Julien Baker & Torres: “Country music has to be potent, it has to be powerful”
Julien Baker & Torres are taking us on a trip down memory lane. Seated across from NME in the meeting room of a trendy central London hotel on an auspicious St. Patrick’s Day morning, the close friends, collaborators and fellow Southerners reflect on the country music memories that made an indelible mark in their childhood years.
“I would do this on the couch–,” Boygenius member and solo artist Baker begins, arising from her seat only three minutes into our interview to demonstrate a stiff snippet of kickline choreography. “I would watch myself in the mirror and dance.” She’s referring to all the times she listened to Shania Twain’s fourth album ‘Up!’ growing up – which featured one pop-rock version of the record and one country – the musicality of which inspired and, quite literally, moved her.
For singer-songwriter Torres, real name Mackenzie Ruth Scott, that core country memory was hearing artists like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, The Chicks and Garth Brooks on the car radio with her newly licensed older siblings at the wheel, the first time they “got to listen to music out of earshot of our parents”.
With Baker growing up in Tennessee and Torres next door in Georgia, country music naturally found its way into their musical DNA. Both grew up in Christian households and shared the experience of navigating queerness and a conservative society in the South. The duo also spent most of their respective careers making alternative and indie music, Torres now six solo albums in and Baker three. But it seemed inevitable the pair would find their way back to their roots, a journey culminating in the release of their new country album, ‘Send A Prayer My Way’.
Neither is a stranger to confessional songwriting, and the new record pools their talents to find them plumbing the depths of human fallibility against the backdrop of open roads, honky-tonks and lonely nights succumbing to the grips of unforgiving vices. “It has to be about something,” Torres says of working within the longstanding parameters of country music. “It can’t be abstract. It has to be potent, it has to be powerful. And it has to rhyme. There has to be an ‘aha’ moment. There has to be a little bit of humour, and there also has to be something a little bit devastating.”
Having first met in 2016 backstage at a show in Chicago, the idea of a collaborative country record has been nearly a decade in the making. But it was the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when they first started working on the project remotely, before recording the album in Texas two years later. The following year, Baker’s career reached new heights as she released Boygenius’ three-time Grammy-winning debut album ‘The Record’ with bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. “I didn’t want to release this before we did Boygenius,” explains Baker, “and have to have a cut-off point to the life of this record.”
“It’s just interesting that there’s a cultural shift happening where people are recognising the greatness of country music” – Julien Baker
When Baker and Torres preview the album at the altar of an intimate church in south-west London the following evening, the pair perform like a seasoned country duo with a whole lot of history behind them. Yet, their relationship with the genre hasn’t always been straightforward.
Torres took a break from country music during her eclectic high school years before she attended college in Nashville and participated in showcases where artists performed in the hopes of being discovered. “I found that I was not really integrating in the way that I wanted to, and I understand now it’s because I’m a lesbian,” she shares with a laugh. “I think I sort of conflated country music with that feeling of being rejected and maybe not being allowed in, which was kind of self-imposed.”
It’s a sentiment Baker recognises in her own story, who was drawn to the counterculture spirit of punk in her teens at a time when country felt “ubiquitous” in her life. “I was like, ‘I don’t listen to country. Country is stupid.’ Because it represented something to me that was more about the cultural distaste for American nationalism, and I didn’t really identify with that life,” she explains.
Still, it’s plain to see that country music made an imprint on them both, which can be heard in the fluency of the musical arrangements – anchored by pedal steel guitars, worn-in violins and twangy banjo strings – and the rawness of their writing. “What I’m used to doing is building a sonic world around these abstract lyrics, and having to dig in really deep to find the heart of what I’m even trying to say,” explains Torres. “And you know with a country song what the subject is.” Baker agrees: “It’s way more explicit.”
‘Send A Prayer My Way’ moves through the universal woes that have inspired generations of country artists, narrating the lives of flawed people down on their luck, forlorn and restless, desperate to show up for the people they love. There are unassuming lyrics that pack a punch, like when Baker admits “I never met a sin I’m above tryin’” on the laboured, string-laden ‘Tape Runs Out, or on the pensive ‘Dirt’ when she sings: “Got a shortcut in to paradise that’s killin’ me but I still gotta try to get there first.”
“I sort of conflated country music with that feeling of being rejected and maybe not being allowed in, which was kind of self-imposed” – Torres
There are moments spared for levity, too, like when Torres gets to have the last word with the close-minded mother of a past romantic interest on ‘Tuesday’. But the jubilant ‘Sugar In The Tank’ is the real highlight, a rolling declaration of love to the person who keeps you grounded, complete with a music video featuring the artists stepping and spinning with queer line dancing community Stud Country. “I remember calling my grandma. I was like, ‘Grammy, you’ll never guess what’s happening in the heart of Los Angeles’,” recalls Baker, “hundreds of people group line dancing.’”
“And they were all kissing each other!” Torres interjects, feigning scandal.
If it seems like the patient pair have timed their record’s release to a T – off the back of country albums by Beyoncé, Post Malone and Zayn, and now a country single from Chappell Roan – they’re aware of how it might look. “The fact that it’s in the mainstream now [and] arguably the most popular genre right now, that’s really fun,” says Torres.
Choosing her words carefully, she adds: “I don’t love that something – we’ll call it a trend – is happening alongside the thing that I’m doing, and maybe converging with it a little bit. I don’t love that it maybe appears as though Julien and I did something trendy, because that isn’t what happened.”
But both are quick to reaffirm that they’re certainly not disapproving of country’s pop crossover, likening the genre to a “lens” that any artist can apply to their work; after all, here’s two artists who were raised on country, and opening it up to more people can only be a good thing.
“We talk about this all the time, who’s allowed to make country music?” Baker concludes. “That’s a thing we encounter all the time, we’re gay people. It’s not like trying to prove someone’s legitimacy or saying it’s a trend. It’s just interesting that there’s a cultural shift happening where people are recognising the…,” she pauses, looking for the right words, before her collaborator finds them: “Greatness of this genre.”
Julien Baker & Torres’ new album ‘Send A Prayer My Way’ is out April 18 via Matador.
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Hollie Geraghty
NME
