Julia Henning Stops in for a chat after Gorgeous Festival

Backed by a band of talented musicians, award-winning songstress Julia Henning is set to take the Australian music industry by storm. Effortlessly teaming contemporary folk and post-rock, it’s of no surprise that the South Australian local has topped the Triple J Unearthed Charts, and been featured alongside the likes of The Black Keys on Channel 10’s ‘Offspring’. Fresh off her performance at the iconic Gorgeous Festival, Henning sat down for a chat.
Congratulations on your spot at the Gorgeous Festival! How did it all come about?
Thank you! I live about ten minutes from where it’s held, and my piano player Matt thought we should apply for their Petit Stages. Applications weren’t open, but I got in contact anyway, and we were lucky enough to get a spot!
You’ve made quite a name for yourself over the past few years – how did you first get your start in music?
The first step is finding songs that you love. As a kid, my parents took me to a lot of theatre and I was really in awe of what they were doing, so I got singing lessons when I was 11. I also did some acting and dancing classes along the way, so that’s probably where it all began for me.
Do you think that background in theatre and acting has influenced your sound at all?
Well, I sit down and write music and lyrics at the same time usually – although lyrics for me are what I feel I’m more capable of – so Leonard Cohen is a big influence lyrically. There’s a lot of influences in the band because a lot of the other members come from a wide range of backgrounds. If I had to be more concise, I’d say Coldplay, James Blunt and Paramore have been really big influences.
Your debut album Fledgling is due out soon, how’s it all coming along?
It’s coming along great! We’ve sent off the first edition CD’s that our Pozzible backers will be receiving, so they should be going out to our supporters very soon. We crowd-funded the album, so through that we’ve managed to get a great amount of support from our fans to go over to Coolangatta and record with Govinda Doyle, who also recorded Angus and Julia Stone. So we’ll be releasing the single from the album by the end of the year, and then hopefully do some touring next year!
You actually got a shout-out from Zach Braff through the crowd-funding campaign –
Yeah! After doing the crowd funding thing we got really interested in who else was crowd-funding, so we kind of went on a bit of a spree to help support other artists. I’d been a fan of his for a very long time from Scrubs and he was crowd-funding a film of his own, so we decided to donate some money to him! We ended up receiving a lovely video from him!
What can we expect from you next?
We’re really looking forward to putting everything we have behind Fledglings, do a tour, and play for all of our fans! So we’re really excited to tour and just get out there!