Juliette Lewis, best known for her performances in films like Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn, took a few minutes off during layover en route to Austin to chat with us about her new band, Juliette and the New Romantiques. The group is the second musical project for Lewis, who toured and released the 2007 album Four on the Floor with Juliette and the Licks. Lewis was fresh off of shooting for Betty Anne Waters, directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Hilary Swank.

Is it hard to switch gears straight from doing a movie to doing music?

It used to be, but now I find that songwriting and acting, drama, they feed each other. I’m a better actress because I’m a songwriter, and I’m a better songwriter because I work with drama and emotion. Yesterday I played an alcoholic, downtrodden, forty year old – they aged me with makeup. That was intense, but I love it. When you make movies, it seems pretty darn relaxed after you’ve toured on a bus or a van for two years. I’ve toured in a van, so I know that a bus is a luxury.

How did you go about putting together the band, and can you talk a little bit about how this project differs from your previous musical project?

This band I got with a friend named Chris Watkins who I wrote most of my record with who I’ve known for about 9 years. We just sat down after I was touring for 2 years and started writing, it was like the key to unlock these songs that had been sitting there dormant. I wrote a song called “Hard Loving Woman” that was just a sentence until I worked with Chris, and then we wrote it in 15 minutes. I didn’t know that we’d be in a band, I was just writing a record. I wanted to challenge myself to write deeper melodies, to use the guitar more as an atmospheric instrument rather than just producing muscular rhythm. It’s different colors, but it’s all very much me. I just wrote a record I wanted to write – haunting songs, slow songs, fucking angst-ridden songs, this is all of it.

What are some of your personal goals as a musician and what are the goals for the band as a band?

I made it another Juliette and the project, because when I’m collaborating with three or more people, I name it for the sound, so it’s Juliette and the new romantic, but not the old romantic, the new romantic. It’s innocence and decay, and dreaming and despair. We could wind up writing another record as a band, I’m kind of loving the way we sound together.
People have so many preconceived notions because I come from film.
They think I have a house in Aspen, that I have dwarves carrying my luggage on a red carpet

How did you first get involved in music? How did we get to this point?

When I was about 9, I took piano lessons. I was a constant daydreamer, I lived in my imagination. For a long time called myself an emotionalist – I’d like to think I made the word up, but I’m sure I didn’t. I took piano, but I quit that. I quit everything because I was terrible with teachers. I got very successful with acting, and that sort of took me away from music.

Before I turned thirty, I was like ‘Fuck this, I gotta start a band. It’s now or never. I never want to be 50 looking back, thinking oh, shit, it would have been fun if I’d explored a songwriting journey, so I started a band. That was 5 years ago. When I started the band, it was all about fighting my fear. I used to be scared of crowds, and of the new and untried.

Are there any unique challenges you face because of your existing career?

Oh, yeah. I’m like the bearded lady, the Cyclops, the curiosity factor, the circus freak. It started with when the Licks we went on the Warped Tour, which was the first tour I went on. Not only was I an actress doing music, I was also a female playing very male-dominated rock ‘n’ roll, and I was one of the only female-fronted bands out of 60. I was the underdog of underdogs there, but it’s always been my perverse pleasure, I’ve always felt like an outsider.

Are there any things in particular you’re looking forward to about playing in Ausitn during SXSW?

Oh my gosh, so many things. Just sharing the stage at Emo’s with the Circle Jerks and Echo and the Bunnymen is a thrill. I’m really curious to see whose going to show up and check us out. I’m playing mostly new songs, and I’m just into the whole adventure of it. I hope to see some other acts when I’m there. I heard Devo is playing – I wrote down some other guys I want to see.

Juliette and the New Romantiques will be playing the SXSW showcase tonight at Emo’s. They will also be performing at several other parties and events through March 21. For a full listing, go to the band’s MySpace page.

Source: austinist.com