Juliana Hatfield at Turf Club (10-09-23)

It seemed like the perfect way to spend a Monday night, listening to Juliana Hatfield play a solo set as she visited her extensive cannon of music. But first, her guitar.

On Being an Angel opened as the crowd filtered into the neighborhood bar. They are a quartet from Austin, TX who are on tour as a duo since Juliana is on the road all by herself. So Paige Applin and Nick Flitton took the stage with their guitars, until Nick left by the second song to head back to the dressing room. He was having troubles with his ax, so he returned with a new guitar.

We last saw On Being an Angel in December of last year when they opened up for The Lemonheads (with Juliana) at the Madrid Theatre in Kansas City and First Ave in Minneapolis. A chance encounter with Evan Dando led Paige to form a friendship/mentorship with the lead singer that led to the band’s first tour and a year later they are opening for Juliana.

Paige and Nick mostly played from their 2019 self-titled debut album and the just released single “Playin It Cool” which is out on American Laundromat Records on 7” vinyl, which is pretty cool. (Only 7 signed copies remaining)

Juliana next took the stage with a cover of Oliva Newton-John’s “Dancin’ ‘Round and ‘Round.” She seemed to fiddle and tweak her guitar throughout the first few songs and mentioned that she had lent Nick her guitar, which she compared to sharing your own child.

With stops and starts she seemed to reach a level of acceptance with the sound, but not really. She had a daunting task of revisiting music that spanned over thirty years with over thirty albums as a solo artist as well as with the Blake Babies, The Lemonheads, Some Girls, Minor Alps and a one-off with Paul Westerberg as The I Don’t Cares. A daunting task indeed, complicated by the fact that it was just her and her recently borrowed guitar.

But as the evening continued and Juliana continued to tweak her equipment and peruse the multiple setlists, I was amazed how quiet it was in the room. The crowd was not there for a night on the town. They were fans, they were attentive and they were rewarded with what felt like a personal concert as if Juliana invited everyone into her living room.

It was a generous set with over twenty songs and it was in that sparse set with a voice and finicky guitar that she revealed compelling interpretations of The Police cover “Hole in My Life”, the Minor Alps song “I Don’t Know What to Do With My Hands”, “Everybody Loves Me but You” and “My Sister.”

“I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately,” Juliana said in revisiting her music. She then went on to sing the most nostalgic song she ever wrote, “Wonder Why” with lyrics that seemed to capture the evening: