Quick & Dirty - Julie Fader
By: Richard Trapunski
November 23, 2009 – Toronto, Canada
Julie Fader may just be indie-rock's best-kept secret. The velvet-voiced Toronto singer-songwriter has lent vocals and instrumentals to everyone from Justin Rutledge and Attack in Black to Cuff the Duke and Blue Rodeo, all while maintaining occasional membership in Great Lake Swimmers and Sarah Harmer's and Chad VanGaalen's bands. Despite her impressive CBC Radio 3 pedigree, Fader has typically found herself playing supporting roles. But now, following the release of her first solo album, Outside In, she's moved into an unfamiliar place: the spotlight.
"It's not really that big of a difference," the soft-spoken Fader gently insists. "When I'm playing with Sarah [Harmer] or Chad [VanGaalen] or Tony [Dekker, lead singer and songwriter of Great Lake Swimmers], I'm singing a lot of harmonies, so people are still paying attention to what I'm doing. It's not like moving over three-and-a-half feet on stage has totally changed my perspective."
That may be the case, but the three-and-a-half-foot shift, however modest, is definitely noticeable on Outside In. Despite contributions from many of Fader's famous friends, including production work by her boyfriend Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck, it's an intimately personal work, one that deploys an elegantly minimalist aesthetic rarely expressed in her ensemble work. Subtle guitar lines intermingle with lush orchestration while Fader's delicate vocals, usually relegated to the periphery, are finally pushed out front where they belong.
"Some musicians really wear their influences on their sleeves, but I don't want to sound like anyone else," she says. "The people that I've been surrounded by have definitely affected me as a person, but I don't listen to the record and hear their influence."
One would think that moonlighting in so many different bands would leave Fader little time to write her own stuff, but the songs on the album were spawned from journals she kept while on tour.
"When I have a stretch of time off where I feel like I can be creative, I revisit the books that I travel with," she explains. "Because those are what become songs. As I reread the notebooks, all of a sudden the pattern of the words becomes a melody in my mind and then I start to sing it. Then when I get the chance, I pick up an instrument and start to play it."
This method has certainly worked for Fader on her debut album, but she's hoping to experiment with other forms of creation on her next release. "I'm really looking forward to a stretch of time where I can just focus on playing and painting and maybe writing some more on keys. I'm also a visual artist, so it'd be amazing if I could incorporate that into my music somehow."
All of this, of course, hinges on her finding time to focus on her own work, a rarity in the life of Canada's busiest bit player. But while Fader continues to lend a helping hand to the country's best and brightest, she's not ready to step back into the wings just yet. This may be Fader's first foray onto centre stage, but it won't be her last.
Video: "Skin and Bones" by Julie Fader
