We have ‘Crazy Eyes’ for Six Foot Blonde!

The towering presence of Six Foot Blonde looms over the indie-pop music scene as they continue to make strides with their sound. Six Foot Blonde’s frontwoman and lead singer, Julia Rusyniak, took time out of her busy schedule to chat with ION Indie Music Magazine’s journalist, Kira Doman, about finding her stage presence, self-confidence and identity, and the life they’ve adjusted to since the release of their first full-length album, Ask Me How I Am.

A natural friendship among the six members of Six Foot Blonde

Six Foot Blonde is built from six talented artists: Dom Heyob on assisting vocals and bass guitar, Elliot Obermaier and Zach Patrick on guitar, Brian Healy playing drums and percussion, and Julia’s brother, John Alex Rusyniak on keys; the band met in the early height of COVID-19 in a music club, while attending Indiana University, meant to rekindle the creativity and connection between artists that may have been diminished at the start of the pandemic.

“We hung out and played music, and that form of casual creativity was truly a retreat for us, being right in the midst of the scary surroundings of COVID-19,” Julia remarked with a sorrowful smile. “Live music obviously wasn’t happening at that time, so we were all a little starved of it, and while we were playing together we realized, ‘Let’s make music because we need this,’.”

With their friend and fellow frontwoman vocalist, Emma Spartz, Six Foot Blonde released their first EP, Tino’s Place, in a very casual way. After about two years of creating music together, shaping their sound, and playing cover shows (once places started to open again), the group found it to be a fun project to write and shape the EP together.

“We were so fond of this project and the fact that we had fun writing and recording it, so we released it on streaming platforms just because we wanted to,” Julia shrugged. “We were more focused on this being a fun project, rather than stressing over it being a perfect work of art, but then our single ‘Lady’ started to see a rise in streams, which none of us were expecting, and it only spurred us to keep releasing music from there.”

Their single, “Lady”, was released before their EP, Tino’s Place, which contains the aforementioned song as well as other crowd hits, however, the single began to see a rise in streams after the EP’s release. They released the follow-up single to their EP, “Perpendicular Universe” the next year, which is the project Julia believes established the group as the Six Foot Blonde they are today.

Julia knew she wanted to be involved with the stage in some way after being exposed to musical theater as Cinderella’s evil stepmother as a child, but she didn’t know where exactly she fit on the stage until she met a few friends.

“I was afraid musical theater or stage performance wasn’t for me, even though my dad encouraged me to enroll and audition for performing arts colleges,” Julia laughed, “but I was afraid and thought it didn't feel right and that I should go for a doctorate of some kind instead. Then I went to college, and I met a group of these guys [the band] and I had this realization of, 'Wait, maybe I'm cut out for this type of performing.'” 

“It was my sophomore year of college when I realized this singer/songwriter path is exactly what I need to follow. I've been performing forever, I just didn't know what kind of performing I wanted to follow until recently.”

Though Emma Spartz didn’t end up sticking around with the band after the first EP, she definitely established her mark in her bandmates' hearts and on the band itself. She and Julia joined the band to help overcome their shared stage fright and pursue their interests in performing, and in turn, developed the band’s name as a manifestation of confidence. 

“We both had this fear of taking up space on the stage, making ourselves smaller to draw less of an eye, but Emma and I taught each other so much when it comes to performing,” Julia remembered fondly. “We encouraged each other to stand tall, wear our eight-inch heels, and tower over what we’re afraid of – we have to be confident with our ‘who cares’ energy. Emma always reminded me to flail my arms and dance like I don’t care what others think. We taught each other to have fun and how to be confident in finding ourselves in this celebration of who we are. That's the lifestyle of a Six Foot Blonde.”

Six Foot Blonde radiates the sure-fire star power Julia and Emma were looking to achieve with their marks on the stage, and as they continued to perform, they really did find the personas they were embodying.

“Emma taught me affirmations to say before shows because we used to get so nervous: we would stand with our hands on each other's shoulders, and say, 'I'm beauty, I am grace, I'm light, I'm abundance.' These affirmations are exactly what the name Six Foot Blonde captures,” Julia stated passionately. “We miss Emma performing with us, but she's doing incredible things with her own music now, and we know she’ll continue to do amazing things.”

This thorough presence of friendship and support has built the successful foundation of the band thus far, harking back even to their first formation as a band and their effortless blossoming chemistry as artists and people alike.

“Joining a band unintentionally and having that friendship as a base is so important for growing in the best direction because we're on the road all the time together,” she explained. “We thankfully love each other so much because we've established that foundation, and that's so important. Of course, I hear these nightmare stories of bands who hate each other, but that would and could never be us. We are friends first – it's a very lovely thing that has happened with us.”

This Six Foot Blonde wants to know how you are

The friendship the group has built together has provided a safe space to produce their work for each other, free of judgment. Sharing lyrics, instrumental hooks, and vocal runs without feeling the need to filter what they are presenting to each other, feeding the confidence of the band as a whole, and improving their skill sets as musical artists has helped them to put out projects they continue to be proud of, like their most recent album, Ask Me How I Am.

“It's been really cool to have this musical project out that is ours fully, we're so still proud of it a year later,” Julia glowed. “The excitement of putting out an album is a feeling that is so unique. As artists, I feel we’ll be chasing this feeling with each project release by writing more and more music.” 

Writing music wasn’t always part of Julia’s creative pastime. She tried her hand at many methods of theater and showmanship throughout her childhood, but she didn’t truly begin writing music until she entered college and discovered this was something she loved pouring her heart into, as well as performing later.

“This creative process doesn't feel like work for me,” she smiled. “I love that when I go to practice, it's not just practice, it's writing music, it's infusing poetry into a melody – I fell in love with performing because I love to perform, and I was lucky to find the same love in songwriting and lyricism.”

Julia, being rather new to this writing, has found fun ways to work with multiple methods of the songwriting approach and grows excited by the many genres she has yet to try her hand in. She expressed how lucky she feels to have built such an easy love with songwriting in her journey to this side of the arts.

“Literature has recently taken such an important part of the songwriting process for me,” she described. “I love curating a story; I love that every day I get to sit down with my best friends, take out my notebook I've been scribbling in all day, and be able to put it to something. I became part of the band because I loved performing, but I'm staying, and will always stay because of the lyrics and poetry of the music, and that is such an incredible feeling for me.”

Truly struck with inspiration for writing, the band announced to their label they were looking to produce another EP with some of their new songs; however, upon arriving in front of their management and producers, they found they were being assigned instead to release their first full-length album.

“Originally, we had six songs that we were really confident in and ready to release, and then some random stragglers we weren't quite sure about,” explained Julia. “We went to our producer and audio engineer and told them we planned to make an EP, and they laughed and responded, 'No, you're not – you're going to make an album. The world needs an album from Six Foot Blonde.'”

An EP they were ready for, but an album? Some of the members had their doubts if they had enough songs, enough to work with, and enough time to push out something they wanted to represent their name, but their team made sure to set them up for the best success.

“We didn't think we had enough material for a full album, but they assured us once we got into the studio we'd be inspired to write more songs, and that's exactly what happened,” she grinned. “We got in the studio, wrote a lot more songs, rounded out some others we were more confident in… and with each song, we learned more about the songwriting process.”

Their chosen studio also helped with striking the right inspiration; rich with beautiful imagery and the right atmosphere that kept them in the warm indoors, the band crafted another handful of songs, making more than enough to produce the album their producer and audio engineer were looking for. 

“We recorded in Bloomington’s [IN] Primary Sound Studio, an old church resting right on a graveyard, and it snowed almost every day. Sitting inside this church, seeing a sunset through stained glass on a snowy graveyard was really cool and beautiful imagery that I feel inspired so much lyricism in the project.”

“We didn't even intend for it to be an album, and then, because we wrote so much in the studio, some of our original lineup didn't even make the cut,” Julia laughed. “We found some of our unreleased work and listened to them this past weekend and thought, 'Thank goodness that didn't go on the album.’ I'm sure it wasn't as bad as we thought, but we didn't feel it was up to the album's standards and were inevitably glad we followed our gut feeling about those songs.”

Every artist or band has partially finished work, or pieces they aren’t entirely proud or fond of that don’t see public release right away, but that doesn’t mean these pieces get thrown away or scrapped entirely. Sometimes artists come back to these projects with a new approach to finish the work, or dissect and disperse the old piece to flush out new pieces. There was inspiration when the line or melody was written, so who’s to say it won’t strike inspiration again?

“Ask Me How I Am is very much about feeling all of the feelings about yourself,” Julia commented. “It's a self-discovery/coming-of-age album that travels through feeling these affirmations and then denying said affirmations, while still affirming yourself and finding others to help you through the discouragement. It's 'who am I? I don't know, and that's okay.' It’s growing up and realizing feelings and answers aren’t certain.”

For example, their songs “Golden”, “Refuge”, and “Crazy Eyes” really emphasize these themes of self-discovery and assurance, causing the band to rifle through their feelings and approaches toward life, finding the moments that feel worthy of writing about. 

“I was having a hard week when we wrote ‘Refuge’,” she revealed. “We were in between, and in and out of studios over the weekends with a scheduled practice during the week, but when we met up, I ended up asking if everyone was okay with writing and working on a new song together instead of practicing what we had. The guys, as always, were very welcoming with this request, and ‘Refuge’ was written by the end of that practice.”

“Refuge” was a later addition to the project, however, it ultimately inspired the album’s direction and themes of unstable uncertainty, seen in the album’s title, Ask Me How I Am. The water elements and imagery on the cover, such as the eye filled with active water and spilled-over tears, and the many fish-human hybrids (also known as Lo-Ting in Hong Kong mythology) add to the album’s theme of uncertainty with identity, but finding the confidence in figuring it out.

The lyricless album’s interlude “Let’s Go Play Mermaids” still incorporates these themes of water elements and provides space for the album to breathe in this new turn to confidence in the uncertainty of identity and the path one might take in life. Themes from the song “Refuge” even caused Julia to go back into lyrics from other songs in the project and tweak them to more cohesively fit the overarching theme she was looking to convey.

“Our song ‘Crazy Eyes’ is about finding someone who makes you feel like you're not alone, and that is exactly what friendship and building someone up through encouragement is about. It's finding someone who you can share your craziness with, building each other and yourself up, and ultimately recognizing, it's going to be okay,” Julia stated calmly. “I like to say I have a ‘guts or butterflies’ feeling about the songs we're writing, if it's a ‘guts’ feeling it's kind of a bad stomach ache, but when it's ‘butterflies’ it's a good nervous fluttering – I had really active and awesome ‘butterflies’ for ‘Crazy Eyes’ once we finished it, and for the rest of Ask Me How I Am."

If Julia had a ‘butterflies’ feeling for ‘Crazy Eyes’, she might have had a ‘guts’ feeling for ‘Hard Feelings’ due to how long this particular song took for her to understand with her vocal and performative style. However, once it clicked, those ‘guts’ quickly flipped into ‘butterflies’.

“‘Hard Feelings’ was instrumentally one of our first songs written for the project, but I hated my vocal part,” Julia divulged. “It was just so not me – I woke up at 2 AM with what are now the melody and lyrics on our last day of recording vocals for the track. I took these manic recordings of me singing a few examples for the guys, and they were ecstatic! We went into the studio later that day, recorded the melodic part of ‘Hard Feelings’, added the bridge, and within that recording session it became what it is now.”

“Now, I love performing ‘Hard Feelings’ live. I love the angry girl energy it emits, it's so fun,” she giggled. “I always love singing the high part in the pre-chorus ‘I don’t care, I’m fine,’ and it's my favorite thing in the world hearing the girls in the audience scream along, because it's good to be an angry woman!”

Satisfied with the reactions from fans and concert-goers to their first album and EP, the band is already excited to work on new and more projects! Julia’s confidence in the band’s progress and trajectory pushes her creative force, and encourages her to keep adjusting her writing style to new tactics for new results.

“It's funny, we put the first project out and came back the next day asking where to start with our next project. We've been writing with that excitement of having a piece of music that's ours out, but then at the same time working through new stuff that we're really excited about,” she said. “It's an indescribable feeling, it's what keeps me writing music because I just want to reach other people in their lives and thoughts, which is also great motivation for me to approach each project with the attitude of, 'let's make this next project even better for them.'”

The artistry of uncertainty

Just as Tino’s Place sounds entirely different from Ask Me How I Am, so too might their next album from the recent release we’re still celebrating! Creative choices will take every band and artist in their own direction and approach to their craft, and Julia isn’t letting anyone predict Six Foot Blonde’s next move!

“I love when artists drop an album that sounds so different from what they’ve released in the past, shaking up their sound in a way their fans have not heard or expected yet,” Julia said. “We’re expanding our markets by sharing Ask Me How I Am with everyone, while simultaneously writing more music for both our new and old fans to listen to and enjoy. Music is art for a reason, there’s always room and time to expand your style.”

Julia has always been drawn to the artistic side of life, even though she may have believed prior to meeting Emma, Dom, Elliot, Zach, or Brian (of course she already knew John), that she would be going to school for a doctorate of some kind, she never set aside her artistic side of her personality. Having met her bandmates, Julia is now an art student, continuing to pursue her passion!

“I am an art student at Indiana University and also the creative director for Six Foot Blonde,” declared Julia. “For Ask Me How I Am, I chose a color palette and style reminiscent of a handmade collage, capturing the feeling of being in your room and making art from collected magazines, old photos, and other found art materials.”

“Because I’m the creative director, I’m typically the one approaching the guys about our photoshoot ideas, merch, stage outfits, some of our social media…but it’s me doing this with five dudes, and it’s not always particularly easy to get five guys to come together and sit still for occasions like a photo shoot, or to find the outfit I’ve assigned.” 

Being an arts student, coordinating outfits, props, photography sets, and other promotional coverage for the band doesn’t take much for Julia to pull together as she is excited to utilize her artistry and what she’s learned. The guys get a little in their heads trying to collect and match what she’s looking for, but with her encouragement, they’re starting to trust their creative sides more as well.

“I love taking this opportunity of performing to play with my style on stage, but when I asked the guys to come dressed in something from the color palette for our photo shoot, I showed up in pink, and they showed up all in the same varying shades of navy blue with blue jeans because it’s all they own,” she laughed. “They’re still learning that being a performer on stage means they can dress in bigger and bolder choices if that excites them. Lately, they’re starting to bring out some funky pants, so it’s been fun to see a progression in their comfort level!”

Watching her friends branch out their comfort levels into something that interests them, and having the confidence to try it has pushed Julia to keep working on her art in varying ways, including crafting some of the merchandise sold at their shows!

“I’ve learned skills in jewelry making, sewing, and I’m learning to make some of my own clothes as well,” Julia disclosed. “For this past summer’s tour, I sketched and sewed all of the lyric shirts we sold! I once watched an interview with Stevie Nicks where she talked about making her own clothes, and I was so excited to feel like I was on the right track in my artistry.”

As she has unveiled parts of her artistry, and her bandmates bring varying forms of their artistry to their rehearsals and studio time, they are able to shape the overarching theme of confidence in self-discovery and always look forward to sharing these themes with their fans.

“I want to demonstrate and paint the picture of Ask Me How I Am for the audience. I want them to feel the same sort of excitement that we have playing our shows,” Julia shared. “That shared excitement and meeting fans is what fuels us; I want our fans to feel that rush of live music with us. We have some somber moments in our show as we play through the album, but there are just as strongly contrasted moments of scream-in-your-car-type energy that is perfect for our dancing crowd. I want to provide a space for people at our shows to dance, scream, cry, do all those things and not care what others may think; we owe it to them for being devoted fans.”

Six Foot Blonde pulls the crowd in with their performances, lighting up the stage with their energy, the flawless chemistry of the band, and powerful vocals. They frequently have repeat concert attendees to catch up with, whom they never want to be able to predict a show. To prevent this, the band will often throw in new twists to songs, sometimes entirely new arrangements to their songs that won’t be available on streaming platforms

“I love performing ‘Red Wine, White Wine’ live because it's so different from our recorded version,” she revealed slyly. “We really sit in the groove of it, it’s very swing and I get to play a tambourine in it even though I'm not very good at it, yet, but I'm trying! From a musicality or technicality standpoint, I think we are honing our live show every day, becoming great live performers, and I think with each tour, we learn little hacks and surprises here and there to elevate our show, changing it up for fans who attend multiple shows so they have the same excitement our new audience members have.”

“We’re very comfortable with experimentation on the stage because we never want our audience to be bored watching us,” Julia explained. “One of my favorite parts of being in the band is coming up with stage moments and performances; for each tour, we have some variation of new material, new transitions, or new live-vocal or band moments. We practice blocking for about a month before the tour starts, running the set, and thinking about how we can improve any last-minute things.”

Dive into their live shows

Once businesses slowly began opening again and COVID-19 had been deemed ‘under control,’ Six Foot Blonde began booking live shows where they could, frequenting the Bloomington, Indiana venue, The BlueBird, which books acts ranging from national tours to budding college bands playing covers. 

“We’d been playing covers at The BlueBird for a while, but once we put out our EP, Tino's Place, all of a sudden we’d be performing shows, and decide to throw in a few of our originals like ‘Calling to Karma’, ‘Lady’, or ‘Red Wine, White Wine’ – and there would be people in the crowd singing along! This is when we realized we might have something as a band, and once ‘Perpendicular Universe’ was out, we really noticed people were listening.” 

Performing at The BlueBird showed Julia what she values and feels comfortable with when booking their lineup for future shows and what she looks for when putting on a show in general. The venue celebrates artists and bands of all listener counts and has directed Julia to similar venues for other shows as Six Foot Blonde’s career continues to excel.

“We like these central city venues with capacities reaching 300 to 800 people,” she said. “Those 300-limit rooms always feel so intimate, which is scary but so cool, but we really find our energy in these 500-800 people venues because they're just filled with people who are there for us and we're there for them. These types of staged venues are perfect for where we’re at in our journey as of right now.” 

Other venues the band has frequented with their stage performances include Indianapolis’s HI-FI Indy and HI-FI Annex, the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI, the Blueberry Hill Duck Room in St. Louis, MO, and Chicago’s Lincoln Hall. The band has played a few festivals but are hoping to add more to the lineup as the weather warms!

“We played Summer Fest [Milwaukee, WI] last year, and that was such an amazing experience! I’m a big Ethel Cain fan, and she was playing that day, so I was fangirling pretty hard,” Julia laughed at herself. “It was awesome, we're definitely hoping for more festival opportunities this next year.” 

Noticeably, many of the band’s high-frequented venues and bookings rely in the Midwest – having met at Indiana State University and all being from the surrounding states, all of the band members hold a special place in their hearts and touring schedules for the Midwest.

“We play a lot in the Midwest, I think it's where our heart is – it's our home,” Julia smiled warmly. “All of us are from Indiana or Chicago, so we have this sort of special connection to the Midwest and what it's done for us, it’s where a lot of our support lies. We're venturing further with our touring as we’ve now played on the East Coast, and in March, we went to Colorado! It just always feels nice to come back to the Midwest.”

As their listener count and fanbase continues to grow, their touring duration also grows longer, taking John, Dom, Elliot, Zach, Bryan, and Julia to more and more locations with more and more voices in the audience singing along with them.

“Last summer, on our first national tour but before we had the album out, we played a show in St. Louis, and we were happy to sing for a group of young people, who were so excited to sing along to our original music with us, being there, watching us; and then in Chicago, a group of girls were screaming along to ‘Blackout’ with us! It feels like this acceleration or admiration happened quickly, but ultimately, I think it was a slow process but a fast turnover.”

The band is still reeling from the overwhelming support they’ve begun to see pour in with the release of their album since August of 2024, including the rise in streams for their first releases and the ticket purchases to their live shows. 

“We have so many amazingly supportive fans who want to see us grow as a band,” she said fondly. “They continue to see us live repeatedly, front and center at our shows, and they always listen to our music, some of them since our first project back in 2022! Personally, I listen to an artist for three months before taking a break and coming back to them a few months later, so I really appreciate the devoted fans we’ve seemed to befriend over the years.”

Seeing fans, new and old, continue to be there for their shows and live events has been the encouragement Julia uses to draw inspiration for making new and continuously improved projects to bring to the band. 

“Being six people in this band, a lot of us have different goals, but ultimately, I think we really want to expand our market and play in places we've never played,” she conjectured. “We haven’t been writing music together for that long, so we’re still in the early stages of learning how our six brains work together lyrically, instrumentally, and stylistically. I want to keep working on our next project by honing my writing craft and learning how our playing styles collaborate and harmonize.”

Having six members to a band who identify as friends, they don’t normally fall short with anything to say to each other, typically able to bounce past ideas into current projects in progress, and while they have similar creative tastes to polish a cohesive sound, they also bring their own preferences to the table to work with.

“Ultimately, we always view this as, ‘I get to do this,’ not ‘I have to do this,’” she explained. “We're so fortunate to have this creative expression as something that affects other people in such a positive way, but also affects us in that positive way. I never expected the band to grow into what it is now when I joined the Indiana University music club in 2020, the whole experience has blown my expectations out of the water.”

Six Foot Blonde continues to make a splash in the indie-pop scene, encouraging their fans to come out and celebrate the sense of being alive and confident with the uncertainties that face us.

“When you see us perform live, put your dancing shoes on! Our main goal in our performance is to see everybody leave with a smile,” said Julia. “We want our music to be a space to escape for our audience. We're so proud of Ask Me How I Am, we just hope there's a song for everyone on the album so that when you come to see us you can watch us perform it with full hearts, brains, chests, stomachs, and souls -- we will push it toward you in a way that helps you to feel it fully.”

If they don’t tower over you in height, watch out for Six Foot Blonde through their various social media accounts and on their website to find where you can dance your “Hard Feelings” out with Julia Rusyniak and the talented men of Six Foot Blonde: Dom Heyob, Elliot Obermaier, Zach Patrick, Brian Healy, and John Alex Rusyniak!