This episode of CEZ the A is brought to you by Mitsubishi.
We were raised to be I think, hard working, and we also believed that you never look at an opportunity and turn it away. A lot of people didn't want to play our music. It wasn't what was happening in Australian music at the time, but we just kept going and we just felt like, you know, there was something good in it.
Welcome to the CS the AA Podcast. Stunning in your moment, I keep one feeling and Madra.
You asked me fun more am am so last started dancing under the street, lad and you saw me and I saw that you saw me, and I wanted you bad.
Well, there's a little something different for you all this week, Lovely neighborhood. What a treat to have the melodious voice of Julia Stone coming to your ears. Unless you've literally been living under a rock, you will definitely have heard some of her work, even if you didn't realize it, including at the very least the ubiquitous and ARIA Award winning single Big jet Plane, released with her brother Angus in the same year that they won five ARIA Awards
from nine nominations for their incredible work. But what I'm thrilled to be chatting with Julia about today is her brand new album, sixty Summers, and you've just heard a little snippet of one of the featuring songs and one of my favorites, break It's so ful of Yea, along with a couple of other tracks that have been pre
released before it launches officially this week. This is her third solo album, but the first one, as you'll hear, that wasn't launched in between other Angus and Julia releases, and with the most striking departure into new sounds. As again, you just heard new partnerships and even supporting visuals, including a wonderful little music video featuring Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover.
You know I love getting into conversations about identity, different chapters, outgrowing your past definitions of success, and finding new metrics for your happiness. So what a perfect time to sit down with this wonderful artist just before this new album comes into the world. As always, it was so enlightening to hear more about the human being behind the household name.
I love that part of this show so much. Hopefully you all learn as much as I did about Julia that you might not have known before before we jump in. You've probably noticed that we didn't have a Yeas of our Lives episode this week, even after our fabulous co hosted chat last week. I'm so glad you guys love the banter. I'll make sure that there is much more of that to come. I've admittedly fallen into some very optimistic but ultimately unrealistic scheduling, so it's been a bit
of an overflowing few weeks. We've been out on the road recording some amazing yeahborhood chats, but need a bit more time to bring the editing together. So just taking a little breather from the extra segment for this week and next to make sure I do justice to those stories, but also to give us time to line up some other co hosts since you loved the banter so much.
I'm actually heading out to the Red Center this week for an immersive women's cultural experience along the Larapinta Trail in the Northern Territory, and won't have any signal for quite a few days in a row for the first time in many years, so there'll be a whole yays of our Lives episode just on that I'm sure to fill you in on all the revelations and our har moments. I expect that that will stimulate after we return next week.
So things are still moving in the background for years of our lives, just slower than I might have liked. My own fault. Your regular interview scheduling, however, will continue, and Years of our Lives will be back as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy Julia Stone, Welcome to the show.
Hello.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.
Thank you for having me.
Oh my gosh, it's my pleasure. What an absolute privilege. I've been listening to your music for so long, so to meet you in person, it's just so delightful.
Thank you. That's awesome.
So before we kick off, I love to start by asking everyone what the most down toward thing is about them. To break through the often glossy surface level identity that our kind of digital world enables us all to have, but particularly for those of us like yourself, who have many wonderful achievements, who we've all often been introduced to through ARIA awards or chart topping albums and singles, what's something really just normal about you.
If there's anything, Oh, there's nothing normal about me. I guess probably my absolute adoration for my dog. Ah, Yes, I found that the love that I feel with her and going to the beach, and it's so simple. It's just a really simple pleasure. But the purity of animals is something that no matter how big a deal you might think you are, in a moment, you know, your dog is just like, yeah, you're just the person that I love and want to be next to. And yeah, so I guess that's that's it.
Oh, we're the same. We have a Golden Retriever called Paul, and here's the center of our universe. Like sometimes it's a trocio. So I'm like, if we've become yes, horror but amazing.
My grandparents are cattle farmers on one side, and so I grew up around working dogs and dogs were just a different it was a different thing. You know. They were there to help out and they were never inside the house and they were loved. But I think if my grandparents saw how redd Is treated inside the bedside, on the bed, anywhere she wants to go, they would be they would be appalled.
They're just whenever you're having an anxious moment or just getting overwhelmed by anything. They're unconditional love for you and just how happy they are to see you, even if you've only been out for like ten minutes. It's just so beautiful. You can't be angry while your dog is happy.
That's true. So, speaking of your grandparents and your background, I think one of my favorite parts of show is going back to the very beginning and tracing back how we form these identities, and as we started talking about before we were recording, just looking at the different decision making processes that you go through in your life that lead you to where you are today, and so much of the incredible stuff that we hear that we've all achieved. You know, it gets more airtime, I think than a
lot of the earlier days. But they're the formative ones, and people forget that you had to go through so many shitty chapters, so many tough chapters where you don't have direction before the fine you find the ones where you do. So tell us about young Julia, what you were like as a child. I know music was part of your life from very early, but did you always perceive it as a career option or was it just something that you enjoyed.
I think music was always a part of our lives, and it wasn't until I left high school and went backpacking that I started thinking about songwriting in the way that I do now. So I guess that was around nineteen. Prior to that, music had been something fun to do and something that, in a way, I wouldn't say our parents forced us to do it, but it was. I mean they did force us music well ish. You know
Mum and dad when they met. Mum sings and Dad plays guitar and piano, and so when they were backpacking, when they had first met and they were in their twenties, they would make money by singing songs together, and oh my god. So that was part of their story and then,
of course has become a part of our story. But probably wasn't the fundamental part of them that drove us towards music, because when we were old enough to remember, Mum wasn't really singing anymore, and Dad had a band of his own that was more the music in the house, and we all joined the school band. You know, Dad was the band conductor.
And I saw that you were all together in the family. Were you trumpet.
I was trumpet, my sister saxophone, and Angus was trombone.
Also, everyone there is a third stone, a third stone sibling, Catherine, who played the saxophone. I thought that was really interesting. Yes, Catherine.
She's a year and a half older than I am, and in a way, Catherine was probably the most naturally interested in music.
Wow.
Yeah, it's funny looking back because she ended up taking up classical guitar when she was in her teenage years. And for me, it was just it was really a social thing. I loved being in the school band because I got to hang out with older kids, and particularly in high school, felt like older kids were more fun than kids in my own.
Year and wise beyond your years kind.
Of not that, I guess, I just at first when I got to high school, I didn't have any friends, and so the band was much more accepting. I was a pretty odd kid in the sense that I had much more confidence than other kids like and that was because being raised by stage yar kind of parents that they put us in well, you know, they we were all doing acting when we were five six. I was in a country practice when I was six years old.
Oh my god. I used to love that show. I did not know that. Yeah, intructor.
I guess that's something that nobody really knows about me.
At an institution.
I was a child actor until I was nine, and then I retired.
Oh like earlier retirement. I mean, you peak and then what can you do?
I peaked? I peakd young early. I peaked in an Australian film called Sirens. It was I don't know if you remember, but there was El McPherson, Kate Fisher and Porsche to ROSSI were the models who were being painted by Norman Lindsay played by Sam Neil, who was a famous Australian painter that he was famous because he was painting naked women at a time that the church was really dominant in the art world. Hugh Grant plays the priest from the UK who fl out to talk him
out of painting these naked women. What a car. I know, it's an all start. This is why I said I picked.
Early Stone's claim to fame.
Yeah it was. It was a big deal at primary school. I had two months off school to shod in the Blue Mountains at the original Norman Lindsay house. Wow, and I got everybody El McPherson's autograph. You know, so I came back to school, you know, just you know, cheering people cheering for me. They weren't, they absolutely weren't. It's weird how jealousy at a very young age seeps into, particularly in girls' kind of environments.
So and difference. I think we spend so much of our youth suppressing what makes us different, because we want to be same, and we want to have grounds that are you know, common with other people, to kind of identify with each other. But I feel like as you get older, you start stripping that back and just owning the bits of you that are weird and unique, and that ends up being what you're celebrated for rather than what makes you an outsider. Yeah.
I think being a kid, you don't understand complex emotions like that, you actually that behavior or the way that other people treat you then refines you to become more, you know, someone who conforms a little bit more. And I realized from all of that time of being out of school doing fun, acting things, it was better not to tell people about what I was doing. It was better to hide that I was doing fun stuff out
of school. And that continued through high school where I started writing songs when I was in year seven at high school, but I didn't have a guitar or a piano to write songs on. So I would write a capella melody lines and lyrics wow, and I felt confident. I just didn't never understood that people could see that as a bad thing to share the songs. And so I would go to the school teachers and I'd say, I want to sing a song that I've written for
the school assembly. And I would stand up with no music and see the song in the microphone to a thousand kids. You know, the song I wrote about peace or whatever.
It was very good.
Dog, exactly my dog. And that was when I started realizing as well, like bullying and stuff where people making fun of me, and and again all of that stuff led to me turning away from music. When I was in high school, I stopped wanting to sing. And I liked singing a lot, and at home it was really normalized to do that. But high school, you know, sort of beats it out of you. And then it wasn't until I left that I was like, actually I love doing this, Oh my gosh.
And that is I mean, another big section that we can probably weave into this. One is your natia, and it is all the big challenges to your joy that you face along the way, like for many people self doubt. But sometimes it's the opposite. If you do show or demonstrate any kind of confidence, it's being hit by tall
pobby syndrome or jealousy or misunderstanding or bullying. And for many people, what makes me shut is that they could maybe not come back to finding the thing that they're joyful about, and they do suppress it for so long that it is beaten out of them completely. So it's so wonderful that the music was never beaten out of you, because now we all get to enjoy it in such a wonderful way.
I think, I mean, from my understanding, people don't mean to do it. I think it's a way of buffering your own feelings of insecurity about something you desire. And I think self expression is something that is innately human.
We all need to express and when you're somebody who's afraid of doing that, it makes you feel uncomfortable when somebody else does it, and for some people it inspires them to do it themselves, and for other people they say, please stop it because you know, in whatever way they say that, but please stop doing that, because it's making me feel, yeah, uncomfortable about that. It's missing in my life. And I taught trumpet throughout high school. That was the
I saw that my part time job. And I was always amazed at how young children could be because we were raised by our parents to believe that everybody can sing. Everybody has a singing voice. My dad, in particular, he didn't have a particularly lovely voice, but he would always sing, and he sang in choirs, he sang in his band, and he would always encourage anyone who came around to our house to sing with us and sing by the piano.
But young kids who would come to learn trumpet from me, I often at the time, would teach with my voice. I found it easier to sing the parts on the music than to play them. And I also found that if you could sing the part, it was easier to play the part on the trumpet when you were learning, So I'd try to get the kid to sing the part with me, and a lot of kids from very young eight years old would say I can't sing, and
I would say, absolutely, you can sing. Everybody can sing, and they'd say no, my teacher says that I have a bad voice, or my mom says, oh, you know, And it's just a moment that a parent turns around and says, can you please shut up, I'm trying to do the cooking. It sounds terrible. It's one moment, and that for someone's voice is a lifetime. They never forget that they've been told their tone. Therefore they're singing out
of tune. And people who have beautiful voices still believe that they can't follow a pitch or oh.
My gosh, it's fascinating.
Yeah, it's incredibly powerful. Wow.
So during that time when you did sort of steer a little bit away from music, something that I find really fascinating is when we mentioned this just before, when you stop making decisions based on what you love and what you're drawn to and what you're good at and the Venn diagram of all those things, and start kind of being more influenced by the noise of expectation and societal norms and also just on what you're going to
do as a job and having a livelihood. And I think for a lot of creative and artists, like musicians, music starts as a passion, and for some people if they turn it into their job, it kills the passion. For others, they don't actually believe that it could be a job, so they don't pursue it. For you, when you know, what did you first think you were going
to do as a living. Was it music or did you have other jobs in between before you came back to it, Like how did you sort of fall into it as a career, particularly if you beat away from it for a little while.
The songwriting part of me, I guess I always wrote poetry. I always wrote a journal, and you know it was all very innocent stuff, you know, about problems at school or mom and dad. You know, they don't understand teenageanks. Yeah, teenage inks. I remember finding one of my journal entries and it was just I'm so fucking tired that I don't understand. It was like they don't didn't get it, And it's like, yeah, I think they do. They both are working six jobs. It's like, yeah, I'm very grateful
to my parents. Now I've reread stuff, and I also behaved incredibly poorly at times, and I thank them as regularly as I can for forgiving you, just for forgiving me and for being amazing. Parents are amazing. Even when they're not great parents and they're going through stuff, they're amazing. It's tough. Yeah, I wish I knew that when I was a teenager, but veering away from music, I think started with boyfriends and that was My parents are amazing.
But they had a very unhappy marriage, and they would be fine with me saying that, because I've mentioned it before, and they split up when I was fifteen. But for up until that time, the house had been a pretty difficult place to be in, and I think all of us kids were looking for a way out of being there. And so when I met my first boyfriend, who was an extraordinary man, I saw a way out and I thought,
that's it. It's marriage and children and you know everything about Yeah, that was the right one option, And he had other ideas. He's a brilliant musician and he was in a band and they were on the road to great things, and I was following him around all the shows and I was just very, I guess, utopian about what I wanted out of the relationship. I wanted it
to save me. I wanted it to fix everything. And he was a bit older than me and aware that that was unrealistic, and also aware I think that I needed to live a life, and I was so committed and so obsessed. I put everything else aside just to follow him around. And when he broke up with me, that was part of the desire to start writing songs again. I felt like, oh, I don't have anything, really like, I don't have a home to go to with my parents that feels safe. I don't have him, who was
everything in my life or every hope I had. I think everybody's first heartbreak feels.
Like the end of the world and your identity. You don't know that you're meant to hold a little piece of yourself back either, so you don't and then yeah, completely subsume in this other person.
Yeah, you give everything, and that isn't I now realize that's not a healthy relationship, but as a fifteen year old, it's it's everything. But without that I wouldn't have I think found my way back to music. I really needed to get it out in some way, and I started
to listen to music in a different way. I had this experience, now, this life experience that made sense of my parents' unhappiness as well, which I hadn't had any way to integrate or contextualize from my own you know, innocence, And all of a sudden that was, you know, the wizard of ours. The curtain had been pulled back and I saw what was behind. Humans are flawed. I'm flawed, and we hurt each other when we don't mean to.
And that's something that really pulled me back into music is really powerful and connective, and I'm not alone in this experience. So many people have been hurt through losing someone through death, or losing someone through them leaving or them leaving. You know, it's I guess in a more physical sense. How I found my way back to music was that I decided I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished school. I studied really hard and I did well at school, but I felt
confused about university. I applied for a course in visual media.
Oh Ida why.
It was a popular course at the time, and it sounds like a smart thing to do. I just thought everybody else wants to do it, so maybe I should.
Isn't that funny? That's probably exactly what you thought.
Yeah, it was. I just thought everybody says I should go to UNI. I don't know what to do, and that that's one of the most popular courses at this moment in time, so try and get into that. I did a year and I was really uninspired. I just remember feeling really out of place. And I wasn't living on campus. I think that made a difference. I was driving in and driving out in my old Volvo and I just felt like, I don't know, just very flat.
And I was going out with a lovely guy whose family were Chilean, and we started talking about going to South America to see his meet his family, for me to meet his family, And this was your gap year. Yeah, oh my gosh.
So actually, relationships have led you to lots of different places that have caused peoplet all moments in your life. Yeah.
I feel like for me, relationships have been a huge part of the proportion through moments in time. Each relationship I've been in has been deep and important. And I'm not saying that that's not the same for everybody. Some people, though, I feel like they find their person and it really makes sense and there's a comfortable side to their life in relationship and other things in their life will propel
them to change. But for me, relationships have been really I think because of our upbringing, it's been fertile ground to find growth and learn love that.
There's a quote that I really like that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
Oh yeah, that's nice.
And we kind of I think we want everything to be forever, and we feel guilt or shame or loss if we do evolve in and out of relationships. But you're a different person at every different chapter of your life, so you're going to need different relationships for different things, different propulsions, different pivots, And I love that you do reflect back and think of them as quite pivotal for you.
And I think some people can do that together, you know, they pivot at the same moment. And I've seen friends of mine who have been together since they're in high school and they're still pivoting together and it's amazing and inspiring, and you know, I sometimes think, what would that be like? You know, that would be incredible. I mean, I still have so much love for my high school boyfriend. I just think he was so to what a great person
to have welcomed me into the world of relationship. He was so kind and so funny and set the tone for what a friendship inside of a relationship looks like. And there was pain in it, of course, but yeah, each person along the way has shown me something about myself that I've needed to see.
Wow. And so then you entered this amazing chapter that I mean, did you have any idea of how you would become a household name? Now we all know who you are. Did it start from just writing songs and then you and Angus deciding to write songs together and then they just happened to go really well or did you set out with a plan for them to become as widespread as they did? Like, how did it all unravel?
I suppose that the first step of Angus and I connecting it all. We had been quite disconnected through the years of our of being teenagers because of what I described. Our parents lived separately. We had a lot of freedom that we hadn't been allowed when they were together, so we lived quite independently. I had moved in with my boyfriend.
It was kind of we were a bit ships in the night, and I knew that he was interested in music because we went to the same high school, so he would sometimes be performing on the school assembly and I knew he was really good. Like I remember seeing him perform once and it was rowdy, like the kids were all talking and you know it, you know, schools just like teachers getting kids under control to pay attention
to a performance. And he walked out on stage and as soon as he started singing, the whole room went dead quiet, and it was a moment. I remember thinking, there's something special about what he does. And this was when I wasn't particularly interested in music. I just knew Angus was onto something, you know, or something about him was special. And well, when I was in South America, Mum flew over and met my partner at the time
and me with Angus, and we went. We took our backpacks and we went into the Bolivian Amazon and it was a great experience. It was so wonderful. It was an organization that was run by the tribal community in the Amazon. It was to try and keep the youth staying in the Amazon rather than trying to go to the cities for work.
That's amazing.
So a lot of them would speak five languages, the traditional language, Spanish, German, English. It was incredible and they're in the deep part of the Amazon forests and beautiful eco lodge, and they would take us on walks around the forest to tell us about the different animals. I remember seeing a tarantula of the size of a plate. Oh my god, it was incredible. And everywhere everywhere were the I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but they it's like the alligators or the crocodiles of the Amazon.
They called kaimaners, I think, and they just we'd go out in canoes at night with the torches and you could see them all around the boat, and you're in a canoe that's kind of just on the surface. It was really wild and wonderful, and we're all on anti malaria tablets and having wild, vivid dreams and Angus we had a guitar with us and he one morning I came out and he was playing a song and I asked him, you know whose song it was? It was
so beautiful and he said, oh, I wrote that. And that was a moment where I realized he was also writing songs about these incredible feelings he was having. And I asked him if he could show me a couple of chords on the guitar and he taught me to play Ben Harper walk Away and he then left went back to finish school. He was in year ten at the time. And I then traveled onwards with the guitar, and that was when I started really writing song songs.
I had them fully formed and I was playing them for people in hostel and my partner and I had split, and so I went down to Argentina and traveled all the way up through Brazil, and it was me and my guitar and my backpack, and I just asked people to teach me songs everywhere I went. So I learned from random travelers along the road. And that was a
year doing that. And then I got back to Australia with maybe eight songs under my belt, and I had no money, and Angus was living in Dad's house and Dad had just met his soon to be wife, and so we both lived there, you know, rent free at Dad's place, writing songs.
After the nest, yeah, And.
It was then that you know, I started singing harmonies on his songs, and he started singing harmonies on my songs. He had a label that was interested in him and he asked if I would come in and sing some stuff with him for one of these label sessions, and then the label sort of said, well, what is she doing? What's going on? And they offered us a weird deal. It was sort of together but a part, and it was a very bad deal. Went No. That was later.
This was very early, even pre doing open mic nights.
Wow.
Then we started doing open mic nights. Our auntie, who worked at EMI and had moved to London, got an email from my mom saying, can you help the kids because they don't know what they're doing and they're getting offered deals but we don't know if they're good or not. And she came back and took us into EMI and a bunch of other places around Sydney and we played just me and I guess we're walking with our guitars and we didn't even still at this point see us
as a group. We were just playing one of his songs and one of my songs and then yeah, we got offered a record deal. We said, well, what do we call ourselves and.
Feel like our names? Yeah?
Well, we went through all sorts of names, you know, band names, and then we just we were like, this is silly. Let's just say where angus and Julier and oh that was the beginning.
Hey Yeahborhood. Just a quick word about our partner and yay before we continue with today's episode. As you've probably seen, I've been zipping around town in a fabulous yamobile from Mitsubishi, the amazing new Eclipse Cross and I'm so grateful to the team for making our yeas of our live segment possible.
You all know I love working with partners who use their influence in business for good and not only are Mitsubishi enabling us to shine a light on unsung heroes in the community, They've also just extended their own partnership
with Disaster Relief Australia. As part of this, they'll be providing twenty five suv and all terrain vehicles across Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Townsville, helping to fulfill Disaster Relief Australia's mission to provide rapid disaster response in the wake of natural disasters.
Throughout the devastating twenty nineteen and twenty twenty bush by A season, Mitsubishi helped Disaster Relief Australia deploy nearly six hundred volunteers across the country to support with clearing bush via land and this support accounted to a community value of over two point two million dollars which will only continue to grow this year. What a privilege it is to have a partner in Yea with such a big heart.
And keep an eye out for the Yamobille as we'll be heading out with Disaster Relief Australia to see more of what they do in the coming months. Also for anyone out in the neighborhood who would like to get involved. Disaster Relief Australia are currently looking for volunteers nationally, so people can sign up by visiting Disaster Relief oz dot org slash volunteer. Now back to the show. Oh my gosh,
that is so fascinating. And this is the bit that I don't think you get to hear as much because you know, we all know of you as Angus and Julia Stone already formed people. Forget that you actually had to decide when that was going to happen, and then choose a name and then figure out who was writing what. And it's oh, that's so interesting. I didn't know any
of that. It's so cool how you came together and I always think there will be so many people out in the world who saw you at open mic nights or who saw you playing around South America, who will now see you and go I remember when I saw her singing on the street. I think my husband had that. He saw the Kook's busking Wow, years before they became famous.
And I think you do you forget once people really hit, you know, platinum albums and all these huge accolades that everyone had to start as you know, from the beginning and from not knowing that it was going to go that well, So what did you think? What was you know once you knew that you know, you could get a record deal and people loved your sound when you like, for example, when you re recorded I think Big jet Plane was Angus's songs that then you guys read wrote together.
When you release a song out into the world, what do you actually think is going to happen? Like, do you monitor people's response? Do you know it's going to go well? Do you know that it's going to become a song that now the whole world recognizes.
Is definitely not I bigd up playing And what happened with that record down the way that was six years into us touring, so we had by that point put out maybe six EP's, we'd made a record or two records. No, we'd made a record before that, and you know, we had been living in London, we were playing. We had gone from playing in front of eight people to twenty people, to fifty people, to seventy people to one hundred and
fifty people. I mean, we were just years and years on the road and we really liked touring, but we you know, we also it was a lot of work.
And you know, we were touring in our eight hundred pound to Rago with you know, the whole band living in a three bedroom apartment, which was six people living in a three bedroom space, and it was a lot I mean, looking back, you think that was a lot of fun, but it was tough, and it was a long way from home, and you know, Angus is a surfer, you know, not being near the beach and water, we we were living a different life and it was it
was good for our writing, I think it was. It was great for us to be in that environment and London was a lot of fun. But by the time Down the Way happened, we didn't have any expectations we'd already signed deals, and you know, our deals weren't major deals, they were just startup deals. You know. He's a bit of money to keep you going whilst you play your gigs and.
Write your food.
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't like we were in Forbes, you know magazine for our record contracts. But yeah, we had some really nice people that believed in us, and we kept having just little incremental changes, you know, and like I said, just watching the shows grow and people
coming back with more friends. And we both believed that every show was an opportunity, and we'd meet people at shows who worked at a radio station and then they'd say, oh, I'd love you to come in and do an interview, and we took every We were raised to be I think, hard working, and we also, similar to what we were talking about before we started recording, we also believed that you'd never look at it an opportunity and turn it away.
So we were yes people. We were just if you told us there was a gig tomorrow night in the south of England and we just played in Scotland, we'd just drive through the night and we'd sleep in the car and we'd get there and we'd play and we were so excited that we got to play gigs, and so we felt really privileged. I mean, it was our both of our parents' dreams to be performers, and here we were living it. And we weren't famous, but we
were happy. And I mean I say that there were so many challenges, but we were really you know, we felt lucky. And so when big Jet Plane had the success that it had, it was really really fun to do bigger shows. But for both Angus and I we were at that point we were ready for a break. So it was funny. It was like at the time that things really started to take off, we were exhausted and we were kind of ready to also be our
own people. Apart from each other, we've been living together as brother and sister, you know, in sharehouses for it was going on, yeah, six years by down the way and living on tour buses or split vans and doing every interview together, doing every photo shoot together, doing every radio together. And that's tough. And I think we both have really different personalities and we have common values and
common beliefs, but we relate differently to people. And having to sit in an interview and try and find a tone that suits both of us and talk about things that are relevant to both of us. Was it was tricky, and sometimes we would clash, and we also we were raised in a clashy environment, so that was also getting out of those habits and behaviors that we that were normalized.
We had to do a lot of work and think Angus and I both would say in different ways that that's the thing we're most proud of now, is that we figured out ways to get through it.
Oh my gosh, it's extraordinary. I love so many of the things that you just said, particularly how you mentioned it was really incremental, because I think any kind of success or fulfillment is always incremental. It's just that you often don't hear about all of the increments, particularly they're less glamorous, harder, even the fact that you know, of course siblings in business together, but particularly in art form together.
Of course there's going to be harder bits that don't make you know most interviews, but behind the scenes there's so much And I think I am so excited to now see that you're here as Julia Stone. It's not Angus and Julia Stone everything anymore. You've now had this is your third solo album about to come out now, and again it reiterates that idea that some of the increments are going to be chapters that are you know,
with partners, and some might not be. In the last few for you have been as a solo artist, which has seen your sound come out as a beautiful individual sound that even from album to album has changed so dramatically. And I'm so lucky to have had a little sneak peek of sixty Summers, which is such an even compared
to your own sound, quite unique and different. So tell us about coming into your own now as an artist and maybe weave in a little bit of what I imagine is quite a jarring experience of building a new identity. And if we ever have self doubt, I can imagine it is when you first go out on your own and put your sounds out there when you're not you don't have two of you to kind of say, oh, it was both of us. So if you don't like it, it was both of us. If you like it, it was just me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's really I've always did my solo artists, and for that particular reason, because I felt for both. I mean, I won't speak for Angus, but for myself, that experience of it's ours really did soften the fear that you have of presenting something. And this record in particular, I have made three solo records, but this one was different because my first two solo records, The Memory Machine and By the Horns, felt like side
projects to Angus and Julia. Angus and Julia were was always dominating our lives. It was in a good way. It was just that thing that it was growing, and it felt like that was where we should invest our time. And Angus and I love writing songs together and working in the studio, so that part of it, and that part of making the actual music, we just loved doing it and we were enjoying that. After down the Way, actually we had sort of decided, Okay, now it's time
for solo music. And then we were thrust back together by the very you know, very successful, wonderful producer Rick Rubin, who just out of the blue was like, you guys, think you're done, You're not done. And that was great because that was a real healing record for us. And then we then stepped into off the back of that feeling great and making snow and again it was two record cycles, and I felt like By the Horns and
the Memory Machine for us. Sorry, it's a little bit of a jumbly way of saying this, but we both write a lot of songs, and putting out a record together it always felt like it was six songs of his, six songs of mine, or six songs that I love, or six songs that he loves, and we would put
them together. That's not a lot for a two year album touring cycle, so side projects had to exist for us to get the other music out, and the Memory Machine and By the Horns felt like songs that could have worked on an Angus and Julia record, but there wasn't space for them. Yes, this record's different because this
wouldn't work in that context. It's something that felt really individual to me and something that sonically and lyrically, I really it's been bubbling underneath the surfaces style of singing, in this style of expressing that I just I've wanted to do for so long, and a big part of it was finding that confidence to do it and working with Annie Clark, working with Thomas Bartlett, working with all
of the collaborators on this record. Really, it gave me that confidence and I just felt like, yeah, this is this is where I want to go artistically, and oh my gosh. Yeah.
So my favorite favorite thing in doing these interviews is watching when the guest's eyes start to sparkle when they get to the bit where they're talking about the thing that makes them really excited. And you just started sparkling,
like talking about it. And you know, this was recorded between twenty fifteen and now, and that is a long time for something to be brewing for you, which means that I can imagine how much of you has gone into finding this new sound and working with new collaborators, having written with the same person over and over. And I think there's five that have been released already, but fourteen songs now that are all yours, with amazing, amazing video clips. I just watched Before You Arrive, the one
with Susan Sarandon and Danny Glass, so random but amazing. Yeah, what does it feel like? What does it? Are you petrified that it's out in the open? Are you proud? And also from a technical perspective, for the totally uninitiated and non musical listeners out there, how do you write a song? Do you hear the lyrics first? Do you hear I know you play different instruments, so do you
hear it on a particular instrument like the vision? When you actually break down every part of a song, from its words to its backing, to its harmonies, to the melody, like how does that all come into your brain? Do you wake up one day and you just hear it? Or how does it happen?
Well, I'll answer that question, then I'll go back to how it feels to put the music out. Writing a song, I think every time is really different. And traditionally for me, writing was always on the piano or with an acoustic guitar, and it's different for everybody, but for me it all came at once. It was something where I would start playing chords and then I would, I guess, almost at the same time, hear the lyrics and the melody, and I would sing it. And what I would often do
is record whilst I'm writing. And sometimes it's really formed straight away, and other times, like a song like Death Defying Acts, I remember writing almost just in one go through, you know, in twenty minutes sort of thing, And other times it'll be like I'll be, you know, jumbling around with different lyrics and different ideas and singing melodies and singing lyrics, and then I'll listen back and then I hear, oh, that's what the song's about. That moment there is what
I want to sing about. And then I refine that idea and develop it from there. And that's been a really solo experience, that way of writing. Then when I started writing with Angus, I guess and I write very differently to that, where we will something like Chateau for instance. We'll start with the bassline. We'll be in the studio often it'll just be the two of us. He will play a bass line, I'll play a guitar part over the top. Then we layer that in protos and just
lay a parts and start to create it vibe. And then we will, you know, we'll send that to our friend who plays drums and feel like do something with it, Yeah, like give us a FOURD to the floor kick pil you know, and send it back and then we'll have
a kick and bass part that's pretty basic. And then we sit opposite each other and we both have a microphone and we just loop it for you know, thirty minutes and we make up funny stuff and some times out yeah, we just He'll say something and it makes me think of something and we go back and forwards.
And a lot of that record Snow was written like that because you can hear it in songs like Snow where that stuff was from just the writing session where it's I mean, I can't remember right now how the song goes, but that back and forward style singing where Angus says something, then I say something, then he says something. And then Chateau was you know he we found in
the lyrics somewhere this. I think he had said something like about the chateau and we're like, that's really cool, like you know the memory of being at the chateau. Mo'm on I'd said something about dancing in the hotel room and it felt like, oh, there's the story, and then you know, we build around it. But working on this record again was different. Thomas Bartlett, who was a
co writer for a lot of it. I'd go into the studio, He's got a studio in Midtown in New York, and he would play me really interesting like break was. He'd play me those kind of the sex line and the looped beats and he'd play it and he'd just set up a microphone and say go and I just sing and say stuff. And so I left and I started dancing under the street light, and you saw me, and I saw that you saw me and I and you know, I just I guess I love I like spoken word, I like freestyle writing.
But I'm two.
I'm not the person who's gonna go and do that live all.
The time all the time.
But I really enjoyed in the studio and there's only certain people I feel comfortable doing that with in front, like in front of them, which is Angus and then Thomas and Nannie. I felt really comfortable to just just write and just make stuff up. And a lot of the time that's where the songs would form, just having someone else create the sound and then I'd create the lyrics and melody.
So yeah, so cool, because I always have wondered, like where does it just come into your brain like a vision? And do you ever like I think with business people we look back at earlier iterations of what we do and cringe. And I think if you don't cringe over your earlier work, you haven't done it right. Because you haven't evolved enough. Do you cringe it your earlier music ever, or do you love every single part of it for what it was at the time.
I mean, there was a time where I couldn't listen to anything ever, you know, if something would come on in a shop, I would walk out of the shop because I was so self depreciating about the recording or the way I had sung. And I think my voices developed a lot. There's a lot more strength in how I sing. When I started, I was very, very delicate in my delivery, and that was just because that's how I sang. I didn't have a strong voice, and years
and years of singing changes your voice. And now I listen if a song comes on, like one of the early songs like Private Lawns or Mango Tree or I find it really sweet, you know, and I feel a sense of like pride around the child that I was when I made that. And I have this real I can hear the lost voice, and I can hear the insecurity, and I can I mean, I just have this feeling of like, what an amazing confidence then to still it's so scary to put yourself out in the world. And
I think that's big credit to our parents. We were really lucky that we didn't question that there were people so much more talented than us on the open mic night scene that didn't have that confidence or that support. And Angus and I talked about it a lot. How you know, we were We had a lot of self belief and there's an innocence in that. There's this naivety you know people. I'm sure a lot of people didn't want to play our music. It was very it wasn't
what was happening in Australian music at the time. But we just kept going and we just felt like, you know, there was something good in it, and.
Yeah, absolutely was, thank goodness. But how does that, yeah, how does that so doubt play out for you?
Now?
Releasing this huge, huge album that's been so long in the works. That's so different again, And I think being at the cutting edge of something and doing something different to what you've ever done is the scariest thing you can ever do. So how are you feeling now knowing there's still half an album to be released? Are you excited? Is there anything you're burning to let everyone hear?
Yeah, I'm excited. I feel like the self doubt part. I mean, you know, when people don't like what you do in any context. I think if people don't like something you say at a party or you know, you're impacted, or at least I am, because that's something I guess is part of my built identity. Is I like being liked. I like making people feel comfortable around me. I enjoy that feeling. And so you know, music, I guess, isn't
at an expression of that. So if someone really specifically doesn't like it, then it's not going to make me feel good. But I don't care as much as I used to. I just I do what I do and if it's not for you, it's not for you. And I feel really excited because it is a body of work that I'm really proud of and I had a lot of fun making and I can hear that in
the record. It's really varied and there's every song has its own I mean, every song has something really heartfelt behind it, and it's been built, like you know, brick
by brick. I feel like I've built this house with these people I love in such a detailed way that I'm so excited for people to come over for a cup of tea, and some people will notice that, you know, the architraves are really unique and special and every window is you know, different and has been selected from markets around the world, and other people will just enjoy the cup of tea and not notice that. But for me, it's just knowing that I've built it with so much
love and care. I know that, and that feels good and that's exciting. And I don't know, I think humans are pretty intuitively smart. I think other people can feel that when you've put love and care into something, it comes across on some subconscious level. So I hope some people get to feel that, because yeah, yeah, the record's really interesting and different.
It's so different. I love it so much. It is so varied, and I think that's such a testament to you as an artist as well, that you can create such a broad range of music and continue to kind of surprise with new styles and new ways of using your voice. And yeah, it's extraordinary. So congratulations. I'm so excited for you. Just to finish up. This is something I am quite fascinated about generally, but particularly in the
case of artists. This section is your plata, which is who you are when you're stripped back from all the titles and all the product, you know, productive endeavors that you have in your life. So for people who are employed or people who are business people, the line is a little bit clearer because it's sort of on off.
But in music or creative you're often drawing your inspiration for like the process of writing over years and years, that on offline is very blurry I can imagine and very hard to I mean, you must enjoy music of others as well as writing it yourself. So in any job, but particularly when you love your job the most, you still need to find joy that's unrelated to it so that your brain can have a rest, so that you
get inspiration. How do you play? What are the things that you do that are purely for joy and that maybe aren't related to music, so that you do give yourself space to come back fresh when you're writing again, or maybe you don't need that. Maybe it is still music and that's all tied up together as work and play. How does it all work for you?
I think both the two. I think there are times that music is completely tied up in my play, whether it's going out dancing and having that sort of experience of endo, often released through moving the body to rhythm. But I've realized over the years of being so immersed in music and being so completely you know, there is no weekend. It's just I'm thinking about it all the time, and whether it's the collaboration of the music video and the what goes into making that, and I mean all
of it's fun for me. I feel like, again so lucky that this is my life. But I don't turn off easily.
And that doesn't surprise me.
So I've had to develop ways to turn off. And it sounds maybe a little extreme, but what I have found works for me being the way that I am and being quite an extreme person and living an extreme life of probably at least ten months touring up until the pandemic. But when I had those couple of months where I wasn't touring or recording or writing, I take myself to Vapashona.
Oh wow, guys, that's a ten days silent retreat, completely silent, like no talking to other human beings. Yeah, double the introspection that must happen.
I mean, it's very uncomfortable for the first few days. It's an extreme shock to the system. In the same way I imagine if you're a heavy drinker, stopping drinking all of the sudden completely, or stopping anything all of the sudden, stopping interaction with other humans when it's the predominant part of your life the first few days is having that the fear around what I'm going to see and what I'm going to confront and what I'm going to face. But I find it extremely healing, and with
a good teacher as well. I've done all kinds of a passions with the go Ankadee system that's all over the world, and then Insight meditation, which is another style of a passionate and had extraordinary teach and feel so lucky to have sat with them because the kind of wisdom that is given to us as students is you know, I think I've always been doing this in a way,
from when I started backpacking. I was seeking out this other side of what could be considered peace or joy or connection and music has been a big part of that, but it's also a job. So meditation and the spiritual community I think is really helpful for me and yeah for passions, not for everybody, but I love it. I'm weirdly in love with the process and probably the thing I miss most about the pandemic has not been able to go and retreat.
Wow. Do you do one every year?
Yes? I mean you know, for the past six years.
Yeah.
Wow, Oh my gosh.
Well that could be one of your answers to the second last question. What are three interesting things about you that don't normally come up in use? The things that only someone who lived with you would know, like weirds, gnoring habits, or funny party tricks.
Or I'm very into having baths. Oh me do.
My husband thinks it's like bathing in your own filth, but I think it's the most relaxing thing you could ever do. I'm like, I'm clean. How do do do you think I am?
Yeah? And I have a very I'm a very cold like I run really cold. So baths are like I just find them so comforting. And I love Switch. So I play Switch in the bath. What switch? It's like a Nintendo Nintendo switch.
I was like, surely not that switch?
Yeah, so people. And then I love gaming. Probably I guess that's three things, but.
Yeah, I have one last one. What is your favorite song that isn't one of your own or a favorite song? I'm sure you have many.
I mean a couple that are on varying degree of the spectrum. Is you know, we grew up with Americana music like Neil Young, Johnny Mitchell and all of those that crew. And I was obsessed with Neil Young's Comes a Time record, and I love most of the tracks on that record like a lot, and Comes a Time is a song that I really anytime I hear it, I think it's a phenomenal piece of songwriting. But then
I also love Kylie's Real Groove. You know that's like at the moment, I just think that's a brilliant pop song, and every time I hear it, I'm so happy.
A love a musician you would love to collaborate with.
I mean, Kylie, I love her. I always be the best. It would be really fun and I think she's so badass, and you know, just yeah, she's awesome. You know people that have passed on, like Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. Of course, if you could choose one throughout history so.
We can hologram them back to you for Coachella and you guys can talk it right. And final question, what's your favorite quote? Oh?
Favorite quote? I don't know who said this, except for my friend who said it to me once when I was extremely heartbroken. I had I had gone into a space that wasn't great after losing someone that I really I felt a strong bond with. And I guess the loss of friendship was a big deal, and they some I was. I was actually on another retreat in India and my friend was sitting with me and we were throwing stones in the river well, playing this game where you chuck one stone up and then you have to
try and hit it. It's a really calming game if you ever need something to take your mind of things. And oh another thing I was going to say, sorry, this goes back to before you said, what else do I do? Aside from a passionate I also love sports away stop. I play squash and tennis, and that's another thing that I do to take my mind of I love that jusick. My dad always said, well, if she didn't get into music, she would have been on the Aussie soccer team.
I loved never too late.
I can have a mature Yeah, so you can do everything kids. I was sitting playing this game and I was really concentrating and I was talking. I was trying to unravel what had happened, and he just said to me, what is for you won't go by you.
I love that one.
Yeah, I found it really helpful, and I just thought, that's so true. I mean, why are we so afraid? If it's meant for us, it will find us? And it made so much sense to me because of course, throughout life there are friendships, there are loves that come and then go forever, and there are some that will return at a different point in your life, and you don't have to be afraid. It's if it's meant to be, it'll it'll find you again.
Oh my gosh. That's beautiful and so a perfect way to end. Thank you so much for joining. This was amazing and I'm so excited about sixty summers.
Thank you so Nay's talking with you, Thank you so much.
I truly love metaphorically climbing into the brains of people like Julia, whose minds just uprates so differently to my own. I can't imagine just hearing a brand new song out of nowhere in my ears? Did anyone else find it fascinating to hear how she writes songs like how incredible is it? That music just comes from nothing into something in the mind of an artist like hers, and then that people can even collaborate to create something from nothing together.
If you enjoyed, as always, please let Julia know by sharing and tagging her. It means so much for our guests to hear feedback and to help us continue to scout new amazing humans to share their stories. Sixty Summers is a beautiful sensory experience such a cool album, make sure to tune in as soon as the remaining tracks launch in the coming days. The album comes out officially on April thirtieth, but in the meantime, hope you have an amazing week and is seizing your ya