Ratboys: "I'm fascinated by the idea of where we find home"

Ratboys' Julia Steiner has opened her life up to the band's fans. Using her past and various internet rabbit holes to help craft rough-edged yet delicat...

Ratboys' Julia Steiner has opened her life up to the band's fans. Using her past and various internet rabbit holes to help craft rough-edged yet delicate tracks that deal with all aspects of life, from touring ('G M') to 18th Century lost boys ('Peter The Wild Boy'), she knows they may need an introduction.

"I have this habit, when we play live, of giving a very brief intro to most of the songs," she explains. "Just saying what or who they're about. I like to talk a little bit, but I also think it's kind of fun for everyone to know what went into the song in the first place and to try to unpack that as the song goes along."

Being so honest and open with the world is scary, but Julia does so with aplomb. Taking her family's history and cementing it in lyrical form comes both with courage, and needing the proper clearance. "I have talked to my siblings and made sure they're cool with me using their names in the songs," she chuckles. "I just want to be respectful of them. It's fun to just kind of experience the memories all over again and share them with people."

Turning these stories and events into an accessible format for both current and soon-to-be fans is a talent all of its own - not over or under sharing, battling with fact and fiction. Julia's approach to this is, as you'd expect, the perfect balance. "I'm just trying to toe the line between honesty and poetics," she says. "Trying to paint a picture that's a little exaggerated to make it a bit more interesting, or beautiful, or dynamic or something. I do think it's important to try to include some details that are concrete.

"I prefer to use real people's names how were there in the story because it feels more authentic to me, and I love my family - I want to honour them and include them in what I'm doing." The lives of touring musicians, from those doing club tours to packing out stadiums, are fraught with instability along with leaving your loved ones. "I live here in Chicago, but my folks live down in Kentucky, and my siblings are all over the place, so I don't get to see them very much. When I do get to play these songs, I get to feel close to them because I do mention them by name." One of the major themes you'll hear throughout new album 'G N' is the idea of home. More specifically, where do you find it? Julia is currently at her house in Chicago; she's been practising for an upcoming tour with fellow Chicagoans Pet Symmetry, but, once Ratboys leave on this tour, where is it then? Julia mulls over this conundrum. "I'm fascinated by the idea of where we find home; maybe it's a place, maybe it's a time, or a memory, or a person. Living life on tour - is it the van, is it the places we sleep each night? It's a transitory thing that can be hard to pin down, so when I mention a place or a person in a song, it's me trying to say this is home, or was home, for me at one point. This testament to that will live forever in the song, which I think is just so cool."

What may not be strikingly obvious is the exact extent to which Julia, along with Dave Sagan on guitar, are honouring these parts of their life. The album's title is an acronym for "good night", something which harks back to early 2016. "We were on tour with a band from Chicago called Island of Misfit Toys, and on that tour, we would always greet each other with ‘G M' for good morning, or ‘G N' at night. It made us feel like a family, and a unit, so we ran with it and still greet each other with it to this day.

"I chose that title as a nod to our friends who started using it," she explains, "and also as a tribute to our lives on tour and that idea of trying to find home when your lives are so transitory. You know when we end days in all these different places, it kind of makes each day and each place that we're in feel like a single home, even though we're travelling all over the place. It keeps us grounded and helps us to let our relationship stay strong; it represents our friendship in a weird way."

'G N' has an unexpected relevance, too. "For some reason on the record, there are a lot of lyrics about sleeping and dreaming," she continues. "I don't really know where that came from or what it means, but it kind of fit with that as well." With Julia's family taking centre stage on 'G N', it was only fair that they got a hand in its presentation, too. "The drawing on the front by my sister Molly is me with my eyes closed, and it just all fell into place. It's pretty goofy."

"It's just all trying to create a world in the song," she concludes, "or at least honour, a world or a time that I did actually experience."

Taken from the July issue of Upset - order your copy below. Ratboys' album 'G N' is out now.