Quirky and original, the award-winning Julie Feeney is about to bring her musical styling to America for the first time, writes Vincent Murphy.
AS anyone who watched last week’s Grammys knows, the crazier the better when it comes to fashion if you’re a pop star. From Lady Gaga’s arrival inside an egg, to Ceelo Green’s feathered peacock outfit, you’ve got to have something to make yourself stand out in today’s music world.
In the case of Ireland’s Julie Feeney, who is about to embark on her debut US tour, it’s hard not to notice that she’s wearing a house on her head. A tiny multi-colored house.
“I had a tree house painted in specific colors in a garden in Galway for the photo work on my album (Pages)” explains Feeney, who hails from Athenry. “Sharon Costello Desmond painted it for me. Then when I progressed to doing live shows, I wanted that magical fairytale world brought into my live performances. So I had a replica of the house made into a hat (by Kim Gilbert, of Irish designers Attack on Humans).”
She now wears the headpiece at all her live performances. Photographers couldn’t get enough of the hat at the launch last month of Imagine Ireland in New York, and several other journalists asked me “Who’s the woman with the house on her head?” The hat was in evidence again, the following week when Julie performed a short set at Joe’s Pub at Astor Place as part of the annual performing arts showcase APAP/NYC. But the audience was taking notice of more than her choice of milliner.
Feeney, and her surprisingly large cast of supporting musicians and singers, are a fascinating live act. Her beautiful singing is combined with a captivating, sometimes manic stage presence. She’s not afraid to get out into the audience and bring the performance right to their tables. Some were bewildered, others captivated. No-one was bored.
Feeney returns to the East Village venue on March 9th, as part of her first ever nationwide tour of the United States. “It’s fantastic,” she says, “I just feel this is going to be a great year.” Feeney will play 19 venues across the States over the next few months.
She’s already a critical darling in her home country. Her first album 13 Songs won the Choice Music Prize in 2006, and her second Pages was also nominated in 2009. She writes, composes and produces all of her own work – releasing her last album on her own record label Mittens. She’s been invited to orchestrate and perform her own music for many orchestras, and her song “Impossibly Beautiful” was used for a high profile TV advertisement (VHI) in Ireland.
“It’s nice to be coming here a little more established, rather than a complete unknown.” she says, acknowledging that it would have been very difficult to make a mark in the US if she had tried it any sooner. “It’s nice having two albums, and to be performing a variety of different types of set-ups. Because I’ve tried all of this out before. It’s not that Ireland is practice in any way, of course, but it’s interesting now that I feel that, I’ve room to play with much more. I can pick any number of pieces to do now, whereas I wouldn’t have had that freedom if I had decided to come to America earlier.”
She thoroughly enjoyed her set at Joe’s Pub, remarking that the audience seemed to be really into what she was doing. “I’m not a typical pop artist. Because I compose for orchestras, I’m not ‘indie’ really, not a regular singer-songwriter. My audience is a bit different to that.” She’s been the South-x-Southwest rock showcase (“wonderful and amazing but a very different kind of world to mine”) before, and thinks Imagine Ireland is a better fit as a showcase for her talents. “My audience crosses into theater-goers as well as music lovers, classical as well as tradition. So this is exactly the right kind of pitching for who I am as an artist.”
The highlight of her career so far was a 10-minute standing ovation she received at the end of a recent performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in front of a sell-out 1,200-strong crowd. “To fill the National Concert Hall was amazing,” she said. She’s now hoping to carry some of that enthusiasm with her across the Atlantic as he makes “a crucial step” in her career.
Julie was a professional choral singer for five years, and toured all over the world with various ensembles. But this is her first time in America with her own show. She has not released any of her music in the United States to date and is going to use her tour as a springboard. “The whole notion of releasing albums has changed so much now,” she says, “A release before meant one thing, but now it’s very different. I think the whole idea of presenting something with punch is only possible with a huge amount of money. When that isn’t there I think momentum is the most valuable thing you can have,” she says.
Touring too is expensive, she explains, especially if you want to present your work in the way it should be. “You don’t need any luxury. You just need to be able to get there, particularly with flights and travel because America is so big.” She’s grateful to be getting support from Imagine Ireland – but is under no illusion that she herself needs to make the most of it by launching her album alongside the tour. “My launch is about leading with the ‘live’ – as opposed to the traditional model before, where an album is out on the seventh of March and there is a whole load of promotion around it. “I think it’s a great time now to be able to lead your launch with natural momentum.”
She plays FathomCreative in Washington DC on February 28th, Club Passim in Cambridge, Mass. on March 07th and Joe’s Pub, New York on March 9th. After that, there are 16 more dates around the US. She’ll be releasing both “13 Songs” and “Pages”, digitally at least, in the US in the coming weeks.
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