LOS ANGELES, CA- A few weeks ago, a musician whose music I respect emailed me a link to a song from an artist that I wasn’t familiar with. When the musician suggested that the artist was a cross between Devendra Banhart and Shakey Graves, my curiosity piqued. The artist was Branson Anderson and the song was “Moonshade”.
As soon as I pressed play, and the playful fingerpicking guitar jumped in with Branson smoothly chiming in, “Like that?”, all I could think was, “Yup, just like that.”
Branson hails from the desert town of Logandale, an unincorporated town in Clark County, Nevada population 6,924. Now based in Ogden, Utah, he’s a rugged working man driving trucks for a rock quarry when he isn’t working on, or touring with, his music.
As his bio states, “as a teen, [he] started writing songs with dreams of rambling across the land as a traveling musician.” In “Moonshade”, you can hear that spirit of wanderlust in the tone and timbre of his music. It’s classic Americana at it’s core and very clearly exhibits a due respect to artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash whom Branson says he draws inspiration from. Like Dylan and Cash, there’s casual ease in the way he sings, but every lyrics feels rooted in a modern truth. When he sings, “I never trust anyone that knows what they want,” I smiled because it’s true.
Of the song, Branson says:
“Moonshade touches on a few things, depending on the verse. I use a romance I had with someone once as a segue as I typically do to get the song flowing and then touch on other things, such as materialism, being unsure of oneself and life decisions, loneliness. I throw in personal history like my hometown and mentionings of my grandpa and dad because I like when old blues singers do that kind of stuff.” -Branson Anderson
Have a listen, and let us know what you think in the comments!
Branson will be celebrating the official release of “Moonshade” March 1st at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City. Tickets for the show can be purchased HERE.
Follow Branson Anderson on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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