Singer-songwriter Julie Byrne’s friend and collaborator Eric Littmann died at 31. Yet the astonishing final record they made together is really about life
ulie Byrne precisely remembers the day she met the man who would change her life. “I loved him right away,” she says. It was the 2014 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas and Eric Littmann had helped engineerby the then-emerging songwriter on a dry creek bed. “He always said he felt chosen by me, right out the gate,” she recalls. “I remember feeling so at ease in his presence.” At the creek, they paired off together.
During what Byrne calls “mine and Eric’s era”, the pair developed a profound connection that radiated through her luminous songwriting, soaked in folky fingerpicking, glowing ambience and gentle, raga-like swells. Early on they “went crashing into love”, moving in together after a month. “I would literally run from the train to get home to be with him sooner,” she says, awed by the memory.
We speak the week that Byrne, 32, is starting live rehearsals. She disarms me by asking not “how are you?” but “how’s your sleep?” She is a thoughtful conversationalist with a huge, colourful laugh like a peony bursting open. Her own sleep is “five out of 10” – this week has been busy with collaborators crashing on her floor.
The connections Byrne made there set her off into the US underground, repeatedly moving from coast to coast, plotting her first DIY tours and releasing her debut in 2014 to some acclaim. Ironically, her mother had modelled the resilience necessary for a life where you don’t always know where you’re sleeping that night: aftermother died when she was 22, she quit her job making lightbulbs to cross the country.
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