© Bryony Shearmur

Finally Home: Julianna Raye

By Steve Hochman

It was pretty incongruous listening to songs from Julianna Raye’s new album, Dominoes, on an iPod in a bustling airport. In Bangalore. In India.  The lilting melancholy of the bossa nova-influenced tunes and wistful vignettes seemed a sharp contrast to what you’d find in any airport. Let alone in India. Let alone in Bangalore. This was the setting for Asha Bosle, not Astrud Gilberto.

But then, there’s an underlying incongruity to the whole project. Or so should there be given Raye’s past -- the New Jersey-to-Hollywood transplant having launched her music career in the early ‘90s under the wing of Warner Bros. Records and super-producer Jeff Lynne.

“For me it was so natural,” she says, though, of the new music. “That was what was surprising. I’ve been kind of a chameleon. Started with the jangly pop thing with Jeff, did the eclectic singer-songwriter thing on my second record. But there was something just so effortless and natural with this style for me. Stylistically the way I had to sing it, the way I could lyrically paint a picture, tell a story. And the influences, those ‘60s influences have always crept into my writing. And the French thing and Brazilian thing, that was natural to me. It felt like coming home in an odd way -- even though I’m a Jew from Jersey.”

She certainly seemed at home, if a bit nervous, debuting the material recently at Hollywood’s intimate Hotel Café, a perfect setting for both the warm sounds and her newly achieved comfort level. She did see home.

That homecoming route, as it were, was a journey as circuitous, fortuitous and perhaps serendipitous as, well, a snaking array of dominoes falling. It wound through her first work with Lynne on her 1992 debut album Something Peculiar, made just a year after she’d even started writing songs (she’d come to California as an aspiring actress, not musician). It wound through her second album Restless Night (which wasn’t until 2001), which took her in more a lounge-jazz direction with producer Ethan Johns. Along the way she worked steadily with a variety of artists, including co-writing with the late film composer Michael Kamen (her cousin) on the end credits song “Holding All My Love For You” for Kevin Costner’s Open Range and collaborating with director Rod Lurie on the songs for his movie Resurrecting the Champ. And she guested on recordings by Ryan Adams and Rufus Wainwright, among others, even touring as a member of Wainwright’s band. All great experience, but nothing that gave her the artistic center she’d sought.

It was Wainwright, though, who got her on track.

“He made me take myself seriously,” she says. “I was doing loungey, kitschy stuff and he challenged me to take myself seriously as an artist, and I realized I was copping out. I thought I was being playful, but I was really afraid of taking myself seriously.”

Why that ultimately led to exploring bossa nova she’s not sure, but she does know that at some point after making Restless Night she heard Brazilian legend Baden Powel’s instrumental album 3 Originals and it resonated with her.

“I just fell in love with those rhythms and the melancholy,” she says. “And there’s one song that Astrud Gilberto does, ‘Berimbau,’ written by Baden Powel, that captured something in me. I know I wanted to find a way to do something with that stuff. I knew what I did wouldn’t come out sounding like that, but I got captivated by it.”

And from there it all started to fall in place.

“‘Leaves Before Autumn’ was the first I wrote in that approach,” she sys. ‘Ethan and I recorded it along with some other things. Then I had written ‘Carry You With Me’ with my cousin Michael Kamen, who passed away about five years ago, and that song lent itself to those rhythms also.”

Her publisher, Chrysalis Music, started sending her on writing trips to work with fellow songsmiths in London and Nashville, among other places, and through that she was introduced to Music City songwriter Bill Demain, and out of that came more material. Along the way the bossa nova sounds meshed perfectly with another growing influence from ‘60s French film scores -- she singles out Francis Lai’s music for Mayerling in particular -- and the project took on more and more a distinct shape. That latter sensibility shines (if reserved melancholy can shine) in the stunning “White Bicycles,” in some ways the centerpiece of the collection, it’s evocative vignette capturing a moment in time.

“It made sense to have these vignettes,” she says. “The song ‘Dominoes’ does that, a story of a love affair. And ‘White Bicycle,’ Bill Demain had the lyrics and were totally in the pocket, so I came up with the melody.”

With Johns producing, the album took shape in very quick sessions with Demain on guitar, Dave Palmer on piano, Reggie Hamilton on bass and the versatile Jay Bellerose behind the drums. And Raye herself took on some of the tricky guitar parts -- a steep but exhilarating learning curve for her.

Also in a distinct break from her early career, this is being released in an ultra-indie manner. Chrysalis, in an unusual move, has put it out itself at this point, primarily via the major digital sites. Film and TV placement, of course, is a big part of the plan and a natural one given the material. “Dewberry Wine,” another one deeply influenced by Francis Lai’s Mayerling score, is already set for the upcoming Charlize Theron-starring The Burning Plain.

And the inspiration continues, with Raye expecting to follow-up this much more quickly than she has her previous albums.

“I’ve already begun writing songs for the next record and they’re very composerly, maybe leaning more on the Astor Piazzolla tip than the Gilberto tip,” she says. “I fell like this is a pivotal record for me. Like it all dropped into the pocket in terms of identity. That doesn’t mean I’ll stick with this -- don’t think I could. But all the elements creatively came into place in a very clear way.”