The local artist, with over 13 million streams on Spotify, performed on the last day of Bluesfest in Ottawa.
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Ottawa singer-songwriter Hannah Judge is the creative force behind fanclubwallet, the musical project she started in the bedroom of her parents’ Ottawa home during the pandemic.
She took the oddball stage name from a vintage Dennis the Menace wallet she scooped from her dad, putting it into daily use while attending Ottawa’s arts-centric Canterbury High School.
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In 2020, one of her first songs, the lilting but dark Car Crash in G Major, clicked with listeners. As the number of streams grew (currently over 13 million on Spotify), labels came calling and a music career was launched. Judge assembled a band of friends from Ottawa to back her on tour.
Inspired by those musicians, the mild-mannered songbird, who celebrated her 25th birthday this week, enlisted them to help write tunes for her latest album, bringing a vibrant, indie-rock sensibility to the EP, Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines, which came out early this year.
(One track, Complex Weather, could have served as Bluesfest’s official tune this year as conditions bounced between heavy rain and sweltering heat.)
Wearing a vintage-looking prairie dress and singing in her girlie voice, Judge played much of the new material during her terrific Bluesfest outing. Her band members gave the low-fi indie-pop songs a shoegaze-y polish as a pair of fans wandered the heat-baked plaza of the River stage with a device that shot streams of bubbles, adding a playful spirit to the atmosphere.
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In a pre-show interview in her trailer/dressing room, the songwriter talked about the significance of the Bluesfest gig, breaking writer’s block, and returning to the stage after surgery.
Here’s the conversation, edited for length.
Q: Nice trailer. Do you get one at every festival?
A: We haven’t played a lot of festival gigs so no, I don’t think we’ve had a trailer. I was so excited by this. We found out when they sent the offer, but I didn’t know it would be air-conditioned.
Q: What’s the significance of playing Bluesfest for you?
A: It’s actually crazy. The first time I went was 12 years ago to see Young the Giant. That was my first Bluesfest show, I went with my mom, and they were amazing. It’s just insane to play at a festival that I’ve grown up going to.
Q: What was your first concert?
A: My first-ever concert was Hillary Duff, but I don’t remember because I was young. I saw Katy Perry, too. It was awesome.
Q: Is pop an influence?
A: I love pop music but I feel like I mostly listen to a lot of indie-rock music. When I started going to Bluesfest, I was 11 or 12, and seeing Young the Giant, the Killers, Metric. Those bands are the biggest influences.
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Q: How did your music get noticed in the first place?
A: I started putting out music during the pandemic when I felt like people had more free time to listen to music. And I was really lucky that Michael, my producer, had been putting out music since they were 15 so they knew how to upload it and pitch it to Spotify playlists. My first song got on a playlist and then we put out Car Crash in G Major, and I guess it got added to a playlist a lot of people listen to.
Q: What happened?
A: I remember I was in the hospital and I took my phone and all of a sudden I had a bunch of emails about Car Crash in G Major and it had 200,000 streams. It started to snowball. From there, I met with a lot of people over Zoom and found people I liked to work with.
Q: How’s your health now?
A: Good. I had surgery (for Crohn’s) two months ago. I should be able to go swimming soon.
Q: How long have you been writing music?
A: I used to make music in high school but I wasn’t really writing songs, I was mostly making electronic music. I think the first song I actually wrote was when I got to college. I went to studio arts at Concordia and had a lot of time alone in my dorm room. That’s when I started really writing songs.
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Q: Tell me about the new EP, Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines. What was going on around you?
A: I had a really horrible writer’s block. And then one day, I was trying to write a song and I was in the same room with the band. I had never really written with them before; they just toured with me. I was like, ‘Hold on a second, I don’t know how to finish this song, maybe they will.’ So they all helped me write this song and it was so good and it felt amazing. I was like, let’s do a whole EP of full-band songs about the different aspects of being in a band.
Q: Who’s in your band? How did you find them?
A: I went to elementary school with Nat (Reid, bass) and Michael (Watson, drummer-producer). Eric Graham (guitar) went to high school with them. Luka (Malatestinic, guitar, and keys) is a new addition. He’s from New Brunswick, just moved here last year. He’s great.
Q: One of your new songs, Band Like That, is getting played on commercial radio. How does that feel?
A: I love it! That was one of the things I was most excited about, hearing my song on (the Ottawa radio station) Live 88.5. I grew up listening to them and calling in and requesting songs. I’m super excited.
Q: You had a label deal a while back. What’s the status of that?
A: I had a deal with AWAL for an EP and an album, and I finished those. Now I’m a free agent. We put this one out on a label that was started by my manager.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I haven’t done much touring this year because I was sick. Now that I’ve had surgery, I would really like to go on tour again. If anyone wants to take me, I’m ready to go.
lsaxberg@postmedia.com
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