One moment in time utah9/7/2023 ![]() ![]() “I discovered Laura Marling in college and she’s definitely had a big impact on my writing and playing, and still continues to inspire, and lately I feel in complete awe of Lori McKenna and her writing. “I didn’t realize then how much those women had already shaped the way I would play and write, but I’m grateful my dad had such good taste,” she says with enthusiasm. Though many young women in the ‘90s can count the latter as an influence, it’s a particularly noteworthy turn of events for Jane, who is a cast member in Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill.” Jane notes that her dad can be credited with introducing her to many of her early favorites whose fingerprints can be heard throughout her own music - Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, and Alanis Morisette, among them. She taught herself to play guitar at age 15 on a borrowed guitar, partly in an attempt to process feelings about teen crushes and the myriad feelings that accompany young adulthood, but also as a way to be seen as more than just a “theater kid.” Once she started playing and writing, she realized she didn’t care much at all what other people thought when she had the ability to get lost in emulating Joni Mitchell’s tunings and Shawn Colvin’s fingerpicking patterns. “While I felt significantly less cool than those people, their music sounded more like what was going on in my head and my heart than what anyone else my age was listening to,” she says. “I was always a bit of a social outcast growing up to proud, alcohol-drinking sinners in a very Mormon town, and the friends I did have were always the cool indie people who listened to the ‘Devil’s music.” Jane was raised in Ogden, Utah, a mountain town north of Salt Lake City. “With time I have come to realize that these so-called shortcomings are human and that my deep-seated fears of disappointing others come from a place of empathy, not weakness.” ![]() ![]() “Growing up in Utah, I felt constantly aware of my different-ness and keenly attuned to all the things that made me unloveable, or wrong,” she continues. “But I felt that writing a song that clearly laid out those things in the hopes that it might make someone love me more was an interesting twist on a ‘pining-for-you’ love song.” “I find it too easy to write and sing about my insecurities and the pieces of myself that I don’t love,” Jane says. It’s an introduction to the smooth, bright vocals that permeate the album’s nine songs, bringing to mind the best of Laurel Canyon-era folk filtered through a modern-day lens. The album’s opener, “Best of Me,” is an exploration of the ways we present ourselves to the people we desire, a note about how our insecurities can feel like they’re truly getting the better of us. “My Bed is about the sad and sticky process of letting go of a lover, as well as the idea of a life I thought I wanted and trying to find confidence and security in the unknown,” Jane says. It’s raw, honest, messy and sometimes a little angry along the way. “There’s nothing I love more than taking people with me on a genuine emotional journey.” Written, mostly, in the wake of a relationship’s end, Jane Bruce’s debut full-length album, My Bed, takes listeners through the passage of a specific moment in time, a familiar touchstone in what it means to be a person: the experience of letting go of a perceived future, and recognizing self-worth in the process. ![]()
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