Julie Doiron

Julie Doiron built a career on the quiet strength of her vocals and compositions, moving from her Eric's Trip years into a long stretch of solo releases. Her first album under her own name, the 1996 release Broken Girl, featured sparse and eerie tracks that signaled a clear departure from the sound of her band, which disbanded shortly after its arrival. Although she explored fuller rock arrangements at times, especially on the 2000 collaboration Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars that received a Juno Award, she favored a leaner style on later records such as 2002's Heart and Crime and 2004's Goodnight Nobody, where she wove in folk, country, and blues touches while centering the directness of her delivery. That same directness drew invitations from other musicians, among them Gord Downie and Mount Eerie, who showcased her clear, affecting vocals on the 2008 album Lost Wisdom and its 2019 follow-up, Lost Wisdom, pt. 2. After issuing So Many Days in 2012, another project guided by former bandmate Rick White, she waited until 2021 to deliver the next solo set, I Thought of You, which brought a bolder edge to her established approach.

Doiron grew up in Moncton, New Brunswick, beginning piano lessons at age ten, saxophone at twelve, and guitar at fifteen. While studying photography at Mount Allison University in 1990, the eighteen-year-old joined her then-boyfriend Rick White in the indie rock group Eric's Trip, taking on bass and vocal duties. That same year she launched Sappy Records, an outlet that first issued Eric's Trip material on cassette and vinyl before also handling her early solo recordings as Broken Girl, among them the 1993 single Dog Love, Pt. 2 and 1995's Nora. Material from those efforts formed the core of her full-length debut, Broken Girl, which appeared in April 1996.

Eric's Trip disbanded soon after Broken Girl reached listeners. For her next solo effort, August 1997's Loneliest in the Morning, Doiron enlisted producers and players including Doug Easley, Davis McCain, Giant Sand's Howe Gelb, and the Grifters' Dave Shouse. Tree Records put out the EP Will You Still Love Me? two years later, and Doiron added vocals to the Wooden Stars' album The Moon that same year. The partnership with the band deepened on 2000's Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars, a collection of introspective rock that earned strong reviews and the Juno Award for Best Independently Released album.

In 2001 she supplied vocals for Snailhouse's The Opposite Is Also True, rejoined Eric's Trip for several concerts, and released the French-language Désormais on Jagjaguwar that August. After the spare Heart and Crime appeared in April 2002, she contributed to a split album with Okkervil River for Acuarela in 2003 and joined Gordon Downie on Battle of the Nudes, one of several projects they shared. For September 2004's Goodnight Nobody she traveled to Paris to work with Herman Düne, introducing country and blues inflections to her minimal framework; she later appeared on Herman Düne's 2005 album Not on Top and formed the project Shotgun & Jaybird with Frederick Squire.

Reviving Sappy Records in 2006, Doiron brought in former Eric's Trip members Mark Gaudet, Chris Thompson, and Rick White for her subsequent solo album, their first joint recording in ten years. Produced by White, January 2007's Woke Myself Up merged the intensity of Eric's Trip with her own restrained method and reached the Polaris Music Prize shortlist. She next teamed with Phil Elverum and Squire on Mount Eerie's 2008 album Lost Wisdom. Another White-produced set, March 2009's I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day, alternated between folk-leaning reflection and indie rock. That year she also recorded with Squire under the name Calm Down It's Monday, releasing a split EP with alternate versions of songs from I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day, and joined Squire and Daniel Romano for December's Daniel, Fred & Julie, a collection of traditional and original folk numbers issued by You've Changed Records.

Doiron returned in 2012 with both solo and group work. Her band Julie & the Wrong Guys, completed by Eamon McGrath, Mike Peters, and Jaye Schwarzer, issued the single "Heartbeats" in September. October brought the reflective So Many Days, her third album produced by White. She sang on Romano's Come Cry With Me the next year, launched a series of Spanish-language singles for Acuarela beginning with 2015's Canta en Español, and formed Weird Lines with Jon McKiel, C.L. McLaughlin, Michael Duguay, James Anderson, and Chris Meaney; the group's self-titled debut arrived in 2016. Further joint efforts filled the rest of the decade, including Julie & the Wrong Guys' 2017 self-titled album, a second reunion with Elverum on 2019's Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2, and a guest spot on Quebecois singer/songwriter Dany Placard's 2020 album J'connais rien à l'astronomie. Although she continued releasing installments in the Acuarela series, her next full solo album did not appear until November 2021's I Thought of You, which included contributions from Romano and Placard and moved across country, folk, and psychedelic pop textures.