The city is Amsterdam and the stage is set for Julia Stone to play one of her first solo shows, with her brother Angus – on his own solo jaunt. Stone is palpably nervous, her hands are shaking and not only is she solely in the spotlight, but this is also the first time that songs from her sophomore release By The Horns will be heard live by this Dutch audience.
“I was really quite frightened about how it would feel and I had all this pressure on myself,” recalls the songstress. “I have to do this and I have to do well cause it’s gonna be the first show.”
Stone, incredibly thoughtful, always warm, and personal throughout the interview, detailed how that show in Amsterdam was, as she calls it, “her first big lesson on being on my own.”
Having already released two studio albums under the sibling duo of Angus & Julia Stone, with Down the Way achieving triple platinum at home as well as platinum sales in France and along with winning five ARIA awards, Stone is by no means new to this.
Yet despite her previous successes the transformation of the singer over the past year has been considerable.
While Stone believes that “the real change this year has been more internal and things that are happening in my head,” that first show in Amsterdam was a turning point for the singer-songwriter as a performer.
“After touring with Angus I didn’t get nervous like that to go on stage, I just got excited about going out but not like this,” she admits.“It was definitely removing a kind of safety and security that we had with each other where we had this support on stage that you know its not just your own show
“It was definitely removing a kind of safety and security that we had with each other where we had this support on stage that you know its not just your own show and you got this other person that’s gonna sing a song after you sing,” continues Stone.
Before stopping mid sentence to say goodbye to her grandparents, the folk singer apologises and picks up from where she left off as if her train of thought hadn’t been interrupted at all.
“If you don’t feel like talking you don’t have to and all of sudden you just had to be the person entertaining and its really affirming to be able to get up and you don’t have to pretend to entertain people; you just get up and sing these songs and say whatever the fuck you want to say and it’s fine,” says Stone.
But as the singer reaffirms, it’s not so much the touring changes that have altered her as a person in 2012, it’s the changes inside her head.
What are those changes though? “Fuck!” she exclaims, “that’s such a big question.”
But Stone, candid as always, gives her lengthiest response of the interview. The artist is by no means shy at giving detailed responses.
“When I started making music with Angus I was very young and not that I’m so old and fucking wise now,” she begins, “ I think that when I started I really felt that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a nice person and to make sure that everything was good and that I was a great performer and I wanted people to like what I did.”
“I feel like it I was getting to a place where I was putting so much pressure on myself that I couldn’t just be myself and to be whatever I was in that moment,” explains Stone, “it was all like just being consumed with this fear”.
Reasoning her decision to go solo last year, Stone says it was about pushing herself to a place where it was “really uncomfortable… enough that I push myself to be authentic,” she rationalises.“When I started making music with Angus I was very young and not that I’m so old and fucking wise now.”
But as the singer illustrates, there was more to her being authentic than just her songwriting.
“Even in interviews and talking to people there was no need to perform anymore,” she reveals, “it’s just like being myself and it’s fine however that works out, whether its very successful or not successful, through it all – just be yourself to the end and everything will be fine”.
Stone reiterates, “that’s just what this year has been about, embracing all the fears and all those things that come up inside my head.”
From February Stone will be touring under the Heavenly Sounds banner, taking in churches across the country’s six major cities.
While the singer has performed in countless churches across Europe, she cannot recall such a gig in her home country.
“I think that for me the shows in the churches are always really fun cause I love the sound of a travelling voice, like reverb, it hits the walls and travels round the room and the way churches are built, they’re designed for voice singing,” she explains.
“So every time we play shows in churches, I know that from the past few years, when we come off stage its like ‘woah that was a really great sounding show’, like that was a lot of fun to sing,” describes the singer.
Although while religion and churches are synonymous, for Stone, it isn’t necessarily so.
When asked what her views were on the topic, the songstress gave a carefully considered response.
“I don’t really know a lot about religion, I’ve never been to church,” she concedes.
Speaking of her ideology of spiritually, Stone gives much of the credit to her father for whom she bases her views on.
“He believes in the beauty of the moment and he’s always raised us saying that ‘why look to somebody outside of yourself to find god when every moment is filled with god?’ If you want to use that word,” she reasons, “he was very strong with that growing up, you know, look to the sky, look to the birds, look to the wind, look to the things that you can see and touch and feel and they all carry the essence of life and I think that’s definitely in me.”
“I guess my belief system is really a mix of that, with I think, everything that comes into my day to day experience and I don’t know how that makes me feel, but religion is another whole thing.”
“I don’t really know a lot about religion, I’ve never been to church,”“I know that there are lots of negative aspects to religion,” continues the singer-songwriter, but she stops short of going into depth of such ‘aspects’.
While she finishes by explaining the difficulty she has with commenting on religion as an organised group of people, she draws upon her experiences with the friends she has made who are religious.
“I think the set of rules and the community that surrounds it is really helpful for them and their life and it seems like a positive thing for them,” justifies Stone.
2012 for the 28-year-old has been a year of change for the songstress, but more so, in her own words, it has been “fun”.
While both Angus and Julia spend time apart, touring their respective solo records, fans of the duo will no doubt be hoping for them to reunite in 2013 to begin work on their third album. But they’ll have to wait.
While the pair spent time together after Homebake festival in Sydney, there are no plans as of yet, with both artists booking tours in 2013.
“I guess we’ll sing out sometime in the early next year and see where we’re at,” says Stone, although she concedes that; “I’m very clueless when it comes to this stuff and I think Angus is as well,” she concludes.
“We’re very last minute deciders.”
By The Horns is out now through EMI. Julia Stone heads out on her Heavenly Sounds tour this Thursday, dates below.
Julia Stone 2013 Heavenly Sounds Tour
With Vance Joy
THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2013 – SYDNEY / St Stephen’s Uniting Church, NSW
197 Macquarie Street, Sydney NSW
FRIDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2013 – BRISBANE / St John’s Cathedral, QLD
373 Ann Street, Brisbane QLD
TUESDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2013 – HOBART / St David’s Cathedral, TAS
125 Macquarie Street, Hobart TAS
WEDNESDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2013 – MELBOURNE / St Michael’s Church, VIC
120 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC
THURSDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2013 – ADELAIDE / Flinders Street Baptist Church, SA
65 Flinders Street, Adelaide SA
FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2013 – PERTH / St Joseph’s Church, WA
3 Salvado Road, Subiaco WA
