‘Female musician is not a genre’ ‒ rock frontwoman Julia Deans

Monday, 2 September 2024

She’s been part of New Zealand’s musical consciousness since the turn of the century, but for Julia Deans there is still a glass ceiling that needs to be shattered.

The Fur Patrol frontwoman, who penned Lydia ‒ the year 2000’s most played song on NZ radio ‒ said it’s taken a lot of “foot stamping” to slowly change the music industry’s treatment of female performers and musicians, and that progress has been “glacial”.

“Female artists are often lumped into a category called ‘female artist’, as opposed to just artist or musician,” Deans said, speaking on the phone from her Auckland home.

“I stand by the statement that ‘female musician’ is not a genre. We are constantly told over the decades ‒ and I hear this from all my female musician friends - ‘Oh no, we’ve already got one female-fronted rock band on the line-up, or on our books’, all this kind of nonsense.

“It’s like, ‘Yeah, well how many male artists in those categories do you have?’”

Deans is preparing to yet again be front and centre for three Fur Patrol gigs in Nelson, Lyttelton and Auckland, with support from Christchurch’s Tom Lark ‒ a Taite Music Prize finalist.

Aside from Lydia ‒ which the band was “very grateful” for ‒ the forthcoming set will revisit Collider, their second album, from 2004.

“It's been about 20 years since the release of Collider, which is one of the reasons that we thought it would be a good excuse [for gigs]. So we are going to lean on that album, I think for probably about 50% of the set,” Deans said.

Following an eight-year hiatus, Fur Patrol ‒ consisting of guitarist and vocalist Deans, bassist Andrew Bain and Simon Braxton on drums ‒ reunited in 2016. Guitarist Steve Wells left the band in 2004 and is based in Paris, where he works as a photographer and musician.

“We’ve got a lot of history together and we really enjoy the songs that we play,” Deans said.

“Just hanging out and also playing live shows is fun. We have great audiences ‒ when we did our last run in 2022 it was just really exciting. They were just little joy fests, everyone was so excited and so happy.”

Despite her frustration about the music industry’s treatment of women, Deans was excited about the women performers who are making their presence felt in Aotearoa.

“On our last tour we played with a band called Soft Plastics, who were really great. And also I’m a big fan of Mermaidens … Erny Belle is also fantastic. And these are all New Zealand artists too.”

“There are a lot more young women, and a lot more women pushing through,” Deans said.

“It’s that cart before the horse thing; it’s hard for a person to break through. If there are more boundaries in place, they’re more likely to stop, to give up, whereas if you sort of allow everyone to have an equal turn you’re going to get more variety.”

Fur Patrol play The Loons in Lyttelton on September 6 (the gig is now waitlist only). Tickets are available for their Nelson gig at the Theatre Royal on September 5 and the Double Whammy in Auckland on September 7.