'Zeroed in on funk': Chapel Hill-based band JULIA. talks creating in quarantine

About three years ago, Torin Alston, Danlee Gildersleeve, Todd Davis and Sean Meehan came together to form JULIA., a Chapel Hill-based alternative blues-rock band turned "funk foursome." The band just finished recording their latest album in Asheville. Staff writer Ben McEntire sat down with Davis and Meehan to talk funk, flow and the evolution of the group. 

The Daily Tar Heel: Can you tell me a little bit about how you found each other and the origins of the band? 

Sean Meehan: The band has theoretically been around since about 2016, but it started off as a side project for Danlee, the guitar player, and me. We were in this other band at the time that was a fairly heavy metal band. JULIA. started as an alternative blues-rock project initially. We pushed that for a little bit and the other band sort of fell apart. Probably three years ago we started to get really serious and push it a little more. We began by trying to figure out what we wanted the sound to be, which initially had been kind of all over the place because we didn’t know what wanted. Then we kind of zeroed in on funk. I think about two and a half years ago we decided to look for a new vocalist and we got Torin to come in, and we started to solidify as a funk-rock band. About two years ago we got Todd to join.  

DTH: Did the band originate in the Chapel Hill area? 

Meehan: Initially the band was formed around Wake Forest, North Carolina, for like a year. It became a Chapel Hill band when I came here for school and we all moved up this way and picked up people around here. I met Todd at UNC through Carolina Jams (a UNC student organization for musicians).

DTH: How would you say the live performing compares to recent studio projects and how you approach playing? 

Meehan: Whenever we play live, there’s a lot more flow. We’ll be coming to the end of the song and we’ll feel out how we want to end it, or sometimes we just jam and not have a planned ending. In the studio, you have the feeling that every second you’re playing, you’re paying for. You have to sit down and write every part. We still did a little bit of improvisation in the studio, but it was much more structured than our live shows are.  

Todd Davis: It was nice that we got to record all together, so we got at least some of the feeling of a live show.  

DTH: Does the live performance allow you to kind of maximize that chemistry? Do you have a preference? 

Davis: Definitely live.  

Meehan: We’re a high-energy band that likes to put our all into our playing. Especially because we’re so geared to playing live, there are so many small improvised things that are happening onstage.  

Davis: Playing live allows you to figure what things work and what things don’t work.  

Meehan: As one of the main writers in JULIA., I am very proud of the music we create. I’m working to improve myself as a musician for the good of the band.  

DTH: How has the band’s sound changed over time? 

Meehan: We all came in with a mish-mash of different influences until the band’s actual conception. There are a lot of subtle ways that we play to accent each other’s styles, which feels very unique to us. It’s a matter of learning how to pull from what I listen to and put it in a context of creating with the four of us.  

Davis: For me specifically, it was mainly just hard rock and blues and I brought that into the funk equation. I think it adds a lot to our heavier, hard-hitting live sound.  

DTH: What are your current projects and next steps as a band? 

Davis: We finished writing and recording our debut album in Asheville in quarantine. We hope to get that out in a few months, and after that a three- to four-week tour in the northeast. We’re not sure how the virus will affect the future, but hopefully we’ll be able to focus on this.  

Meehan: We’ve been sitting on this content for a while. We’re excited to show that this is the first evolution of who we are and what we do. It really shows where we want to be. We want to let people know who we are right now and move it up from there. Writing new albums, touring more. Sonically, this album will be different from (our last song) "Mothership." We want this to sound like us. It may not sound as clean, but we don’t really want that. We want it to sound like the four of us playing together.  

arts@dailytarheel.com