Juliana Sparks

Born in Montreal, Canada, singer-songwriter Julie Sparks knew at an early age she was going to be a musician. Born into a creative family, she was nurtured by parents who supported her artistic leanings – her Dad, a talented artist who worked for the National Film Board as a rep, provided the visual.

“My earliest memories are of my Dad taking my brother and I on Saturdays to work, and then we’d run to the screening room, where would pull anything we wanted off the library shelves and thread the projectors ourselves. I was watching Norman McLaren, Ryan Larkin and Charlie Chaplin before I knew how important those filmmakers were. When I write songs now, I’m always thinking in terms of film, so the visual had a strong impact on my work…”

Julie’s mother was the writer in the family – “My mother’s family was unusual, because my Grandmother was a single mom in the Depression years. What was interesting was her love of words – my mother tells of her mother pushing the stroller down the street with kids in tow, reciting poetry from memory. Because the library in Wallaceburg was limited, my grandmother would order books by mail-order – Thomas Hardy, Yeats,…the classics. I was encouraged to read anything and everything, so the writing came very naturally...”

After discovering the coffeehouse scene in Toronto, Julie began her career as a singer-songwriter, working in small rooms with an acoustic trio. “When I first started writing, I realized that I was much more influenced by the folk music I had grown up listening to – women like Joni Mitchell and Ellen McIlwaine. So I decided to put together a band with that kind of sound – and I discovered open tunings. I became obsessed with going to Telluride to see the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. So I got on a bus with a friend, and we went all the way to Colorado. When I heard that music, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. A musician friend at the time, heard my stuff, and thought I should meet Justin Abedin. He really got it, and so we started playing together. One day, I was talking to him about doing a record, but how I couldn’t find the right producer. And he just said, why don’t I produce? And it made so much sense…and then all the jigsaw pieces fell into place…”

With the support of Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, “Juliana”, Julie and Justin’s CD collaboration, was released in September, 2007. “It’s been a long road, but it’s been worth every bit of heartache and hard work. I have been very blessed, no question, and I’m so happy to be surrounded by so many supportive and talented friends and musicians. It has been a great year…sometimes it’s hard to believe, that we really did it…and it’s everything I’d hoped for.”