Listen/Buy Music at: Julie Hill Website

Bio continued

While pursuing a bachelor's degree in Recreation Therapy at Brigham Young University, Julie began using music as a means of therapy with some of her clients. She states, "You can see it in their countenances...music makes people feel free. It takes us on unfamiliar roads. It lifts us from our places of standing. It validates where we've been. It weaves common threads among us. Music is one of the surest ways of communication to the soul."

Julie's music has been defined as "Contemporary Folk" with influences from a variety of artists including Patti Griffin, Annie Lennox, and Barbara Streisand. But she recognizes that influences stretch even beyond other musicians. With song titles such as "Buried in Sunshine", "Daisies", "Prayer of the Desert", and "Run Me A River", it becomes apparent that she is greatly influenced and inspired by the beauties of the natural world.

After having spent a summer as a youth counselor in the deserts of southern Utah, Julie became spiritually connected to Utah's desert lands. Her songs have been inspired by these red-rock landscapes, which have become an integral part of her relationship with nature and song writing. Bill Frost from Salt Lake City Weekly writes, "Hill is the current front-runner in the yet-to-be-established Henry David Thoreau song writing contest", a quote with which Julie has no qualms.

As Julie is touched and inspired by so many things, so too are those who encounter her music. They often comment on her honesty and simplicity, and her intelligent observations about life and living. "It makes me feel free inside", writes one fan from Menomonie, Wisconsin. This freedom infiltrates both young and old. One mother writes, "Every time I turn on her music, my one-and-a-half year old son gives a huge smile and then starts dancing. She's even touched the hearts of children."

Julie has attended the 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 Rocky Mountain singer/songwriter workshop in Lyons, Colorado sponsored by Planet Bluegrass, receiving instruction from legendaries such as Tom Paxton, Paul Reisler and Steve Seskin as well as John Gorka, Vance Gilbert, Lucy Kaplansky and Beth Nielsen-Chapman. This workshop and festival experience inspired her to start something on a bit of a smaller scale in her then hometown. Julie organized the "Farm Folk Fest", an annual music festival and songwriter workshop, held at Holmgren Historical Farm & Gardens in Tremonton, Utah. The festival and workshop feature some of Utah's top performing singer/songwriters and is now entering it's fourth year.

William Athey of Salt Lake City Weekly writes, "Julie is one of the most alive people I've ever met." With a simple smile, playful lyrics, and her voice that "runs like a river" ...she connects to her audiences in an honest way, a kind of dusty-sweet way, or perhaps we could say...in the way of folk.