went into the local Borders with business cards she printed out at home. They had black borders and a leaf curling into a circle around her name, labeling her as “singer, songwriter, guitarist.” She started playing shows at the café not long after. Now, five years later, she doesn’t have those cards anymore but she still performs and two out of three labels hold true.
With lush brown hair, green eyes and a Molly Ringwald-esque pout, Julia Easterlin sparkles with electricity when she begins talking about music. Though she is trained as a jazz vocalist, Easterlin also studies Music Production and Sound Engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, making for a diverse musical background. Her lifelong musical loves are just as diverse, ranging from Bjork (“my favorite strange lady”) and Radiohead to Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf (“feisty”). Easterlin brings these interests into her own music, producing a neo-soul-folk-jazz sound. Her voice is light and refreshing but has depth and passion sprinkled with energy and sass; listening to her is the aural equivalent of happily discovering that the orange juice you’re drinking is actually a mimosa.
Easterlin also writes all of her own lyrics, and she’s no slouch. At least not according to the New York Songwriter’s Circle Songwriting Competition, where she won second place last year at just 20 years old, the youngest songwriter in the competition. Her lyrics are fueled by “the poetry of everyday life” and “intense emotional responses” to experiences, leading Easterlin to achieve her ultimate goal of connecting with her audience. “Making other people feel what you feel, that’s the essence of a songwriter,” she says. And in her songs, like the soulful “Render” and the jovial “Go Straightaway,” she does just that.
But Easterlin is no longer strictly a guitarist. Actually, she has all but traded her self-taught guitar for a looper pedal, which allows her to instantly record and replay parts of a song. When Easterlin performs, she records her own hand claps, snaps, and vocal beats, replays them and sings over them. Then she records that part of the song, replays it and harmonizes with herself. The result is an eclectic, sparky sound that sweetly works with her vocals—almost as if Easterlin herself took form in song.
Currently, Easterlin is finishing up her senior year at Berklee. Upon graduation in May, her plan, she jokes, is to “pay off some parking tickets, hopefully.” Easterlin will also be applying to audition as a singer for Cirque du Soleil. She adds genuinely, “I want to be successful, but I don’t really know what that means yet.”
In the meantime, though, Easterlin is recording at Berklee on the university’s Heavy Rotation Records label (check out her tunes at http://myspace.com/juliaeasterlin). Easterlin also has albums produced independently that are available for purchase on iTunes and on Amazon.com. Additionally, she performs all over the Boston area and occasionally in New York, among other places. Easterlin’s next show will actually be in New York this Friday, October 22, when she performs at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the Berklee Showcase at the CMJ Music Marathon, so be sure to check it out if you’re around. Even if you’re not, though, keep an eye on the lovely Miss Easterlin. Soon enough you’ll be saying you loved her when…