Julien Baker's 'Faith Healer' was introduced via essay by Columbus author Hanif Abdurraqib
Julien Baker became known for writing songs examining her life and questioning her faith while accompanying herself simply on guitar and piano.
With her latest album, “Little Oblivions,” Baker continues her self-examination, but broadens out to include other musicians in the mix. Her current performances, which includes a stop at the Newport Music Hall on Sept. 28, is the first time she's toured playing her own music with a band.
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“I always imagined that my job would be playing in a band,” Baker, 25, said, speaking from her home in Nashville, Tennessee. “And then I put out a really sparse record, and I learned to perform that way. I don't know why, but I felt like since that was the incarnation of my music that was under my name and not under a band name, I felt like I had to be consistent with it.”
Working on many projects
Besides touring on her own, Baker has also more recently performed with indie-rock supergroup boygenius, where she joined Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, with each musician playing a set and then the three coming together to perform at the end of each concert.
“That was a little different because it wasn't my band. It was just a very different dynamic than playing with a band you've rehearsed with much.”
Baker has learned a lot by making two albums on her own.
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“There's something very valuable about working in that way for so long, working with a limited palette. But I had to learn not to resist change, like if I changed my musical taste or I changed how I operated, people would stop liking my music,” she said.
Returning to college and finishing degree
She accomplished that by stepping away from music for a while. After four years of making albums and touring, she went back to college the fall semester of 2019 to finish a degree in English at Middle Tennessee State University.
“And my life didn't fall apart when I wasn't performing on a stage every day or doing interviews every day,” she said.
Not that college was necessarily easy.
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“I had procrastinated taking British literature the whole time that I was in school. And then I dropped out to tour, and I came back and was taking an overload to finish in one semester because I thought I was going to go back on tour. I had to take "Beowulf" and "The Canterbury Tales" at the same time as Dickens, and it was the worst thing ever,” she said.
By the time school was over, the pandemic had begun, and that tour was deferred.
Instead, she worked on the complex, reflective “Little Oblivions.”
Making it, she said, “I just wanted to not make things off limits to myself. There are a lot of moving parts in the songs. There's a lot going on production and arrangement-wise.”
A friend in Columbus
“Little Oblivions” has a Columbus connection. The first single from the album, “Faith Healer,” was introduced to the world with an essay by Columbus author, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, whose writing concludes: “Thank you, Julien, for this comfort. This glass box through which a person might better be able to see their own grief. This kingdom of small shards of sunlight, stumbling their way in to disrupt the darkness.”
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Abdurraqib is planning to attend the concert in Columbus.
“I admire her work and the way she navigates the world. I feel like I learn from her openness and her vulnerability, and the way she is able to articulate those things while keeping a part of herself for herself.
“She is such an effective storyteller, who is able to parse through a really rich thicket of feeling and distill it down to these three to five minute blocks.”
Baker has known Abdurraqib for years.
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“I met Hanif, oddly enough, at a Christian writing conference in Grand Rapids (Michigan) when I was 19,” she said. “I think there is something in Hanif's writing about music and his poetry that is very spiritual. I think that was something that I needed, oddly, to go to Calvin College in the middle of Michigan and meet Hanif and see him perform. I've learned a lot from him, even though we probably haven't spent 24 hours in the same room in all our years of knowing each other.”
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At a glance
Julien Baker will perform at 7 p.m. Sept. 28 in the Newport Music Hall, 1722 N. High St. Tickets cost $22. Attendees must wear masks and provide proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours of the show. For more information, call 614-461-5483 or visit promowestlive.com.