Julian playing an Ampeg Dan Armstrong guitar at New York City’s
famed CBGB club in in 1978.
“That’s the last guitar I ever sold,” he
laments. “I miss it. Never sell guitars—ever.” Photo by Tanda
How would you describe your
compositional process?
The impetus for my songs
often comes from my immediate
surroundings. I wrote the
music to “Liars Beware” off [the
Voidoids’ 1977 classic]
Blank
Generation when I had just
moved to New York and heard
about four or five sirens upon
exiting the subway—sounds
that turned themselves into a
guitar riff. Other times, a song
will emerge as a reimagining of
an older one. When I wrote the
title track to
The Naked Flame,
I set out to make a modern-day
version of “Fire” by Jimi
Hendrix. My writing process
also involves the other musicians
I work with—their input
can take a song to a place I
hadn’t envisioned.
On The Naked Flame you
cover Lucinda Williams’
“Broken Butterflies.” How
did your arrangement come
about?
I was a slave to the song—I
gave it what it needed to walk
on its own two feet. The song
seemed to call for just a
tiny bit
of guitar and mostly harmonium,
on account of its organic
sound. I love that instrument.
It’s just so human, with its
leather bag pumping away like
a pair of lungs or some wild
sexual thing. By the way, I
didn’t actually play the guitar on
that track. It’s my friend Nick
Tremulis, a player from Chicago
who’s got this wonderful, rootsy
style. I told him just to pretend
to be me, so his playing on the
song is an interpretation of what
I do—which is often over-the-top
and angular. What you hear
isn’t in the exact same sequence
as he played it, though. This is a
rare example of my using a little
Pro Tools action to move the
guitar parts around a little for a
more powerful arrangement.
Julian playing a 1966 Fender Mustang at a 1981 gig with the Outsets,
the
band he formed after leaving the Voidoids. Photo by Lisa Lloyd
Let’s talk about some of the
guitar work you did play. How
did you get that great, vocal-like
sound on the title track?
In my living room, I plugged
my Strat into a Peavey Bandit
and cranked both the amp and
a Rat pedal just before the point
of breaking up. I mic’d the amp
with my favorite mic for electric
guitars—an Electro-Voice
PL76, which has such a warm,
natural sound. I placed the
PL76 off-center and got a bit of
the room sound in there—the
room should always be a part
of the amp, in my opinion. To
record the parts I used an old
Tascam 8-track, which I fed
into a 24-track for a raw sound
that you don’t get when using
digital equipment exclusively.
As for the actual playing, I
made a conscious effort to avoid
the obvious—tired blues lines
between the vocal phrases—so
I tried to create some unusual
nuances there.
Watch the video for the title track from The Naked Flame: