Years before Julia King began playing NYC hotspots like Rockwood Music Hall, regaled folks at some of the 60 wineries in her home region of North Fork Long Island and dropped her critically acclaimed 2019 full length debut Radio Therapy, she brought friends together in intimate settings to hear the early fruits of her eclectic musical muses.

Naturally defying commercial industry wisdom, she’s never expressed her emotions along one- dimensional genre lines. Whether she played pop, folk, country, rock or soul – or sometimes an enticing combination of any and all of those – her greatest encouragers recognized a uniquely “Julia” style in her music and especially in the distinctive poetry of her lyrics. Realizing the impact of her songs over the years once prompted her to declare, “I make music you listen to when you want to feel something or heal something.”

Drawing inspiration from a multitude of styles and hard-hitting life experiences, her latest EP Inside Out finds Julia needing only four original songs and an incredibly sensitive cover of an Ozzy Osbourne classic to create a genre-busting masterwork of self-reflection. The five-track collection is the follow-up to her perfectly titled 2022 EP Growth and Progress and two cover song singles – The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” and AC/DC’s “T.N.T” – that showcased two very different aspects of her artistry.

On this incredible journey, she begins to heal traumas in her life while trying to figure things out in the present; reflects upon and gets in touch with her ever-evolving emotions; works towards sorting out the person she feels she should be vs. the person she is; and navigates the battle between outward conformity and the rebellious spirit simmering inside her. The five tracks were produced in Nashville – where in another lifetime she earned a degree in exercise science at Belmont University – by Nick Brown of the popular alternative/indie rock band Mona.

Julia kicks off Inside Out with the slow simmering, deeply self-reflective pop/rock ballad “Blind,” whose chorus captures it all about the inner conflict she felt after an argument with her boyfriend: “Cause I think I’m blind, I could never see/The beautiful things right in front of me.” In verse two, basically acknowledging she’s sometimes her own worst enemy, she sings, “I should count my blessings but I push you away.” The second track, the semi-autobiographical though firmly tongue in cheek brooding ballad “Rebel on the Inside,” finds her cleverly sharing the reality that there’s much more to her than meets the eye. Written when certain special people walked out on her and she was feeling overwhelmed, she dares people to underestimate her:  “Under this bright smile I’m a little dark and wicked. . .You might feel the raindrops of heaven when you kiss me/But I promise you that the Devil’s gonna miss me.”

Julia shares a sunnier, more optimistic and romantic side of her personality on the beautiful and passionate love song “Never Be Lonely,” a song she wrote as the first dance tune on the wedding day of two dear friends. The production has a more ethereal, atmospheric quality than the original version that appeared on Julia’s 2016 debut EP The Morning After. On the emotional flip side of that is “Something in the Silence,” a plaintive, lonesome country flavored tune that was written about the imminent end of a once meaningful friendship but could also be applied to a romantic relationship. The singer wraps the EP with a soulful, meditative twist on Ozzy’s classic rocker “Crazy Train” that allows the listener to feel things that the brashness and intensity of the original version obscured. She recorded it in honor of her fiancé, who loved the song. “Though written in a completely different time,” she says, “it applies to today’s social and political struggles. The world is still nuts and we all feel like we’re going off the rails on this crazy train that’s out of control.”  

Growing up on a rural chicken farm on Long Island, Julia always knew that music was the most important thing in her life. As a child, her father introduced her to Motown and classic rock, her grandmother always had the likes of Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Patsy Cline playing, and the singer connected deeply with the works of greats like Smokey Robinson and Van Morrison. As the third child of a farmer, who on Sunday’s was a preacher, and a mother who loved and guided but insisted on perfection, she had a complicated upbringing. She would literally lose herself in the music and let it transport her into a world where it felt everyone understood her.

Yet instead of initially pursuing music, she followed her parent’s practical advice to earn a degree in exercise science at Belmont University. Although she worked in that field (at Equinox) for several years after moving to NYC, she felt inspired by her fond college memories of hanging out in Nashville studios with her friends who studied audio engineering. She had always wanted to perform and learned a lot about songwriting during that time. While living in New York, she began writing songs and, with the encouragement of friends, played live wherever she could, cutting her teeth on the open mic circuit. Julia later left the exercise industry for a more flexible career as a sommelier, which allowed her more time to continue her pursuit of music. Talking about the North Fork, Julia says, “I finally found my people. For the first time in my life, I felt seen and understood.”

‘Developing my vibe has been a lifelong process,’ she adds, “and it differs depending on the mood of the song – which really explains the overall moodiness of my work. I've always written from the heart. Song and performance have always been a coping mechanism for me, or a way I felt I could express my emotions most clearly. Each song to me has its own life, its own story to tell. So my goal when writing is to communicate the depth and color of whatever story I am telling.”