Julie
Neumark is friendly, accessible,
funny and charming. None of this
explains her debut full-length
album Dimestore Halo,
a disc so full of passion, fury,
sadness
and triumph that you begin to wonder
if mean streets thread through
the lawn-patched, summer-cookout,
backyard-fence neighborhood of
Cincinnati where she was raised.
By the time she reached high school,
Neumark had documented much of her
life in song – but only as
a private exercise. Driven by the
desire to entertain, community theater
took up most of her time. And it
was theater that drew her away from
her musical studies at Indiana University
to seek her fortune in Los Angeles.
She found work quickly with a recurring
role on the Lifetime series Oh,
Baby starring Cynthia
Stevenson, guest
roles on Mad About You and Gilmore
Girls, many films including Tattered
Angel starring Lynda
Carter and various
commercials with everyone from KFC,
Gap and Xbox to Charmin and Puffs
tissues. However, music continued
to gnaw at Neumark’s soul and
acting quickly lost its luster.
Fate, in the form of an opportunity
in the theater, sealed the deal.
Neumark was offered a part, but
there was a catch: she had to
play guitar.
With a straight face she assured
the director that, yes, of course
she could play, then promptly went
to her brother’s apartment,
stole his guitar and gave herself
a crash-course. For the next year
or so, Neumark wavered between acting
and music before eventually following
her heart to pursue a career in music.
Once she had made that fateful
decision things immediately started
to happen
for Julie. Her calendar filled
with solo acoustic gigs, which
expanded
into band shows as she put her
own group together. The more she
wrote
and performed, the harder she drove
herself. She drew inspiration from Bob Dylan, the Stones, Janis
Joplin, Lucinda Williams, Shelby
Lynne – artists
whose music reflected the kind of
urgency and honesty that ignites
Neumark’s creativity.
The picture was completed by a
sobering rite of passage when her
father
began to succumbed to the cancer
he had battled for five years. “Watching
my father die was a wakeup call,” she
says quietly. “It made me
understand that none of us knows
how long we have. That opened me
up, and I allowed myself to become
more vulnerable than I’d ever
been – enough to have my heart
broken for the first time.”
Julie wrote most of the songs on Dimestore Halo over
a compressed period of a year.
By the time she
brought them to the studio, she
was primed to deliver her material
with
an emotional focus that practically
leaps from the disc the moment
it’s
pulled from the package.
More doors are opening for Julie
Neumark as reviewers have heralded
her arrival as a rare and formidable
talent. Revolver Magazine in
the Netherlands calls Dimestore Halo “one
of the best releases this year.” Music
Connection Magazine declares, “Hearing
[Neumark] sing makes you a believer
in the song.” While
the Los
Angeles Times simply states “Neumark
shines.” And now, with Dimestore
Halo, this whirlwind is about
to break beyond its So Cal spawning
ground, beyond the idyllic world
Neumark recalls on “Cincinnati,” into
every corner of the country that
appreciates music that’s soulful,
rootsy, and utterly original.
“What I’ve been through
over these past couple of years has
set
off a chain reaction,” she
sums up. “It’s helped
me figure out who I am and what I
have to say. I’ve dug deeper
and found my voice. And I’ve
found how to express my feelings
and thoughts in ways I never thought
I could before...that’s what
Dimestore Halo is all about.”
Today,
Neumark has been named one of
the top unsigned artists in the
United
States for the past two years
and her debut album Dimestore
Halo was recently picked
up by Hyena Records (Europe)
and Lonesome Day Records and
released
in 2010.
She has already received rave
reviews from various publications
throughout
the Netherlands and Belgium: “Soulful,
rootsy and exceptionally original….the
same kind of boundless passion
as Janis Joplin” (Ctrl
Alt Country) “Neumark
delivers such a convincing debut
and has
the potential to become one of
the big ones!” (Mania).
Beth Hart, whom
Julie has opened for during her
last two tours
of the Netherlands, says
of
Neumark,"She says
what she means and means what
she
says thru
music and movement and a shit
load of conviction. I love her."
|
