Things to Do: See and Hear Julia Byers

The B.F.E. Rock Club sits in a small, nondescript shopping center on Jones Road. It’s sandwiched in between Kyung’s Beauty Supply and Hector’s Wheels and Tires, and for years has brought original and cover bands of many genres to the nearby suburbs of Northwest Houston/Cypress.

The front door—in true rock and roll fashion—is festooned with hundreds of stickers of bands who’ve played there maybe once or maybe dozens of times. And inside on this Saturday September night, B.F.E.’s clubgoers are mostly in their late ‘30s through ‘50s, clad in the hard rock attire of black shirts, blue jeans, and the occasional leopard print jacket on the ladies.

Onstage and sandwiched between several other acts (and also sporting an outfit with a leopard print) is Julia Byers. Standing confidently front and center and backed by a trio of male musicians, she forcefully strums a guitar while challenging an unseen lover with her words.

“Give me one reason to stay here/And I’ll turn right back around!” she says, repeating the refrain of the Tracy Chapman song. Then, “Said I don’t want to leave you lonely/You got to make me change my mind!”

The rest of her short set are also all cover tunes, ranging from Fleetwood Mac (“Dreams”), Counting Crows (“Mr. Jones”), and Alanis Morrissette (“You Oughta Know”) to Tom Petty (“Mary Jane’s Last Dance”), Cranberries (“Zombie”), Miranda Lambert (“This Ain’t My Mama’s Broken Heart”), and 3 Days Grace (“Animal I Have Become”). Backing her tonight are frequent collaborators Alvaro Ramirez (guitar), Gustavo Urdaneta (bass), and Harrison Mistich (drums).
“Thank you so much!” she says after finishing a number, smiling appreciatively to whoops and hollers. “And now, I’d like to do one of my originals!”

But before she can start, the guy at the sound board quickly holds up one finger. As in Byers has time for one more song before it’s time for the next act to take the stage.

“Oh, okay,” she says. Wanting to leave the audience with a hint of the familiar, she and the band quickly launch into “Rooster” by Alice in Chains.

But in the not-too-distant future, if Julia Byers has her way, that tune she didn’t play—“Insane Train”—will be one of her many originals that audiences will become familiar with all on their own.

For now, after she and the band break down their equipment, if she wants to slake her thirst from all that singing at the bar, she’ll have to settle for a soda. That’s because Julia Byers isn’t yet old enough to be served an adult beverage at the B.F.E. Club—or any other for that matter.

“Oh, that’s an issue!” the 19-year-old Byers laughs via Zoom a week later. “It happened at the House of Blues. They asked to see my ID to get in and I was like ‘I’m playing here!’ So, they had to put all these Xs on me!”

In addition to B.F.E. and the House of Blues, she has also gigged locally at Discovery Green, Constellation Field, and the Fort Bend County Fair.

Julia Byers was born in Austin but raised in Richmond. She had an ear for music early on, but even as a child wasn’t satisfied with just being a consumer of it: she wanted to play and create her own. And as soon as she could write, she began penning songs before moving on to piano (her grandmother is a pianist) and guitar, which she taught herself.

“I had that dream in my heart of being an artist, a singer, and creating music and performing. I never thought I would be able to try and make it a career,” she says. “But when I was 17, I graduated high school early. And I knew that [continued] school was not the thing for me. I wanted to put all my cards in and go for music. I have the drive for it.”

That drive meant that she’s already been to Nashville several times seeking to make her mark and meet contacts. The first time was right after graduation with her father, MacGregor (Byers says he and her mother Candace have been “incredibly supportive” of her ambitions and are both “such a blessing”).

“My dad went with me that first time, and then my mom on later trips. Just to help me out and give a second opinion. It’s a very scary industry and they just wanted to be sure that I was looked out for and protected,” Byers says.

But on that initial trip, she saw an Instagram flyer pop up on her phone. “I’m not one to usually trust those things and click on them because they’re scams. But for some reason, I had this gut intuition, and I clicked,” she recalls. “It was info on a vocal retreat with an industry panel in the city with producers managers, and radio people.”

Unfortunately, Byers could not afford the asking price for the retreat. But she had been corresponding with a vocal coach in the city, Brett Manning. And through that contact was able to get a scholarship and discount to attend the event.

Fortuitously, she met a producer named Malcom Springer, who is now working with Byers on her original music, with the rocking, sassy single “Insane Train” coming out in November.

She is also heading back to Nashville this month (this time on her own) where there’s a strong chance she’ll be signing a management deal with a well-known label that has launched some big country rock performers. She’s also meeting with an investor who wants to back her on future projects in which she’ll straddle the country and rock lines.

As a card carrying-member of Gen Z, Byers has not known a world without the internet and social media, but she hopes to use this familiarity with both to market herself and her music in a way that older acts must hire consultants or a team to do.

“I think that with my generation and because of how everybody is so chronically online, it’s so easy to be in with the trends and the popular things that go viral and the hashtags, I see it all the time all over my phone,” she says. “It’s just flooded with kids my age. I get a lot of info from that, and from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. People know how to [promote] themselves.”

Right now, Byers acts as her own de facto manager and booking agent, sometimes cold calling bars and venues to ask for a gig via email or even in person. And she’ll switch up her set list—sometimes on the spot—depending on the venue and crowd reaction.

“It’s a struggle sometimes, because I don’t have anyone really to vouch for me, to say ‘Hey, you’ve gotta book this girl!’” she laughs. “But I’ve lucked out so far!”

For. more on Julia Byers, visit her Linktree or Website.