Julian Velard
with Jordan Carp
Paradise Lounge
Tonight, 7 p.m.
18+, $10
website
The baseball fates are smiling upon Julian Velard today.
The New York-based singer-songwriter told Bostonist recently that he was looking forward to performing in Boston tonight, with a show at the Paradise Lounge that serves as a brief escape to live performance during an intensely busy recording process. But Velard knew that trying to compete against the Red Sox in Boston is a lesson in futility - one can only deliver the musical goods, try not to get equally wrapped up in the game, and hope for the post-game crowd.
Fortunately for him, this is an off day for the Sox and baseball. Boston musical audiences can instead turn their attention to Velard’s piano-driven pop-rock and deep growl of a voice, as they recover from last night’s debauchery.
You’re in the midst of a recording process that has found you holed up in studios in New York and London. Can you tell us about how the process has been going? There are performers out there who live for the chance to be in the studio and create a concept. And then there are performers who just want to be out on the road and would rather not go near a studio at all. Where do you fall?
This thing I’m recording is for EMI UK, and that’s at a whole other level [than earlier releases] - up to this point, it’s been doing whatever work you can do in the time you get. You get a few days, you try to rush to the finish, and it all feels so final.
It’s a process, it’s definitely a new thing for me, it’s intense. I love it for a minute, then I hate it for three minutes. It’s frustrating, a good thing, I think the material is strong enough so that if the production doesn’t live up to it, you do it again. It‘s not fun. The shows are fun, the studio work is work - very precise, very minute, very much going over the same things.
Photo by Gareth Drake. More interview after the jump!
In your mind, where does a song truly live - on stage, where it's being delivered to an audience, or in the studio, after that minute process has come to an end?
The great thing about playing live is you get a chance to revise each night. It’s a different interpretation. It’s exciting. Crazy things can happen - a certain way a bar will hit or the fact that you can sing it angry one night, play it soft the next. With a record, it’s very much…it has to be able to stand the test of time, at least the kind of record I want to make. The music I love, it sounds just as good in 1976 as it does in 2007. I don’t want to make something of the moment.
They’re just so separate: a live show, it's like a baby wipe, but you’ve got to live with that record. By the end, you don’t even want to hear it anymore - it’s a strange thing. I feel like it’s almost like the record is the statement, the live show is the interpretation.
You're really living and breathing the album during the recording process, we'd imagine.
The recording process goes pretty quickly, it’s more the editing process. It's very scientific. I feel like I’m kind of a research scientist, trying to simulate an emotional experience. I think every great performer has that. People will go to see Rod Stewart or Elton John, guys who are great performers, even if you hate them. It’s almost like a science, a martial art. It looks spontaneous, but it’s actually years and years of a cult experience.
What is the music that evokes that from you?
I don’t really enjoy listening to music anymore. I like to watch movies and read. My brain, maybe it’s just where I am now, I’m just in such a hyper-accelerated mode. There’s definitely music that serve as touchstones, things I’ll come back to along the way. As much as I break things apart when I listen to them, I can’t rip apart "Inner Visions" by Stevie Wonder. I can’t rip apart "Off the Wall." I can’t rip apart "Blood on the Tracks." When I feel like I’m in the psych ward in Bellvue, those are my healers.
You mentioned film - your last album [2006's "The Movies Without You"] was all about films. What is it about the medium that appeals to you?
I’ve always been a huge movie person. That’s my crack. I can watch movies, shitty movies, great movies, and I can go to Virgin and buy 20 DVDs. That’s my thing.
I look at songs in a very cinematic way. I have a hard time viewing things abstractly. I like when a song progresses and it informs you about the person singing it. The idea, a song is like a mini-movie. The record is the movie. You’re trying to take the lyrics - make that picture. Puts them in a place.
I think that’s a lot of the reason I have a hard time with a pop music. You say the word "love" and that could mean a million things to a million different people, but the more visual images you have, you allow people to enter in and they decide what love is.
That’s the thing about a movie. You’re completely caught in the world. It is a vulnerable experience. I find myself crying at Disney Movies, overwhelmed by the intensity. I look at songs in a similar way.
Likewise, when you see a really great movie - a thriller, in particular - you can go back after viewing it once and continue to take from the experience as you go through it again. A director allows you to realize what you missed the first time around and how he was able to manipulate your emotions or attention.
That's what I want it to be [musically]. I don't want people to say that's catchy shit. When stuff is really good, you keep going back. The more it informs you, the better the experience is, know what I mean? That’s what makes something last.
That said, there's also the visceral experience of a great beat, great move. Something like Michael Jackson beats. Beyond a story there’s just a feeling. Not all cerebral - it's also gotta grab.
Think about the fact that you can play "Billie Jean" in a room with 20 people, and 18 of those people are going to have the same instinctual reaction - their eyes light up, heads starting to bob.
Part of it is a song, part of it is a moment. I was walking down the street today getting coffee, and the sign outside a Starbucks said "We’re going to get pumpkin back." That would have made no sense before. Now that we have "SexyBack," it means something. It’s just interesting. Not that I’m a big JT fan, but I acknowledge that that phrase means something now.
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