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SunFest headliner Branch learning about life, love and making music her way By Bill DeYoung entertainment editor April 30, 2004 Take away the slick pop production, the heavy percussion, electric guitars and orchestras, and Michelle Branch's songs are introspective, self-doubting pieces of poetry. The Arizona-born singer/songwriter, who stops at SunFest on Saturday, obsesses about matters of the heart from a wounded and yearning perspective. Her debut album, 2001's "The Spirit Room," sold more than a million copies and produced a couple of gigantic hits, "Everywhere" and "All You Wanted." She's just 20 years old. As it turns out, romance -- broken or otherwise -- was just a writing exercise in the early days. "My first album was written when I was 14, and there was no emotional connection, for me, with any of the songs I'd written," Branch says from a Connecticut tour stop. "My whole record was basically about relationships that I hadn't been in." Released last year, "Hotel Paper" came from a more mature vantage point. "On the latest record, I was definitely going through everything that I was writing. So it was a new experience for me. At one point I was like 'I don't know if I want anyone to hear these songs.' It just seemed so personal at the time." John Shanks' multi-layered production is radio-friendly, and put Branch on the commercial map alongside other "girly pop" singer/songwriters of the past year or so, including Avril Levigne and Vanessa Carlton. Yet Branch is hungry to record her songs the way they're written: simply. She points to the title song on "Hotel Paper," a lilting ballad in waltz time, as an indicator of her next direction. "I wish I would've done the record more with that approach," she says. "It was still a little bit too polished, too produced, for me. "Playing with a band is a completely new thing for me. My favorite thing to do is sit with a guitar and play acoustic. I'm a huge fan of acoustic performances, and I love records that are a little bit more tender like that." Her all-time favorite artists, she says, are Cat Stevens and Patsy Cline. In the studio making "The Spirit Room," as a green teenager, things were out of her hands. "The music that I had been making was always acoustic, so it was like hearing a completely new thing," she reflects. "And it was exciting: 'Oh wow, I didn't know my song could sound like a song on the radio.' That was kind of my interpretation of it all. "Whereas now, I don't want my songs to sound like every other song on the radio. Can I go back to making the records that I wanted to make before?" She wants to make half her third album acoustic, and the other half more straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. "But not like cheesy Linkin Park or something like that," Branch says. "I love bands like the Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden." Branch says things in her life -- including a steady boyfriend, the bass player in her live band -- are going great. Unfortunately, that plays havoc with the angst necessary to write songs about heartache and broken romantic promises. "For me, I just don't want what I do to ever feel like work," she explains. "And just recently, a lot of what I've been doing has started to feel like work. "I need to take a step back and try to enjoy everything that's come my way in the past few years, because I haven't really had time off since I released my first record. "I've decided that after I finish this tour, I'm going to just sit at my house and enjoy myself for once."
SunFest headliner Branch learning about life, love and making music her way By Bill DeYoung entertainment editor April 30, 2004 Take away the slick pop production, the heavy percussion, electric guitars and orchestras, and Michelle Branch's songs are introspective, self-doubting pieces of poetry. The Arizona-born singer/songwriter, who stops at SunFest on Saturday, obsesses about matters of the heart from a wounded and yearning perspective. Her debut album, 2001's "The Spirit Room," sold more than a million copies and produced a couple of gigantic hits, "Everywhere" and "All You Wanted." She's just 20 years old. As it turns out, romance -- broken or otherwise -- was just a writing exercise in the early days. "My first album was written when I was 14, and there was no emotional connection, for me, with any of the songs I'd written," Branch says from a Connecticut tour stop. "My whole record was basically about relationships that I hadn't been in." Released last year, "Hotel Paper" came from a more mature vantage point. "On the latest record, I was definitely going through everything that I was writing. So it was a new experience for me. At one point I was like 'I don't know if I want anyone to hear these songs.' It just seemed so personal at the time." John Shanks' multi-layered production is radio-friendly, and put Branch on the commercial map alongside other "girly pop" singer/songwriters of the past year or so, including Avril Levigne and Vanessa Carlton. Yet Branch is hungry to record her songs the way they're written: simply. She points to the title song on "Hotel Paper," a lilting ballad in waltz time, as an indicator of her next direction. "I wish I would've done the record more with that approach," she says. "It was still a little bit too polished, too produced, for me. "Playing with a band is a completely new thing for me. My favorite thing to do is sit with a guitar and play acoustic. I'm a huge fan of acoustic performances, and I love records that are a little bit more tender like that." Her all-time favorite artists, she says, are Cat Stevens and Patsy Cline. In the studio making "The Spirit Room," as a green teenager, things were out of her hands. "The music that I had been making was always acoustic, so it was like hearing a completely new thing," she reflects. "And it was exciting: 'Oh wow, I didn't know my song could sound like a song on the radio.' That was kind of my interpretation of it all. "Whereas now, I don't want my songs to sound like every other song on the radio. Can I go back to making the records that I wanted to make before?" She wants to make half her third album acoustic, and the other half more straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. "But not like cheesy Linkin Park or something like that," Branch says. "I love bands like the Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden." Branch says things in her life -- including a steady boyfriend, the bass player in her live band -- are going great. Unfortunately, that plays havoc with the angst necessary to write songs about heartache and broken romantic promises. "For me, I just don't want what I do to ever feel like work," she explains. "And just recently, a lot of what I've been doing has started to feel like work. "I need to take a step back and try to enjoy everything that's come my way in the past few years, because I haven't really had time off since I released my first record. "I've decided that after I finish this tour, I'm going to just sit at my house and enjoy myself for once."