Julia Jacklin
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Julia Jacklin

As an interviewer, you tend to only encounter dodgy phone lines when speaking to musicians in the very upper echelon of commercial success – bands that you have to dial a phone card to chat to, only to then muddle your way through a conversation plagued by static, muffled responses and a god-awful time delay.

Take the poor reception that dogs Julia Jacklin’s call as a sign of her meteoric shot to fame then. Though the songwriter is Sydney-based, she’s currently on an international tour, travelling from radio sessions to sold-out gigs, cultivating a devoted fanbase in the process.

“I don’t know where we are, actually,” Jacklin says. “We’re on a bus, on our way to –” A shriek of static makes her destination indiscernible. But regardless of where she’s heading, one thing’s for sure – Jacklin’s tour diary has been intense, the kind of schedule that would have even the most road-hardened muso turning green at the gills. Doesn’t it get exhausting touring for months on end?

“It’s only been a month,” Jacklin says. “It just feels like months. I’m not sure how I keep the energy up on tour. It’s a mysterious thing. I think I’m running on a general kind of energy. I bet when I come home I’ll just need a week to recover.”

Over that same month Jacklin has played easily the biggest shows of her career, sharing stages with golden-voiced troubadour Marlon Williams and making appearances at renowned events like Turf, a Canadian festival where, adorably, her set was reviewed by a seven-year-old critic employed for a one-off review at Noisey, who gave Jacklin a perfect ten out of ten rating.

Given the sheer scale of the shows Jacklin is now playing, does the spectre of stage fright still haunt her? “I still get nervous,” she says. “It’s usually just the first song. That’s the one that I’m usually shaking a bit during. But it also depends what kind of show it is. And it can come at really surprising times. I’ll play to huge audiences and I’ll be fine, and then I’ll play to tiny audiences and I’ll get the head spin and I’ll freak out for a moment. I’m a lot better than I was a while ago. There’s nothing like playing every night for a month to get you over the nerves.”

Ultimately, the feedback Jacklin has received from her shows so far has been ecstatic – her debut album Don’t Let The Kids Win has only just come out and already fans have the lyrics memorised. Indeed, it’s that kind of reception that gives Jacklin life and allows her to survive her punishing tour schedule – though she admits it’s not always easy to get a sense of.

“It’s what makes you or breaks you – whether or not people are responding well to it, and are engaged,” Jacklin says. “That’s what makes a good show for me, that crowd feedback – if people are loud after every song, I think.

“But it’s also about whether, for me, if I enjoy myself. Whether or not I’m out of my own head for the majority of the performance. That’s what I walk away with.

“You don’t always enjoy yourself on-stage all the time – sometimes you’re too far in your own mind, or you’re stressing about everything. Or you’ve seen like, two people walk out of the gig, and that flares up your anxiety. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell whether you’ve played well: sometimes you play shows and you think that everybody hates it, and then afterwards you get the best feedback that you’ve ever gotten.”

Written by Joseph Earp

When & Where: Queenscliff Music Festival, Queenscliff – November 25 – 27