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 whether mean streets thread through the lawn-patched, summer-cookout, backyard-fence neighborhood of Cincinnati where she was raised.
“My upbringing was picture-perfect,” she shrugs. The problem is, of course, that nothing is perfect – not even in Cincinnati. “Because everything was so nice, I put pressure on myself to be perfect, to stay within the lines and not break any rules,” she elaborates. “It wasn’t until I finally got out of town that I started to truly discover myself.”
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, Janice 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.”
