Meet Julia Jade

VoyageLA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Julia Jade.

Hi Julia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started writing music when I was around 5 or 6 years old. I told my sister we should go into separate rooms and not come out until we wrote a song. Needless to say, my song was not my best work, but I do still remember most of it. Since then, I’ve written songs, and for a long time, they were intended for my ears only. I was a children’s theatre goer and attended Millikan Middle School of Performing Arts as an orchestra kid who later turned musical theatre (there’s no getting away from it!) I then was admitted to the LA County High School for the Arts for theatre — still writing and showing nobody. I then joined the songwriting club and played my song “February Flowers” for the first time in front of people, and everybody loved it! And like, really loved it? I started to wonder if this was something I could be pursuing more actively. I eventually transferred into the music department while simultaneously joining a life-changing program called Encompass – where we used the arts to help spark social change and train teachers in creating bias-free classrooms. This intersection shifted and molded my songwriting as it helped me see music as not only a vehicle for my own self-expression but a unifier and a way to spark conversation about important things. From there, I graduated high school a year early and was admitted to the Berklee College of Music at the age of 16. I attended Berklee for three years (graduated early, guess it’s my thing?) and studied music education, music business, and songwriting. I then accepted a year-long internship in Nashville, Tennessee (where I knew nobody but my boss) and assisted in putting up a feminist musical in Chicago. This is where I also received my 200-hour yoga certification and helped a children’s museum open their very first music exhibit, the soundbox! Once the pandemic hit, I decided to come home to Los Angeles and pursue my music, yoga, education, and activism here. I am very grateful to be back, gigging A LOT, and working in a field that is meaningful with people I admire and respect. There’s nothing better!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t know about smooth. I think a lot about the Taylor Swift lyric “I’ve never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try….” I don’t feel like I was necessarily born with a lot of natural talent or that things came so easy. I definitely had good ears, I could sing harmony when I was 3, but my voice needed A LOT of work. I had a lot of privilege growing up in that I had really supportive and artsy parents, who let me try any and everything I was interested in. I didn’t have many friends but over the years always had one or two very close friends at each school I attended, and for me, that was more than enough. Things that weren’t as smooth (and that I’m often shy to talk about) include working through eating disorders, toxic relationships, coming out as queer, moving to a city in which I didn’t know a single person, not obtaining my teaching license, being long distance with my partner for a year….etc. etc. All of the life stuff. I feel like when I look back on it though, it feels like all those moments that felt uncertain or uncomfortable have been tied together in a neat little bow. I feel like that it feels like I’ve always been trending in the right direction, even in the moments the make me feel lost. I don’t know if I’d call it smooth…. but it definitely feels like a bumpy dirt road that led me to the right place.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I do a lot of things — I think that’s something that sets me apart. I’ve never been interested in being just one thing — and at times this has felt overwhelming. I love teaching music, I love higher education/res life (being an RA is still my favorite job to this day,) I love yoga, social change work, writing, etc etc. It’s taken me a bit of exploring but I think that these things have started to intersect in the best way. I currently work for an incredible company that does DEAI (diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion) for many different types of clients including music and entertainment. It has been inspiring to contribute to a mission I believe in and to once again see the intersection between arts and activism represented. In addition to that, I still teach yoga three times a week, using my playlists as a way to set the tone for my students and to create a theme for the class.

I write primarily using piano and ukulele. However, my lyrics are definitely the focal point of my songs. I write about love, loss, heartbreak, joy, social change, and everything in between. I’ve been told my music is borderline theatrical as it typically tells a very specific story. I’ve grown very proud of some of my songs — some more recent, some from when I was 16. I think there are a few things I’m most proud of, which is a gift:

1. Some of my songs I wrote when I was 16 still resonate and don’t feel dated, so I can still play them.

2. This one is a little more marketing-y, but I had a song licensed to be in a commercial when I was in Nashville, and it was a song I wrote in high school! It was a really exciting experience, and I felt grateful to be in collaboration with a brand whose mission I supported.

3. I think the thing I’m most proud of, and this is not music-related, is the relationships I’ve kept over the years. Whether it’s friends, acquaintances, colleagues, teachers, mentors, etc. I have some truly spectacular people in my life, and I feel so gracious to wake up every day in a world where those people exist and are just a phone call away.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
That’s a big question. So many things matter to me but I think at the end of the day: family (including pets) and friends. I think that music falls into those categories somewhere as music has played a huge role in my family dynamic as well as my friendships, but if we’re really getting down the nitty-gritty, the people I love are what matter most to me — and the other thing that I’ll say is: It matters so much to me that I work on myself and be somebody that can show up for the people that I love. I want to be reliable, loving, considerate, and therefor the people who are there for me. I think that those are the things that matter most?

And my cat. She’s awesome. She makes the rules.

Image Credits
Featured photo: Taken by Dylan Scott Other photos: Taken by Kay Kennedy