The Evolution Of Ratboys: In conversation with Julia Steiner
Hailing from Chicago, Ratboys touch down in Tufnell Park to play Downstairs at the Dome. A couple of hours before their gig with Salarymen, we sat down with Julia Steiner of Ratboys to discuss how the band’s sound has changed, the experimental nature of their most recent record and the future of protest music.
Meeting at Notre Dame University, Julia and her partner Dave have been making music almost since the day they met. Whilst starting out for fun, this developed into their project Ratboys, an alt-country-rock band that could soundtrack any coming-of-age movie set in a small town. Space and place are important for both writing and producing, especially with their most recent album, Singin’ to an Empty Chair.
They lead the gig with ‘Open Up’, the fittingly named first track on this record. The room is immediately enraptured, headbanging their way throughout the set. The band’s harmony is palpable; they work together on stage seamlessly. Performing in such an intimate venue allows the whole room to buzz; the band and audience feed off each other's excitement. Julia’s vocals remind me of early Julien Baker records, blending with the country twang of Dave’s guitar, drums that feel alive and a bassline that undercuts every song perfectly. They could not have chosen a better opener than Salarymen (shoutout to Chilli), who’s music feels incredibly familiar despite hearing it for the first time.
Having the privilege of talking with Julia before the gig and being able to understand her music from her own perspective allowed me to resonate further with the deeply nostalgic lyrics of Ratboys. We spoke to her about everything from the Beatles, Chicago’s Electrical Audio and the current political panorama threatening to destroy democracy as we know it…
I know you guys started in college. What was your experience with music beforehand? Had you been in bands before?
Well, I didn't have very much experience in bands. I didn't really have friends in high school that knew how to play music or wanted to be in a band. For most of the time leading up to when I met Dave, I was just playing music alone. You know, like coffee shop open mics, but also just for no one. For fun. I was going to shows with friends, but not playing in bands, but then Dave had a different experience where he was in a bunch of high school garage rock bands. So he has lots of stories about doing that that he could tell me when we first met. But we met when we were 18.
So was it at the beginning of uni?
First weekend of uni. We met instantly and just realised we liked a lot of the same bands. But also he knew so much music that I had never heard of before. So it was really exciting because we could discover a lot from each other too. We were both doing the classic American dorm room experience, you know? And so I feel very lucky looking back because I realise, I've realised as I've gotten older, that that's not always, it's not a typical thing for so many students around the world. We were very much in a new place for real, out of our houses for the first time, away from our parents. So it was extra exciting because we were just able to hang out all the time pretty much. And you feel like you have so much time when you first start, and it's wild to think that was more than 15 years ago for us now. I'm grateful that music forms such strong bonds. It lasts for sure.
How do you think, since then, your sound and approach to music has changed?
It changed a lot. I brought an acoustic guitar to uni when we moved in, and he [Dave] was mainly playing bass and, so when we first started working on our own songs together, it was me playing acoustic guitar and him playing bass, and that was it. That was the band. We were playing very quiet compared to how we sound now. Our approach to music when we first met was truly just for our own entertainment. It wasn't any sort of career ambitions off the bat at all. Honestly, for a long time, we didn't really start thinking about doing this as a quote-unquote career for 7 years just for fun and just to spend time with our friends and make something, upload something for free on the internet that we thought our friends might like listening to, just have a good time. Not that everything now is this careerist mindset for us, but once we started realising that there were people in the wider world of music who were willing to invest their time and some of their career bandwidth into helping us, then we realised it might be worth pursuing doing this more, “legit”, in a way. The DIY foundation of everything is still very important to us. Not taking anything for granted, as far as how we like to approach things in the spirit of still having fun first and foremost is the goal for sure.
I think there's so much talk about industry plants and stuff nowadays that it's just nice to hear someone say, oh, it was just for fun.
I feel really grateful that we started in an era before monthly listener accounts and Instagram follows and stuff. All of those numbers and metrics can put so much pressure, self-imposed usually on young artists in bands, to reach a certain level by a certain point. That can really be harmful as far as feeling like you're not doing good enough or whatever. As long as you're enjoying yourself and feel like you're a part of a community, that's all that matters at the end of the day.
Do you think space and place, or where you are, has an impact on how you're sounding or the lyrics that you're writing?
Definitely. Yes, the answer is yes. On many levels, I think [at] the very beginning we were writing songs that I was literally playing in my dorm room and recording them in the chapel of our dorm because I went to a Catholic University. So for that reason, I didn't want to be too loud or to disturb my neighbours and stuff. So our very first songs are not restrained, but they're just not fully plugged in and electrified. Also I didn't have an electric guitar. So that was part of it too.
Definitely have written lyrics in tribute to certain places that we love, around the Midwest and, Lake Michigan and, all of these sorts of landscapes that we feel at home in the Midwest. [I] wrote a song once in my childhood bedroom and knew I was going to be there for the last time. And so writing a lyric to remember that was special.
But then in the studio, it's exciting to maybe not write to suit a certain place… but to push the limits of the production based on the rooms that we're in… is really exciting. We were at Electrical Audio in Chicago, and each of those rooms feels so unique. So it's exciting to tailor the production to those rooms and try new things, feeling inspired by the rooms that we were in.
And the people that come along with those places?
Oh, absolutely. That's such a good point. The history of the rooms, for sure, because Electrical Audio was built and curated by Steve Albini, who has now passed away, who was this legendary producer of punk rock music. So even though he wasn't physically there with us, we felt his legacy…his spirit is literally in the walls, the adobe brick walls. So that was really inspiring the whole time.
I read somewhere that the process of producing your latest album was quite experimental. How did this impact the record? How did it differ from the previous couple of records?
I think the biggest difference or the biggest experiment that we wanted to try was recording in a bunch of different places and then smashing the results of all of that together, not just from song to song on the album, but some of the songs have certain parts from certain places that we stitch together almost like a collage or a scrapbook. So it was exciting to see, we didn't fully know going into it if that would work. If the recordings from this cabin in Wisconsin that we went to would match up with or stand up against the recordings from electrical audio, which is this extremely professional hi-fi environment. The good news is it worked. I don't know if there's something to be said for the same players in different rooms and also just the expertise of Chris Walla, who we made the record with. He produced it,as well as anyone could, or beyond that, he knows how to tease similar sounds, or… complimentary sounds from all these different places and use similar enough equipment to make it all sound great together. So, it was exciting. We didn't know how it would go.
I think that's a really cool way to approach something, not knowing how it's going to go but then it works out.
Totally. It's such a classic way that records are made that we didn't, or maybe I shouldn't speak for everyone, but I personally didn't realise or think about. In the past, we've only ever made albums in one place but if you think of so many of your favourite records and look up where and how they are made, it's often in many different studios. It was cool to participate in that process.
I was listening to ‘Burnt It Down’ and I really loved the lyrics. They're so apt for the political climate, everything is just going insane everywhere. It felt like you were talking to everyone, but also a personal reflection. What impact do you think this music has? I mean, all music is inherently political.
I think it's important. That song, I think, compared to - we were just on tour with this artist, Jesse Welles from the States, [who’s] making extremely explicit protest music. Extremely topical, extremely present day and he's naming a lot of these American, despicable political figures by name in his songs. ‘Burn It Down’ isn't doing that. But at the same time, hopefully, I'm glad that you picked up on the fact that it is referencing current issues and struggles that we're having specifically in the States, but also, I am grateful that it feels… Well, I'm not grateful because it means there's problems everywhere. But it is, I think, important to be able to talk about current issues happening in the world. I started working on that song in 2020 when in the US there was, …essentially, a revolution that started because of the murder of George Floyd. And people were talking about racist policing, in not a new way, but a bigger way, and that should have happened a long time ago. And nowadays, it's felt extremely important to keep playing that song in the States because of what's going on with ICE and all of the racist deportations that are happening without cause. And unfortunately, I think, because of our phones, the rise of fascism is happening everywhere, we're also isolated, and billionaires have a literal incentive to keep us siloed in our algorithms, so... in that song, singing to anyone and everyone in the audience, but also reflecting on our own participation in these racist systems implicitly is something that we're all a part of. It's important to just, at the very least, call it out.
I'm grateful that we have this one song at least. And I do use it as a challenge, not just for other artists for ourselves but to keep making music. As explicit as ‘Burn It Down’ might seem, we could go further in that direction.
On the one hand, there will always be greedy people who are gonna try to divide us to make money. There will always be artists who are there to call it out. Hopefully help spur change with other like-minded people.
Do you have any favourite places that you perform? I know you guys are p
laying End Of The Road tomorrow. How would that compare to venues like this (Downstairs at the Dome) and festivals and different countries?
We're always excited to play outside. That's always a huge treat, especially when the weather's just decent, and this time of year, it's my favourite time of year as summer turns into autumn. Tomorrow will be a highlight, even if it rains, it'll just be wonderful to be outside. So that's always really exciting.
We love playing in Chicago. It's so special to be at home and play with our friends and families in attendance, and at the same time, anytime we go far, far away, is so exciting. I almost can't believe that our music has reached beyond the borders of the country we live in. I can, because the internet exists, and I understand how it works. But at the same time, it's just so surreal. Every time we come here we get to meet people who we've already connected with, who we don't know, you know? That's so special. I personally love playing in big cities across the world. I just feel London, specifically feels so vibrant and [I] love spending time here when we're off the clock. So it's really special being here and getting to feel like a part of the city for a day. We love going everywhere. We're really not picky.
I feel like London is the kind of place where you can just drop in for them and just feel like you're a part of it. Whereas other cities feel like you're still very much a tourist every time.
That's true. Something about big cities. And it'll keep on trucking until the next time.
How are you feeling towards this tour that's approaching?
We're grateful to get to play these festivals. We were able to book a few shows in between the two festival weekends, but it's been a busy year. So grateful. We've never had the experience of putting out an album in the beginning of the year and then touring the entire calendar year in support of it. We were supposed to do that in 2020. We had an album come out in February that year, but the tour did not happen. It's been a really special year for that reason. It just feels different the way that the calendar falls, psychologically, it feels like we've just been out and about the whole year, and we kind of have been. So it's exciting to keep doing that. This winter, we'll go back home and hibernate and be off the road and get to see our friends and families and also get to write some new songs. That's the goal.
What was the first record or artist you remember listening to and really resonating with?
This is probably an overused answer, but I was obsessed with that Beatles compilation, the 1 compilation. It was a red CD with a bright yellow number one, and it was all of their number one hits. Which, spoiler, there's like 20. They had a lot of number ones. My mom always had that on the car and I was always so drawn in and amazed by the different ways that they sing. And I will never forget. I always just assumed there were more singers than there actually are. But then one day we listened to ‘Lady Madonna’, and I realised that that's Paul McCartney singing. So that was a massive revelation for me. I was like, you can make your voice sound different? People can stretch themselves in music, and so I was like 7 years old, and I was like, what?! That was always my favourite and I wanted to learn how to play those songs on my guitar. So when I started playing guitar, they were the first songs I learned.
How do you find music now?
I mostly discover music these days a lot on the indie head subreddit. I love just lurking on there, and that's mostly for new releases. People post the records that come out every Friday over there. A lot of discovery happens in the van with the guys, they’ll put on music that I've never heard before, and that's always really exciting. I'm grateful to say that still Dave and I, that's a big part of our relationship is sharing music with each other. Dave has this unlimited knowledge, it seems different, especially older bands that I've never heard of or things that I missed. Dave knows so much. But in lots of different ways. There are a bunch of different music blogs that are still really great. Going to record stores is really exciting, don't get to do that as much as I would like, but that's always really a special treat to go to a record store and just buy something I've never heard and be like, this cover looks cool. That's always exciting.
If you could go back in time and attend a gig or a festival, what would it be?
Maybe this is recency bias, but I'm thinking about early Lollapalooza lineups that looked really cool. I've never, I never attended a big music festival when I was young, but I feel like if I did, it would have turned me onto a lot of bands that I love way sooner. I think it was 2005 or 2006? Wapooza or something? It was a crazy one where Broken Social Scene had this massive set on the main stage, and they went on right before Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I feel like I would have lost my mind. I love that band and I would have gone nuts. So maybe that one. There's so many.
Where I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, there were so many awesome venues and shows going on, but I just didn't know about or were before my time. There's a band called Slint from Louisville that I would have loved to have seen. They were active in the 90s before I was of showgoing age. So it'd be cool to go back in time in the town where I grew up to see some legendary bands.
We were just talking last night about how Oasis played King Tut's in Glasgow. That's where they got signed, I would have loved, you know, I'd love to see Oasis in a tiny club. Just things like that. Like bands before they got huge, you know? Who knows?
Edited by Eva Lau-Johnston Co-Music Editor
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