Californian Julie Baenziger – aka Sea of Bees – went through a period of turmoil as a young gay woman before she was taken to church to be 'saved'. And she was: she took up guitar to impress a church-going girl and hasn't looked back since, she tells LAUREN MURPHY
KOOKY. If you had to choose one word to describe Julie Baenziger, that’s what it would be. But don’t confuse that with “ditzy” or “air-headed” – the woman behind the Sea of Bees pseudonym may be peculiarly bubbly at such an early hour of the morning, but her wit is as sharp as a warehouse full of tacks.
The Californian sounds both genuinely amazed that people are interested in her music, and enthralled by the inner workings of the music business. A trawl through her Twitter feed unearths gems such as “Accounting! Eww!”, “Got a comfy new blanket for my bed, yay!” and “Got a publicist now!! woah, like woah.” Like we said, kooky.
Baenziger's loveably geeky persona suits her music down to the ground. Songs for the Ravenshas been in the making since she first picked up a battered, one-stringed guitar as a 16-year-old. A charming combination of Cathy Davey-style quirkiness, Jenny Lewis's pop melodiousness and Micachu's DIY ethos, tunes such as Skinnyboneand Fyrefizz and crackle with an understated vibrance.
But life hasn’t always been sunshine and lollipops for the 25-year-old. Confusion and paranoia relating to her sexuality meant that much of her early teens was spent as a self-confessed “loner”. For a young gay woman, a Catholic church community seems a strange source of refuge – yet as well as providing a sort of kinship, that period also mapped the blueprint of her musical adventure.
“I just didn’t know what to do with my life,” she says of her pre-musical existence. “I’d just get up, get dressed, and think ‘I guess some day I’ll grow up. Or maybe I won’t.’ I think I felt that I was gonna die young because I’d been told that it wasn’t okay to be in love [with a member of the same sex], that what I felt inside was just a hindrance. I thought I’d rather die than be alone for the rest of my life. Looking back now, it sounds kind of sad . . . but that’s the only alternative I could see. If I couldn’t get to be in love with a woman, then I’d rather die.
“My parents and my family were great – I was brought up in a very normal way. But when I was 16, my sister and my cousin thought I needed to be ‘saved’, so they invited me to church.
“It was scary, but there was this girl by the door, and she was really pretty and sweet. And she just opened her arms and hugged me, and I thought ‘Wow! That’s what it feels like!’ So I thought ‘okay, I’ll stay here’.
“Then I saw this girl on stage, and she was singing, and her brother was playing acoustic – and I was like ‘I wanna be able to sing with her and impress her.’ I remember before going to school, I’d wake up about 5am and take my brother’s girlfriend’s old guitar and go to the shed in the back yard. I’d put on that girl’s CD, and I’d play it over and over again, and try to mimic it on my one string. I didn’t know how to sing, or tune a guitar, or what the fuck I was doing, but I played till my fingers bled.”
Inevitably, not all of her church-going neighbours were accepting of her sexuality – “I got some emails saying ‘we’re praying for you’, and I’d be like ‘you didn’t even fucking know me, and now you care?’ – but moving from small-town California to the big smoke of Sacramento made all the difference.
It was there that she threw herself in to music – punk bands, mostly – gathered a network of like-minded creative types around her, fell in love, had her heart broken and subsequently wrote Songs for the Ravens.
She also became fast friends with John Baccigalupi, who recorded and produced the album in his home studio, and who prodded Baenziger into fully committing to her Sea of Bees project.
“Every week I’d write stuff, and he’d just try to add some things and give me ideas. He’d be like ‘Why don’t you play the electric guitar?’, which is something I’d never thought about – I’d always played acoustic. He’d throw in some marimbas and bass. Just kind of exploring, I guess. I think he saw something more than I did. I was just playing in a punk band on a one-string bass guitar. I thought ‘I’ll do this for a little bit, and who knows? Maybe I’ll fall in love, maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll die.’ But when John came along he’d say ‘You’re gonna live a long life! You’re gonna be able to play music! I wanna do this with you. Let’s make music.’ So we did.”
Falling into the women-with-guitar cliche was something the pair studiously avoided. The range of instrumentation on the album helped, in that respect – particularly when coupled with her idiosyncratic vocals.
“I definitely didn’t want to be caught in that frame. It just sounds so cliche, and I’d like to remain, like, an alien – completely different,” she giggles. “Don’t worry, I’m definitely not ever going to be your typical woman with a guitar.”
Songs for the Ravenswas quietly acclaimed upon its Stateside release, and soon Baenziger found herself making friends and playing gigs with bands such as Ganglians and Mountain Man. After signing to Bella Union the harmonising trio passed the Sea of Bees album on to label boss Simon Raymonde, and it eventually found its way to UK indie Heavenly Recordings, who saw its potential as a slow-burning success. Signing to such a label was a dream come true for the woman whose fashion sense is dictated by thrift stores ("Not to be cool or anything – I just can't really afford anything pricey") and who only recently gave up her job as a barista at a coffee shop in downtown Sacramento. The fairy-tale nature of her story sounds almost too good to be true, but the singer is so endearingly sincere that you can't help but be drawn in to her odd little universe.
As for what’s next? Well, she promises that the next record will be a lot more lyrically upbeat now that she’s happier with life and things finally seem to be working out.
She’s even, she says with grave, sleeve-tugging sincerity, going to try to make it to Ireland this year. She’s heard so much about how beautiful it is, and she has some great-aunts and uncles living here.
“I’m nervous,” she says, “because . . . I dunno. I just hope they like me.” They’ll probably think you’re quite kooky, I tell her. “I guess I can live with that,” she says with a goofy giggle.
* Songs for the Ravensis released on Heavenly Recordings on February 4
