Michelle Branch

Chance inevitably finds Michelle Branch. \nShe got her first guitar by chance, a castoff gift from an uncle. When he discovered the old remnant lying in a closet, he proffered it to his niece under one condition: a diligent commitment to learning to play. She did -- in 14 days. \nShe credits that same sort of providence with dropping her demo tape in former BMG Music vice president Danny Strick's lap. A family friend and real estate agent in Branch's hometown of Sedona, Ariz. met producer Rick Neigher, Strick's associate, while giving a condominium tour. Only 15 at the time and still without a driver's license, Branch commandeered her neighbor's golf cart and drove to the tour's site. A month later she was producing and distributing an independent album and touring the West Coast with teen pop group Hanson. And a few months after that, Strick begged her to sign with Maverick Records. \nSpeaking on the phone from a tour stop in Las Vegas, a certain adolescent tinge still colors Branch's inflection. After all, the 18-year-old just completed her final year of home-schooling.\nBut her star is rising, evidenced through increased radio airplay of her first hit mainstream single, "Everywhere." She just completed a tour opening for rock and alternative band Lifehouse, and this week, she'll hit the Bluebird with another Maverick Records artist, Jude. There's even an Internet campaign launched to get Branch's videos airtime on MTV's Total Request Live. \nYet as the first whirlwind year of her professional career comes to a close, Branch, the daughter of a restaurant manager and retired plumbing contractor, seems remarkably unaffected. \n"It's definitely surreal, but I've always wanted to do this my whole life," Branch says. "I always imagined being on tour. Once it actually happened, it really didn't surprise that much. It was like normal stuff."\nBut she has come to realize that being on the road isn't quite the lush life she expected as an aspiring songstress playing three-chord rifts on her uncle's castoff six-string. \n"It's not as glam as lot of people think," Branch says. "They don't know how hard it is -- how expensive touring can be. I thought I'd be staying at the nicest hotels, with this huge bus and playing great venues. But it's funny. This is like the 'Holiday Inn tour.'"\nYet life on the road can prove lonely, although Branch's best friend and bandmates accompany her on every leg. Mere days ago, packing her tour bus to round out the Lifehouse tour and prepare for her stint with Jude, Branch broke down in tears. Away from home since January, a yearning for home simply "overwhelmed" her. \n"When you're doing what I'm doing everyone thinks you're so huge, and no one even knows how lonely bus tours can be," Branch says. "You play a show for hundreds of people, but then you go home alone."\nShe conveys that tedious solitude in her favorite single on The Spirit Room with "All You Wanted."\nBut despite her sometimes lonely lifestyle, her enthusiasm for her music is in no way compromised or unrecognized. Her unique blend of pop and rock vocals have earned her rave reviews with industry executives and critics alike. Her edgy blend of acoustically-driven rhythm and melodic descants belie her age; in fact, a few venue operators have denied her show dates because she's too young. And though a few critics still try to confine her music to the teen-pop realm, Branch remains unshaken. \n"I'm definitely a songwriter before a musician," Branch says. "I remember being so excited to learn to play the guitar and locking myself in my room to learn three or four chords."\nAnd although she never intended to be known as the quintessential "girl with a guitar," Branch claims she'd rather adopt that mantra than the pre-packaged bubblegum pop icon status of Britney Spears or Mandy Moore -- with whom, in fact, Entertainment Weekly reviewers have drawn comparisons. \nBranch handles criticism well. She's aware of her talents and her limits; studying voice as a child at local universities, she often contended with peers, teachers and aspiring musicians who told her she "just couldn't make it." They encouraged her to have a backup plan. They told her to finish public school. Yet Branch had an agenda of her own. \nHer music has been classified as typical Top 40 fare, gaining airplay on B97 and other pop and rock stations, but Branch refuses to lock herself into one genre.\n"I'll definitely let whoever pick up pick it up," Branch says. "Music is an opinion, and I want whoever likes it and wants to play it to do that."\nBecause she writes her own material, the course of her album was unchartered -- it "evolved," she says. Collaborating with producer John Shanks, Branch allowed the "songs to become themselves." She doesn't want to stick with one songwriting and producing formula "just because it works." Rather, she says, she wants each song to bring something different to the record. \nThe fan support, she says, speaks for itself.\nSenior Erin Arkin got hooked on Branch's music after a friend loaned her a copy of The Spirit Room. She listened to it once -- straight through -- and then got online and printed out the lyrics for the entire disc.\nFor Arkin, Branch's direct writing style makes every track uniquely interesting.\n"I spent some time reading through the lyrics before listening to the album agai, and I just knew which songs would be my favorite because of what they say," Arkin says. "I can relate to her music because the emotions and feelings that are expressed through the lyrics are so heartfelt."\nBranch's next album is currently in the works. She's again coupled with Shanks, working through the early stages of recording and producing, as well as churning out new original material.\nMany young stars have recently taken a hiatus from the spotlight to attend college, but Branch says that's not her bag.\n"I am not a school person," Branch says. "I was always the girl who got in trouble. I had the worst grades; I was always ditching class to go to the theater and music concerts."\nThe idea of school frustrated her, she claims. That impatience mounted her sophomore year, as teachers and peers encouraged her to stay in school in case songwriting didn't pan out.\n"I didn't want to allow that," Branch says. "That would have been leaving myself room to fail, and I didn't want that to be an option."\nShe ended up leaving her public school, with the consent of her parents, to take correspondence classes through Brigham Young University. She kept the minimum history, math and science courses to graduate and chose classes such as astronomy and business marketing to maintain her interest by day as she worked on securing small venues to headline by night. \nShe credits her parents with much of her success, deeming them a "huge part" of where her career stands today. They even financed her independent first effort.\n"They had options," she maintains. "They could have done anything with me -- told me no, put me on 'The Mickey Mouse Club' or whatever. But instead, they really taught me there's no reason why you can't do what you love for a living."\nShe laughs.\n"And that's where I am. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm still dreaming"