Julie Tiehen
<p>Julie Tiehen outside her home in Bigfork.</p>
NAME: Julie Tiehen
AGE: 30
HOMETOWN: Bigfork
EDUCATION: Flathead Valley High School graduate
INSTRUMENT(S): Piano, guitar
CONTACT: Facebook- Julie Tiehen Music
For Tiehen, inspiration can come from anywhere in her life, be it friends she admired, or conversations she wished she could articulate.
“My writing is usually drawn from some relationship I’ve had,” she said. “It’s a longing for some way to say the thing that I may have never been able to say.”
Tiehen calls these relations the “bones of her songs,” and uses ideas from anyone of her relationships to build powerful messages into her songwriting. Her songs either answer questions that have been left unanswered in her life, or they pose questions she has always wondered about.
“It might be something that someone said that resonated with me, or something I’ve always wanted to say and couldn’t,” Tiehen said. “But people and relationships are always at the heart of it.”
The Singer/Songwriter Showdown will be Tiehen’s first competition, and she said she looks at the competition as a chance to stretch her skills.
“I didn’t even know about the prizes or what the competition really entailed when I signed up,” she said. “I just knew that it would give me a goal to work toward, and know I’d improve.”
For the next year, Tiehen said she doesn’t have specific projects that she’s working on, but she hopes the exposure and oportunities the competition will present will open some doors for her.
In the future, she would like to begin playing with other musicians more. As a self-proclaimed “gypsy,” Tiehen said she has had little oportunity to play with the same group of musicians or form a band, but when the chance has come along in her life she has loved it.
“You’re up there having fun with your friends and inspiring each other,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about, what you’re able to create with those people.”
—BL