Interview: Just Janie - 'Mythology Of The Girls' Album Release Tour

Ōtautahi Christchurch rising songwriting Just Janie aka Janie Shaw this week wraps up a tour marking the auspicious launch of her debut album Mythology of the Girls. Recorded in the all-analogue setting of Sublime Studios in the Waitaki Valley, interviewer Tasha Tziakis chatted with Just Janie about the feminist themes at the core of Mythology of the Girls plus much more — discussing nostalgia, mental health, and the magic of live music...

Just Janie Album Tour

Friday 29th May - Tussock Country Music Festival, Southland (info and tickets HERE)
Saturday 30th May - Pearl Diver, Dunedin, supporting Mim Jensen (solo)*

*Mim Jensen tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Tasha Tziakis: Congratulations on the release of Mythology of the Girls. You've been building to this release for a while now, how does it feel having it out in the world finally?

Just Janie: This is my first album so it feels very, very special and exciting. Admittedly, I probably underestimated the undertaking of creating and releasing a full album. The fun part for me is always writing and recording, and recording this album in particular with so many incredible humans was just such a magic experience — that was kind of the best part of it and felt magic.

There's obviously the release side and it was quite a large workload as an independent musician. So I've been wearing a lot of hats and I'm quite excited for that side of things to be finished.

When I started to feel a little bit exhausted, I guess I just started to reframe it and think, what a delicious life to be living. I feel very, very grateful to get to make music. [I’m] excited to hit the road and go on tour and actually see people again, get out from behind my laptop.

Speaking to the magic of the recording process, the album was recorded via tape in the Waitaki Valley at Sublime Studios. What was that recording process like using those analogue pathways? Did it help deepen your process? Did it help invoke more of that magic you were talking about?

I think so. I actually came across tape in a conversation with Matthew (Campbell of Sig Wilder). I knew that I wanted to capture the magic that I feel when I perform live on stage and not lose those sort of raw and imperfectly perfect moments. So I started researching and found Sublime Studios, which is obviously quite close to my home, I'm from Saint Bathans. It was really nice to kind of go to Sublime and immerse ourselves for just under a week in the mountains, in the vineyard, and just make music together and not be distracted by the outside world.

I think tape, the best part of it, is those imperfections. You can listen to old recordings of Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and you can hear the wee human moments. When I say imperfections, I mean it in the best way.

We did it all live because it was live to tape. We were in different little sound booths, but we could see each other and everything was played all at once. There was no sort of chopping and starting again. I'd do my one vocal take and one guitar take all at once. I think there was an energy in that, looking at my drummer, my guitarist and bass player and feeling so, so grateful and excited that we were working on the songs together.

Mythology of the Girls meditates on the female experience and the folk scene in the '60s and '70s. Your lyricism makes those pressures and experiences still feel quite prevalent to today's women. What helped your writing process cross decades and generations?

This album in many ways is a response for my curiosity for women's stories. I wanted to mirror those with my own experiences as a modern woman living in Aotearoa. It started as a sort of album about nostalgia through a modern lens. I was writing these tracks that were considering the beautiful parts of the '60s and '70s — the music, the art, the fashion and the sort of longing to be in that era. But as I went, it became more of a deconstruction of those rose-tinted goggles.

Something that really kicked my writing into gear was a short prescription of Mother's Little Helper, which is more commonly known as Diazepam or Valium. I have OCD and I had an OCD flare-up in 2024. The doctor gave me a lovely little prescription and I was so tranquil, so, so tranquil. But I couldn't stay awake for very long. I wasn't allowed to drive. I kind of started to think, you know, women have been prescribed Valium or Mother's Little Helper for generations and this is a really strong drug.

It made me think, you know, I was in no state to be fighting for women's rights in the street. I was the housewife on the couch. So it made me consider what it was like for so many women. And women's mental health and women's rights. Some of these songs consider women that are quite problematic in history, like the Manson girls. I wanted to think, well, what is the psychology behind that and what did society do wrong that meant that those women ended up where they did?

I think that then becomes timely, because we have come so far with mental health and wellbeing [and] what we've got so far to go. I'm trying to be more open with my own mental health. I've worked in the mental health space for quite a few years now and I know how beneficial that can be. But it's also very scary, as women, we've got so much historical evidence of women being called crazy when it sort of suits a world's narrative. So if I worry about telling people that I have OCD, then how suffocating was that diagnosis in 1969, for example?

The album became this kind of fusion of those things, that deep longing and nostalgia for that time. And then considering what it might've actually been like for me to live in the seventies.

Thank you so much for such a generous sharing and vulnerability there, especially with medication and mental health.

I think that's the beautiful part of art and music — using it for good, I guess.

Absolutely. Which you historically do! A track that I was very interested in was 'Cielo Drive'. It has a lot more of a bluesy, almost rock sound that, to my ear, is new to the Just Janie musical universe. It's such a thumping track and I imagine it would have been a hell of a lot of fun to record.

Yeah, it was. So Tim (Shaw), who is my brother, creating with him, it's a very trusting relationship. He will not sugar coat things, I can expect him to tell me the truth. He'll say if he thinks that my harmonies are bad. That means that when we work together, I really, really trust that he has my back and will help me create my vision to the best that it can be.

But credit where credit is due, 'Cielo Drive', the sound and the composition, is really Tim's vision. I wrote the lyrics and I remember sending them over Facebook message and saying to Tim, "If I write the music for this, it's going to end up being quite lilting. And I really want this to feel like stepping into 1960s Hollywood, it needs to feel more rock and more upbeat."

I let Tim take the reins on this one. When we went in to record, it was really exciting because I was doing harmonies and things, but I was really watching him create as well and got to step back a little bit on this one.

Now you've already toured the country, quite extensively, as both headline and supporting act. And you have already started the Mythology of the Girls tour. What keeps bringing you back to the live environment?

Definitely connection. I really love meeting people, chatting with people. I think there's just something magic about sharing the songs with an audience that wants to listen. Firstly, I'm very lucky that the kind of music I make tends to be quiet, respectful crowds. It's really beautiful, because people sit and listen and it's sometimes a wee bit scary. I'm on stage and it's absolutely dead quiet out there. But yeah, what a sort of beautiful thing to be able to then have people come in and experience and want to listen.

I'm such a homebody. I love New Zealand. I love the people. I love the places. There's such incredible music communities scattered across Aotearoa. I haven't gotten sick of touring in New Zealand yet. That's for sure.

What is the feeling that you want your audience to be leaving with after seeing this album performed in full live?

My hope, which I think we tried to capture with the recording to tape and recording live, was to sound like the aesthetics of the seventies and eighties. I wanted it to be like a warm hug. It's so nostalgic. I wanted people on the first listen to be like, "this is just beautiful and fun and transporting me back in time". Then when they go away and listen to those songs again, maybe have a bit more curiosity about the lyrics or the songs and what they're about. I think we tried to balance those quite harsh themes with the warmest sonics of the album.

Hopefully people enjoy it when it's live and then they go, "Oh my God, it's actually murdered woman and suburban suburban housewives." It's actually quite sad.

You do walk that line between horrifically sad and very light quite well. Going back to your point about the aesthetics and the Just Janie universe, the aesthetics are very strong. I wanted to ask about the album design. Both about the photography that was featured within the album release rollout, how was that shot? Is the album cover image actually a wood print?

That was a wood print I did just straight after we came back from Sublime Studios. It's actually the room, my little booth, and I took creative liberties because I didn't have a stripy skirt but I wanted to put a stripy skirt on. But the little orange recording thing behind me and the light, everything was in the studio, so I gifted the first print to Sublime.

The photography was really fun actually. I went to help my hairdresser as she is doing her wedding portfolio again, her name is Suzie Lee. I'd just gone in for the day and was, you know, playing dress-ups with her. I got home and my friend Sam was staying from the UK and I said to her, "I think we have to utilise the fact I can't normally do this to my hair, should we go for a drive?" We went five minutes down the road and took some shots together. Because it was just two girlfriends hanging out, it was quite fun and I was really relaxed.

The Just Janie world is incredibly westerny, witchy and whimsical. I wanted to know if you had any sort of good luck talisman or object that you either take with you into the recording process or on tour?

I do, I take it with me everywhere, it's a necklace. A couple of years ago my Grandma and I were going through her boxes of jewellery together and she sort of pulled out a few things and we made a little trinket necklace.

It's a little golden necklace with my grandmother's wedding ring to her late husband, my grandfather Jeff. Then there's also a little charm she got when she was traveling solo in probably her her 40s or 50s, she was traveling around the world, went to Greece, got this little charm so we put that on there as well. There's a locket which has a photo of my Mum and Dad in it and so I wear that all the time. I'm quite attached to it and it just feels nice to have those little parts of home with me.