 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. My name's Julia Oxmreder, and the sound of my music would be best relayed as whiskey music, kind of drinking music, sad a little bit, friends, good times, bad times, hard times, heartbreak, mostly. And when did you first start getting into performing music? When I was 14, so I've been at it for 22 years now, which is hard to believe that it's been that long. And what's your history with music? Well, I started playing music because I was a writer first, and I really felt like I couldn't catch anyone's ear. No one wanted to hear poetry so much, but people would listen to music, and they would listen to the lyrics, and they'd really get into it, and it's something they'd want to have for their own, and listen over and over and over again. And that was something that I just didn't find an audience, that kind of attitude with poetry. So I really appreciated how much other people appreciate music, and that's what brought me to it, is I wanted a platform to do my writing, where people would actually want to listen. How do you decide what will be a poem and what you'll use for a song? It's a fine, fine line, and it's easy to cross. I've made a couple poems into songs. I've stripped the music from a couple songs, and made them into poems. So it's really nice because it's easy to transfer, and so if you want to build up more music, you know, just hit your journal, get the poems out that never really went anywhere, and you can really start working them into music just as easily as finishing them off as a poem. And what's it like for you to perform live? Like what's that feeling you get when you're in front of an audience and sharing these songs with the public? It's becoming something I enjoy. It used to be a struggle. I used to get mega stage fright, like sick, and I'd always just regret it and want to back out last minute, but I'd like make myself do it. You know, after 20 years of doing it, like I'm finally getting to the point where I can handle myself on stage and I can kind of control my breathing. After the first couple songs, I start to really ease into it and just like feel the music and perform the music how I want it to be done, and that's awesome. I'm very excited to be moving into the phase of having fun on stage, instead of being scared. I think the hardest part about songwriting is making it make sense because not everything you want to say is going to fit, right? And so how do you convey your message in the set block of rhythmic pattern is definitely the hardest part. It's something that poetry doesn't deal with. Whatever you want to say in poetry, you say it. You have all the poetic license to vary in any direction, but songwriting is definitely more structured and therefore can be really hard to make a song make sense. But for the most part, when I do have inspiration, I write it down and it sits in my journal for a while. It could be years, it could be months before I see it again, but almost always if it was something that caught my ear and was inspiring to begin with, it'll eventually end up as something, you know, it's like inspiration. It doesn't come very often, so when it's there you've got to hold on to it and use it. Kind of advice would you offer someone who was gain interested in performing music live? One thing that I always struggled with forever is I didn't do it good enough or I didn't do it right or I, you know, I screwed up once during that song. The audience doesn't know. They just really honestly will never notice. You can't take yourself too seriously, like that's the bottom line. People really respect that when you're up on stage and you're able to be goofy and relate to them and you feel comfortable and look comfortable, it changes the whole performance no matter how good of an artist you are. If you're feeling at home on stage, people really, really appreciate that. For some corner by the next round, there's some change, hell, an option to keep roads. It's possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you enjoy watching Backroads Online, please consider making a tax-deductible donation at lptv.org.