The Everywhere And Back Again Tour gave “Breathe” and “All You Wanted” company from across Branch’s catalog.
Twenty-five years after “Everywhere” introduced Michelle Branch to much of the world, it was the natural closer for her Thursday, Nov. 12, show at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater. The “Everywhere And Back Again Tour” traced what she’d done since that first hit, from the guitar pop of The Spirit Room and Hotel Paper to country radio with The Wreckers. With a quarter century of music, that last chorus felt like a celebration of everything Branch has built around it.
Branch was just 17 when she signed with Madonna’s Maverick Records, and part of what made her stand out in 2001 was how plainly she could put the things people were usually too embarrassed to say out loud. The songs on The Spirit Room could be earnest enough to make you wince a little if they caught you at the wrong age. They also had choruses you remembered after one listen. The album went double platinum in the U.S., and two years later Hotel Paper debuted at No. 2. By then, she could take the same directness that made “All You Wanted” so easy to sing and turn it into something as sharp as “Are You Happy Now?” There’s a little more steel in that song, and it still sounds good on her.
The anniversary project had some fun with the era that made her famous. In July, Branch introduced it with MBTV, a one-off show in West Hollywood staged in the spirit of TRL. She took fan questions and played the songs that would’ve fit right into an afternoon on MTV. The tour shares its name with an EP of rerecordings released Nov. 6, less than a week before the Pabst show. The TV special played with the way people first encountered Branch. The EP lets her change how those same songs sound now.
The best example is “The Game of Love.” Branch won a Grammy for singing it with Carlos Santana, whose guitar is as recognizable as her voice on the 2002 recording. For the EP, she teamed with New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander, who co-wrote the song. The new version puts synths where you’d expect Santana’s guitar and lets Branch share the vocal with one of the people who wrote it. It’s an interesting choice for an anniversary release. If any song had an arrangement listeners could hum from memory, it was that one, right down to the parts Branch didn’t sing.
There was another kind of freedom in hearing “Leave the Pieces” in the same show. Branch and Jessica Harp took the song to No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart as The Wreckers in 2006, after Branch had already established herself in pop. “Leave the Pieces” has the same plainspoken delivery as her early hits, especially when the singer gets tired of waiting for someone else to make up their mind. You can hear why country was a good fit for her. She could get a whole relationship across in a line or two, then leave enough room for the chorus to do the rest.
Milwaukee got a look at another side of Branch at Summerfest in 2017, when she was touring behind Hopeless Romantic, which she co-produced with Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. The album’s darker sound gave her room to let a feeling hang unresolved. The title track still made a good companion to “Everywhere” at the Pabst. On one, Branch sounds like she’s still figuring out how much she wants to give away. On the other, the feeling comes spilling out. The tour was at its best when it put those two instincts close enough together to hear how long she’s been working with both.
“Everywhere” still has the urgency of a song written by someone young enough to feel like the thing she’s singing about might take over her whole life. A quarter century later, Branch can sing it with all the country records, collaborations and quieter songs that came after it in the room with her. There’s a lot to hear in that first hit once you know where she went from there.
