Julie Christmas, ‘The Bad Wife’ — New Album

Made Out of Babies vocalist Julie Christmas -- she of the holiday merriment nom de plume -- will release her first solo album, 'The Bad Wife,' this fall. One of the album's songs, 'July 31,' will be featured in the film 'Wrong Turn at Tahoe,' starring Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

"I grew up in Brooklyn with hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, and I played him a couple of the tracks we had recorded -- before I knew 'The Bad Wife' was going to be a full-length record -- and he asked me if I wanted to contribute to the soundtrack," Christmas told Noisecreep about her song's placement in a film. "It was very flattering. My song is only on the closing credits, but I'm proud to be the closer on a Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding Jr. movie. I prefer to remember Harvey Keitel for 'Mean Streets' more than I remember him for doing a movie where his monkey got kidnapped."

The singer decided to go solo in order to keep herself creatively stimulated, saying, "When we started working on 'The Bad Wife,' I was involved in a few different projects that were rough, angry and involved a lot of screaming. I won't ever be able to separate myself from this kind of performance and I don't want to. I do know that, in day-to-day life, I get overwhelmed with emotion about things that have nothing to do with anger, just like everyone else. The project started as a way to show the importance of other feelings, like love. Once the heavier projects ended, though, I noticed that the songs on 'The Bad Wife' started to get heavier. One of the last songs we did is a screamer involving a James O'Brien Yeti Special."

Made Out of Babies fans are a "largely intelligent" bunch according to Christmas, and she thinks they will embrace her solo endeavor. "They should be able to embrace something new -- which led them to us in the first place," she said. "On the other hand, there are always a few duds ..."

Christmas -- that's her middle name, since she was born on Jesus' birthday, revealing that "my mother went into labor on Christmas Eve and she and my father sat in a warm bathtub drinking tequila to delay birth; I come from a huge Irish-American family, and I was born drunk" -- remains busy, with her clever hands in a panoply of projects.

She is collaborating with Nix Turner, renowned illustrator of worldwide counterculture icon Emily the Strange, to create a book titled 'The Scribbles and Scrapes of Amy Anyone: (A Multiple Personality Autobiography).' Christmas wrote the story and is working on music for the release of an accompanying CD, which features a tone signaling the reader to turn the page.

Christmas started working with Nix after she approached her "as we were boozing up for a Made Out of Babies performance at a bar somewhere in California," she said. "I don't mean to insult people from L.A. or people from San Francisco, or anywhere else in California, but I honestly remember faces in the audience far more than the places we play in. Anyway, I was going to play and she was going to watch. Both required liquid buffer. I could tell that she wasn't an idiot right away. Almost a year later, someone brought up the idea of working with an illustrator to write a book. It is very good working with another lady. Her personal artwork is amazing. Everyone should check it out."

The singer will be performing in support of 'The Bad Wife,' and she admits to having a fear of going it alone, saying, "I am totally terrified of doing a bad job -- which I will try my hardest not to do. Made Out of Babies will also be touring on our next album, which we are in the process of writing. In the meantime, we will be releasing a video for 'Bow,' one of the songs on 'The Bad Wife.'"