interview with Julian root
Grass Roots: Inside the mind and home of a contemporary Austin artisan
interview + photography by Jordan Boudreau
Among the quaint yet cozy neighborhoods of East Austin sits the humble abode of one Julian Root, a local leatherworker and purveyor of all things old and interesting. It is also home to his collection of objects and decor that all appear to have a rich and unique backstory. From the furniture to the artwork to the coffee mugs to the books. Absolutely nothing looks like it came from Target. Even his dish rag was cooler than mine.
When he’s not ‘at the bench’ (leatherworker code for doing leather work), he can be found playing banjo, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and manning a local bluegrass radio channel. In many ways Julian is a local gem who represents the raw, magical energy that Austin has been historically known for.
I met Julian through a mutual friend and was utterly struck by the lifestyle and character he carried out. So much so, that I recently paid him a visit to snap a few photos of his bohemian dwelling, talk to him about leatherwork, and maybe get a little philosophical with him. I came prepared with a list of questions, only to realize that not only will Julian simply pontificate on any subject unprompted, but that his riffing is far more interesting than any pointed questions I could’ve asked him. The following paragraphs are the highlights of that riffing, which ranged from the nuances of social media, to people’s fear of embarrassment, to misconceptions of alcoholism, to the various objects in his home, and more.
I pulled up to his house, which I can only identify with the help of Apple Maps since the house itself, much like every other house on the street, is engulfed in overgrowth. I navigated up the driveway to the front porch, dodging an array of dusty glass containers, old scraps of leather items, rickety furniture, and miscellaneous trinkets that I can only imagine crows must have brought him from the streets in exchange for seeds or something.
A distant “Hey man!” signaled me to walk through the loose screen door, where I found Julian picking away at his banjo in the back corner. Julian is actually on the board of the Central Texas Bluegrass Association. His other contribution to the culture of bluegrass, besides fashioning banjo straps for fellow pickers, is working at Strictly Bluegrass - KOOP Radio 91.7 FM.
After a few more riffs and some quick pleasantries, Julian fashioned me a makeshift seating area (I suspect he doesn’t regularly have guests), and immediately we dove into a discussion about Instagram, phones, and social interaction in general.
“I got my first cell phone when I was sixteen,” he began, “and cell phones are great…I think the good probably does outweigh the bad with just a mobile telephone, but then with smartphones and a computer and the internet in your pocket…I feel like wonder and creativity and imagination are just becoming things of the past.”
Despite this being a common take with quote unquote “old heads”, it continues to feel increasingly true.. We brought up the example of two friends discussing a topic, and rather than debating the truth of a certain detail, someone will just Google it. What could have been a lively exchange is now dead on arrival thanks to technology.
He went on to say, “What you gain from doing the human thing and talking to someone is definitely more valuable than having the answer.”
Taking into account certain obvious exceptions (medical emergencies for instance), I find this to be a largely unique but healthy perspective.
All this talk about doing things the old-fashioned way turned into a reflection on his very first leather projects. He described to me a box he has full of his first projects:
“That’s when the learning curve of anything is at its highest,” he said. “Cause like, I just have a very basic understanding of what needs to be done, no concept of like, how to intelligently, artfully get there…and of course that’s not unique to leatherwork. That’s learning to walk – ‘I just need to ambulate’ - fancy word for walk. ‘I just need to move on my own’, and as a child you see that the people who are bigger than you have this way that doesn’t involve all four of their appendages. And of course they just fall, and kids don’t care about embarrassing themselves.”
I’ll often think about the fact that fear of failure is one of the biggest things that holds people back, but I love the added insight here that this only starts to become an issue when we become adults. It’s not necessarily the failure we fear, but the embarrassment that comes as a result, and embarrassment is a learned behavior that children don’t seem to have as much of. Julian, with his poetic manner of speaking, summed it up beautifully with the following statement:
“The embarrassment and the ultimate shame of being unwilling to go through that temporary embarrassment is greater than any embarrassment you might feel in your learning pains,” he proclaimed.
Or as his buddy allegedly would say, “Imagine if you had that attitude when you were learning to walk.”
It’s true. If we had this same fear of failure as children there would be a bunch of adults still crawling around on all fours.
Somehow we got onto the subject of alcohol (most of our conversation could be described by “Somehow we got onto the subject of _____”).
Julian is a ‘tea-totaler’, a term he taught me that refers to someone who has quit alcohol. I can’t relate personally, but nonetheless I was not prepared for his take on it:
“Everyone likes to tell you when they quit drinking how great their life is – they’re lying. It’s kind of a lie they need to tell themselves. I did it, I think it’s a necessary thing. But it’s like that is untrue. The longer you hold on to that the more likely you are to backslide.”
Like all things I’m sure there is some nuance here, but I was shook by his honesty. As an enjoyer of alcohol, it did make me fear a day where I would eventually have to give it up for one reason or another. It didn’t help that he continued to shed light on what it means to drink excessively:
“I don’t use ‘blackout’ as a noun anymore,” he told me.
“...No you overdosed is what you did. You overdosed and your body shut down.”
Shit man, the tea-totaler has a point. ‘Going out to overdose on 6th Street’ doesn’t sound quite as charming when you put it like that.
I made a point of asking him about the items in his house, from the furniture to the tools to the artwork, and everything in between. While it seemed like everything was mostly gathered from a myriad of sources, he revealed that a lot of it is actually Goodwill, especially the artwork.
Rugged posters and hanging banners covered his walls with a vintage, yet edgy aesthetic. One section of wall was taken up by a record insert from his favorite band - Against me!
“What kind of music?” I asked.
“In a nutshell, like, punk. But it kinda got lumped into this generally awful sub-genre called ‘folk punk’. Strangely two of my favorite artists fall into that, but as a whole I loath folk punk”
“Is it like the worst of both worlds kind of thing?”
“To put simply, yes, but often it’s such a slave to its own dogma.”
What an incredible statement. I can’t wait to go to my local dive bar and describe any given band as a ‘slave to its own dogma’ and watch heads turn as people will be forced to perceive me differently with this newfound wisdom I bestowed upon them.
“Every little knick-knack, I can tell you…maybe it’s not an interesting story…but I could be like ‘Here’s where that came from. Here’s why I haven’t thrown it away yet, or here’s what I intend to do with that.”
He pointed to a small white cone-shaped object next to the lamp on his side table. It was an elephant tusk he’d gotten from a coworker whose father does scrimshaw, and it was at that point I became fully convinced this man was somehow airdropped from the year 1430.
In between me capturing shots of the different corners of his house, Julian pointed out a small artifact on his shelf, which he identified as a squirrel skull. He began telling me the story of how he came across a dead squirrel in his backyard, and in the interest of harvesting its skull, looked after it for several weeks to make sure it wasn’t abducted while the body decomposed.
As he told the story, he felt the need to emphasize one detail: “You cannot keep the maggots from the flesh.”
This was his creative way of saying that the dead squirrel corpse had been smothered in maggots upon its death. “It’s like they talk about, “there’s only two things certain in life.”
“Death and taxes.” I affirmed.
“Well they say that’s in life. And maggots and the flesh…that is definitely not certain in life and there’s a big problem if it happens and at all”
*chuckles ensue*
“There’s a certainty in death…” I began, catching on to where he was going with this
“That maggots will follow,” he stated.
He went on to describe his general feelings on this experiment, “I would never go out of my way to desecrate a corpse, but at the same time I don’t act like a corpse has any sort of value in the world that a brick doesn’t have. Like, I wouldn’t go out of my way to fuck up a brick…so when it came time to remove the head or the skull…there wasn’t any like ‘well how to do I do this”, it was just like “let me just put on these fucking garden gloves and yank this skull off the vertebrae – and it just popped right off”.
As silly and whimsical as the topic was, I was so engaged with the depth to which he dissected and articulated his thoughts. Julian manages to turn what for a lot of people would be a one-sentence account of what happened into an entire story with premises and set-ups and a resolution. This, above all, is what indicates to me that Julian is a true Renaissance man - a man of unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination, who interfaces with the world through a very dynamic and poetic lens.
In addition to thrilling conversation, knowing Julian also has the perk of having access to quality, locally handcrafted leather goods. I recently commissioned him for a custom, fully-tooled leather belt and custom wallet. For the wallet I was able to choose the leather and accompanying hardware, and with the help of his recommendation I chose a beautiful Minerva vegetable-tanned leather from Tuscany, which came out stunning. Now not only do I have two gorgeous staple pieces that will last me several years, I now have a “leather guy” - something you might have had back before we bought everything we owned at big box stores.
Characters like Julian, with his old soul and passionate mind, are becoming increasingly rare and, as a result, valuable. We need people like Julian to remind us of certain types of beauty that we are at risk of losing - things like good conversation, good company, and an appreciation for quality. As the world continues to spin faster and faster, let us embrace the things that are truly timeless.
Julian recently bit the bullet and fired up an Instagram account for his leather work. As he put it, “I want people that met somebody who has one of my banjo straps at a festival in fucking Kentucky to be able to go to my Instagram and see my banjo straps.” But you don’t have to meet somebody who has one of his banjo straps at a festival in fucking Kentucky in order to follow him and see his work. His handle is @rootleatheratx, and I highly recommend giving him a follow and even treating yourself to a nice bag, belt, wallet, or other item. Feel free to tell him Jordan sent you!
