4 To Watch For: Julie Lee

By Josh Jackson  |  November 30, 2004 | 11:00pm
Music Features Julie Lee

It was less than 24 hours before Julie Lee would be on her way to Northern Ireland to spend a year working with children. And she couldn’t believe she was having dinner with her idol, Alison Krauss.

As a child, Lee watched Krauss + Union Station on public TV; she remembers calling her mom into the room to identify the singer with the crystalline, unadulterated voice. Later, seeing Krauss at a music festival helped convince Lee to move to Nashville and work odd jobs—waitressing, nannying, scrubbing floors—all for a chance at a music career. But when her manager suggested she get a demo CD into Krauss’ hands, Lee’s response was, “I’m not giving my first attempt at bluegrass music to Alison frickin’ Krauss.”

Fortunately, she did, and just as she was preparing for her year abroad, she got a phone call—Krauss wanted to meet for dinner. As exciting as it was to hear her hero praising her songs, Lee couldn’t believe she was about to leave the country.

“Alison looked me straight in the eye,” Lee recalls, “and said, ‘you’re not going to miss anything. Go, have a wonderful time, write lots of depressing songs and come talk to me when you get back.’”

Lee did just that, playing her songs around the UK, opening for artists like Bill Mallonee and Pierce Pettis, and performing on Bob Harris’ radio program on BBC2.

When she returned, she took a job substitute-teaching, but soon got the call from Krauss to open a show at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.

In spring 2002, she signed a publishing deal and was finally able to make a living from music. She later signed with Compadre Records for her first full-length. Thanks to the Krauss’ help and to Lee’s gift of drawing listeners into her soulful country songs, Stillhouse Road features a host of veteran musicians, including Krauss, Vince Gill and Colin Linden.

Much of the record was inspired by memories of Lee’s childhood trips to visit her grandparents on Knob Mountain in the Alleghenys, from the legend of a hidden moonshine still to walking through virgin snow and waking up to homemade bread and grapefruit juice.

“Northern Ireland was one step beyond missing home,” she says. “I flew from Belfast to Maryland back to Tennessee, where I wrote Stillhouse Road. My grandpappy died of cancer when I was 13. My grandmother died right after I moved to Tennessee. I wasn’t able to say goodbye. This is my way of saying goodbye [and] my way of telling my family how much I love them and how grateful I am for all the memories they gave us.”

 
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