'A theme of rebirth': Juliana Nash, of Boston indie band Talking to Animals, returns

Even by rock ‘n’ roll standards, Juliana Nash’s story is an exceptionally colorful and head-spinning chronicle.

The frontwoman and creative force behind 1990s Boston rockers Talking to Animals, Nash saw her band go from headlining local venues such as The Channel and T.T. the Bear’s to a major label record deal that got scotched, revived and ultimately ignored in the late-'90s corporate reshuffling. The long-awaited album did appear, but without decent distribution it soon sank like a stone.

From there she moved on to become a founding partner in Pete’s Candy Store, a Brooklyn rock club where she hoped to re-create some of that Beantown community feeling she’d loved about her music career. Subsequently, Nash converted some of her songs into “Murder Ballad,” a musical that got rave reviews off-Broadway, and has had productions mounted in London and Shanghai.

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Now Nash has a new album out, “Pennies in Time,” dealing with her personal journey through all those musical adventures, plus the passage of time, love and loss, recovering from addiction and depression, and emerging with a sense of rebirth and revival.

Nash will be appearing on Tuesday, June 14 at Earfull in Watertown, the patio venue at the Branch Line restaurant. The venue has a weekly series where it offers musicians and authors, with alternating sets of music and readings/discussion from 7 to 10 p.m. Nash will be accompanied by longtime friend Kevin Salem from the Boston band Dumptruck, and the night’s authors will be fiction writers Lindsay Hatton and Askold Melnyczuk.

Talking to Animals heyday

In their heyday, from 1988 to '98, Talking to Animals was competing with other Boston rockers including Letters to Cleo, The Lemonheads and Juliana Hatfield. But there was a spirit of support and Nash loved that. The other band members included guitarist Thomas Juliano, bassist Greg Porter and drummer Jay Bellerose.

“It all seems different now, but in the ‘90s big labels and big-label money was the thing we all were chasing,” said Nash from her Woodstock, New York-area home. “This was basically still pre-internet. When we signed with Columbia Records, we had one of the first websites for a band – and we were all ‘What is this?’”

“How we got onto Columbia is a very Boston story,” Nash said, laughing. “We were still going to Kinko’s to get flyers to post for our gigs, but we had three or four development deals going. Labels like Sire and Atlantic courted us. The late Mike Dineen at Q Division financed our record ‘Manhole,’ and then Columbia bought it off of them. Our manager was Mike Hausman, the drummer for ‘til Tuesday.”

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Alas, Columbia was going through some corporate upheaval and the Talking to Animals album got dropped in the process.  But luckily, it found its way to Walter Yetnikoff, a former Columbia executive who’d been ousted himself. Yetnikoff had big plans for his own Velvel label, perhaps too big.

“Walter’s son heard us and brought the record to him,” Nash said. “We had been dropped by Columbia, and it is rare to be able to get your own record back in a situation like that. But we did and sold it again to the new record label Walter was starting. We felt like we were really moving forward and we made sure we owned the songs again, but eventually that label just faded away and the album never got the distribution or visibility it needed.”

Talking to Animals faded away not long after that. And Nash, a native New Yorker who’d come to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory, returned to Gotham to start over. Fun fact: Talking to Animals consisted of two Conservatory grads and two Berklee College of Music alumni.

“I had actually left Boston in ’94, and traveled back and forth for those last few years,” Nash said. “With Pete’s I wanted to take everything I loved about the music scene in Boston and try to make it happen in New York City. But New York City is not the same as Boston, not the same vibe, in some respects because it is so much more expensive. When I was in Boston, I had a rent-controlled apartment in Cambridge, and could ride my bike everywhere. It was an amazing time. But, I still feel I’ve been blessed, to have grown up around New York’s music scene in the ‘70s, Boston in the ‘90s and Brooklyn after that.”

'Murder Ballad' kills off-Broadway

Nash became part of a musical production kind of by accident.

“'Murder Ballad’ was directly related to Talking to Animals, but I didn’t pursue that,” she said. “One of my friends from Soho, Julia Jordan, is a playwright, and said she wanted to put some songs of mine into a play. She felt there was something there, the story of how long we stayed together without making any money. Julia came with me to a writing workshop and the play that resulted is really a gift she gave me. It was almost a chemical reaction, just as often music collaboration is like magic. We had that in Talking to Animals, and I was fortunate to have it with Julia too.”

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The concept for a musical came at a rough period for Nash. Her brother had died, and she was in the middle of a divorce. The basis of the musical came initially from seven songs from the old Talking to Animals songbook. The transition from rocker to musical theater was daunting.

“It was challenging, intimidating and totally different than anything I’d done before,” Nash said.

“I had been really depressed, and it was a relief for me to write,” Nash said. “We took seven of the old songs, and then started new ones. And even the old ones, I rewrote them lyrically or restated them differently. I’d written good songs, but in a very different manner. But I’m not a writer of musicals. I’m a songwriter, not a composer. It is a sung-through musical, and there is no dialogue, so it is like an opera, a ‘popera,’ if you will. We took the show through workshops and previews, and I was happy to be so in-the-moment again. And when ‘Murder Ballad’ had its premiere finally, The New York Times loved it, which was awesome.”

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'Pennies in Time'

Talking to Animals bassist Greg Porter had sent Nash an old tape of their performances, which spurred her into revisiting some of those old songs for the musical. It also led to the new album, which has new and old tunes, but a central theme of redemption and embracing life in all its aspects.

“The band was together 10 years and we only made one record,” Nash recalled. “This album was born out of Greg sending me the old tapes. I decided to write some new lyrics and also do some old tunes. They were about how I felt then but they still resonate. ‘Pennies in Time,’ the title song, for example, is an old song that is newly relevant with COVID-19.

“There is a theme of rebirth,” Nash said. “For me, alcohol took over when my brother died. Life grabs you by the ankles sometimes and can pull you down. But I got through it. ‘Love Is Not the Enemy’ is about that rebirth, and also about being in love when you’re older, how it can still be beautiful, understanding how it is different, but still beautiful.”

See Juliana Nash

When: 7 to 10 p.m. June 14

Where: Earfull, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown

Tickets: $17 and $27

Info: earfull.org

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Boston indie rocker Juliana Nash back with 'Pennies in Time'