By: JoAnn Snavely

Music festival season is upon us, with festivals like Lollapalooza (LatAm), Bonnaroo, Coachella, and local fest Dreamville’s lineups being released. There’s a special corner of our nation that continues to grow eager for these festivals to begin, and with that excitement building up, we’ve witnessed some new musicians taking over as headliners. Musicians like Noah Kahan, Frank Ocean, and Wallows have been huge headliners this past festival season, and this week, I will be introducing the Herald to some future headliners–meet: Housing Co. and fanclubwallet!

FANCLUBWALLET

Fanclubwallet is the assumed pseudonym for the Ottawa-based musician named Hannah Judge. 

With a simple Google search, you can stumble upon a few things–miscellaneous Spotify links, social media profiles, the occasional spotlight or interview, and then her bandcamp. If you’re unfamiliar with what a Bandcamp is, it is, according to the website itself,  “an online record store and music community where passionate fans discover, connect with, and directly support the artists they love.” It is also just a hub for all up & coming musicians. I, have coincidentally spent a fair bit of time on the site and must say that Hannah’s bio has been one of my favorite bios so far. The five words, “i am simply just kickin it” are the only terms found on her Bandcamp to describe who she is musically. I prefaced with that because I think it is a good precursor to the rest of the interview as Hannah is truly “just kickin it”.

Judge has always had a love for music; her musical journey seems to have no specific moment she could mention as  it’s just always been there for her, “ I’ve been making mixed CDs for my friends for as long as I can remember! I made some weird electronic lo-fi stuff in highschool, but I didn’t start really writing music until college!” With that love for music, Judge draws a lot of her inspiration from musicians like Modest Mouse, Rilo Kiley, Black Moth Super Rainbow, The 1975, and many more.

Judge’s professional music career began in 2020 when she released her debut single, “This Must Be the Place” almost exactly 3 years ago. The poppy-single has synth elements that are reminiscent of the way Dayglow’s debut album Fuzzybrain  produces synth, or even similar to some of The 1975’s earlier work, but it is done in a way that feels original and completely different. Over the past 3 years, Judge has amassed  quite a few singles and an album. With a discography of 23 released songs, she has quite an impressive streaming history. On Spotify alone, she has over 393,000 monthly listeners with her most streamed song being her 2020 single “Car Crash in G Major”. The song shares a similar synth to “This Must Be the Place”, and its popularity has featured her in multiple Spotify-made playlists like Lorem, Bedroom Pop, and Garden Indie.

Most recently, she released her single “Roadkill” (not to be confused with the iconic The 1975 song with the same name). The lo-fi single has a much more sinister background to it than can be initially heard. Hannah told the story of the single: “I wrote roadkill on tour. Since becoming a musician, I’ve had to see and deal with a lot of weird oversexualization; the song is just a comment on that and how messed up it is.”

Although the single lacks a bit in lyrics (there are very few words), those lyrics speak massively about the oversexualization in the genre. In the lyrics;

“He’s no good and neither am I to you

But I can do everything he can’t do

Are you listening? I told you that I loved you

You’re the roadkill that I eat in my stew”

As listeners, it becomes easier to grasp Judge’s internal struggle between yearning for the attention she deserves and just wanting to be successful without the help of the patriarchal industry, for the men that help perpetuate this struggle are quite figuratively the roadkill she eats in her stew.

Although the song “Roadkill” tells a negative story about being on tour, Hannah has found a love for all things live music. She’s played a good bit of live shows having most recently toured alongside CHVRCHES, Yot Club, and Penelope Scott. Although she still feels a bit new to playing live, she explained her favorite aspect of playing live, “I’ve only recently learned how to actually have fun on stage, haha, so right now I’m enjoying dancing around!”

As a touring musician who is relatively new to it all, she spoke a bit on the complications with being a newer musician. She finds herself struggling with “the bureaucracy of it all, visas, how expensive everything is. It’s hard to break through without help.”

On the topic of receiving help, Hannah gave her best word of advice for any aspiring musician: “Do not worry!!! About what anyone says!! Make things that make you happy!!”

The name fanclubwallet feels like one of the most authentic names I’ve heard thus far in my unprofessional interview career. Judge explained its origins: “It was my Insta handle in highschool, I had a Dennis the Menace fan club wallet that I used every day and when it came time to pick a band name I couldn’t think of anything else.” 

As someone with such an immense collection of released music, it was hard for Judge to choose a favorite song; with that being said, Judge explained, “I still really love ‘Fell Through,’ it’s not lyrically dense but the instrumentation in it I’m really proud of. Lyrically ‘You Have Got to Be Kidding Me’ is my favorite!”

Judge released her debut album “You Have Got to Be Kidding Me” back in May of 2022. She most recently announced her first-ever vinyl for that album. As a self-proclaimed vinyl “connoisseur,” I had to ask a bit about her vinyl story. She told her story by illustrating the fact that “The first one I can really remember buying was that Velvet Underground album.. with the banana on it? I’m actually not a big vinyl person, but my favorite vinyl I have is my Lonesome Crowded West album by Modest Mouse”

At the end of the day, Hannah is still in the beginning stages of her career and is getting ready to be (if not already) in the prime of career. With a good chunk of the biggest musical milestones out of the way (debut single, album, tour, etc.), Judge can only look forward. As she looks into the future, she explained her plans: “I hope I’m just happy, making whatever I want to make. Whether people are listening or not. And I hope I’m still surrounded by an amazing music community.”

fanclubwallet is perfect for fans of Clairo, Men I Trust, Ritt Momney, and Samia.

Also, for more local Herald readers, check out fanclubwallet when she opens for Dream, Ivory on 03/21/2023 in Durham. You just may see a few Herald writers there…

Spotlight on Rising Stars Series: an Author’s Note

This is the fifth edition in the “Spotlight on Rising Stars” series. In the last article in the series, I introduced the herald to Sorry Snowman and The Backfires. Next week, I will have interviews with The Forum and SHADESOFBLUE in a very special social media edition, until next time, listen to my interview with Sorry Snowman and check out the bands’ links and the link to my ‘Spotlight on Rising Stars’ playlist available on Spotify that is updated with each article release!