A ride through the Great Plains landscape of Julie's stone cupid soul, evoking the influences of Joni Mitchell, Dinah Washington, Joe Williams, the Staple Singers, k.d.lang, sweet 1970's soul and Americana. Julie Christensen's second CD is under the new moniker stone cupid and is a swell followup to her 1997 'love is driving'. It's called 'Soul Driver'. ...
More music from the Great Plains via Texas and California: Julie Christensen's travels with her longtime musician friends have brought us glimpses into her achy soulville through a lens of strong focus on real live instruments and Julie's blue country jazzy soulful vocals, organically grown in Ojai. Stone Cupid became the name for these longtime musician companions who get together with Leonard Cohen / Divine Horsemen veteran Christensen. She has produced this followup to 1997's love is driving, a soul-country ride of a CD that was played on 50 public radio stations nationwide and covered in BILLBOARD and CMJ. (Love is Driving is newly re-mastered and re-packaged and available here at CD Baby, too...) Starting with live basic tracks over the course of 3 nights of public performances at Happy Valley School's Zalk Theater in Ojai, recorded in 24 track analog an mastered in the audiophile HDCD, the songs in Soul Driver were filled out with Julie's intimate and powerful vocals, as well as the live backup of Perla Batalla and Beth Fichet-Wood, horns (Lee Thornburg again, of Tower of Power), great guitar (Jonathan McEuen, who also provided duet and backup vocals, and Greg Leisz again, of k.d. lang, Joni Mitchell and Bill Frisell ), and the beautiful keyboard work of songwriting and singing partner and jazz stalwart Karen Hammack. The rhythm section is Headless Household's Chris Symer and Supertramp's Cliff Hugo on bass and James Cruce, of J.J. Cale's band, and Jim Christie of Dwight Yoakum's band on drums and percussion. Soul Driver is a fully realized album of new and older songs (including songs from the never-released Todd Rundgren production for Polygram) of Christensen's with collaborators, and cover material by her friends Jeff Turmes, Peter Kingsbery, and Heather Hoban. Julie Christensen Artist Profile Veteran chanteuse Julie Christensen has been honing her chameleon craft over more than two decades of singing live and in studios. She has met the challenge of many a song poet who needed a foil: Leonard Cohen (even as his 'Joan of Arc'), Steve Wynn, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Van Dyke Parks, Chris D., as the other head of post-punk swamp-rockers Divine Horsemen (SST), Robben Ford, and many others of whom you haven't heard. Other folks utilizing Julie's vocal talents have been as far-flung stylistically as Iggy Pop, PiL, Phil Perry, k.d. lang, Lowen and Navarro, Steinberg and Kelly, the Freewheelers and the Blue Hawaiians. No wonder we have trouble cramping this woman in a category! If one adds that she'll be performing in another of O-Lan Jones' opera theater productions at the Taper Too in early 2001, or that New York audiences and critics enjoyed her singing the role of the comic/tragic blue folk Slue Foot Sue at the Public Theater's production of Sam Shepard's Ballad of Pecos Bill on the eve of Killing His Wife, one wonders if there wouldn't be a poor man's Judy Garland or Bjork in the making. One of the things missing from this chequered career is a conventional release from Polygram, which Todd Rundgren produced in 1990. Rundgren called it a 'genius piece of work' and later said on his nationally syndicated radio show that 'somewhere there's a really smart record executive that'll give her a chance to start up her career again.' So, in 1996 Julie started her own record label and produced and then released her first solo CD of her own brand of Great Plains Soul-Folk Music called 'love is driving', a little jewel played on at least 50 radio stations nationwide and covered in Billboard and CMJ as one to watch. There should be no doubt that this artist belongs in a AAA contemporary folk rotation along with the others who travel the road-weary lonesome land of longing a
