SERVING SIDE OF VERSE
Staying close to music roots
You can find out a lot about Bruce Enloe, the chef and owner of a vibey nook in Kemptville called the Branch, by reading his restaurant’s website where the stories talk about growing up in rural Texas and doing the “band thing” in Austin before moving to San Francisco.
That’s where he became a chef and met the Canadian, Nicole LeBlanc, who became his wife. They settled in Kemptville almost a decade ago and followed a dream of opening their own little spot, the Branch Restaurant and Texas Grill, specializing in fresh, organic food, including the best catfish I’ve ever tasted.
Although Enloe long ago gave up music as a career, he takes pride in presenting live acts at the restaurant, and was never able to shed the songwriting bug. “I’ve been writing songs my whole life,” he says, his voice betraying no trace of the Texas twang that slips out when he’s singing. “I don’t know why but songs come into my head. Sometimes I’ll sit down and write them out and figure it out on guitar. Then I sort of set them aside.”
Aided by some musical friends from the area who were willing to be part of a new “band thing,” he recorded Bonfire, a quickie, live-off-the-floor album of his tunes a couple of years back, partly as a gift for his mother. The band sounded terrific, the songs kept coming, and now Enloe is set to release a more fully realized project. Unseasonably Cool is Enloe’s second album of original material recorded with his talented friends, the Burning Sensations, in a studio.
The friends, by the way, include fellow Kemptville-area residents, Brad Turcotte, aka Brad Sucks, and guitarist Ben Mullin, the two musicians who co-produced the album. The full nine-person lineup also includes members of Uncle Sean and the Shifty Drifters, Graven and Fiddlehead Soup.
This time, Enloe dug into the dark corners of his life, and come up with diverse, rootsy songs about falling off the wagon, dealing with messy breakups and other personal stuff that you probably won’t read about in the restaurant’s newsletter. Songs range from the bluegrassy twang of Don’t Burn Your Bible to the defiant rocker Late Fight to the cosmic boogie of God Particle.
“The first album was almost a love letter to my mom,” Enloe says. “Those were the songs that I knew she’d love. Then there are these other stories that are the kinds of stories that anyone accumulates in a realistic life. They’re not as happy. I’ve been divorced, had rough times with substances and that kind of thing. I’ve travelled a lot and moved a lot and lost friends, and of course, made new ones along the way.
“Those are the ones that were left untold by the first album. The reason I called this one Unseasonably cool is because it’s a little bit cooler in subject matter. This is the other side, the emotional rawness and honesty that happens sometimes in life.”
When Enloe was part of the Austin punk scene in the 90s, he was in a country band, of all things, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bad Livers and Butthole Surfers. Like everyone around him at that “weird, fun time,” he wanted to be a rock star. His aspirations have changed a lot since then.
“I’ve gotten to know another side of the industry by booking musicians,” he says. “I see the blue-collar musician, the people who are able to support themselves and do the job and are easy to work with and write good songs and sing well and are in tune and on time. That side of the music world was not something I was exposed to when I was younger. I was crushed when it didn’t work out the way I expected it to in my 20s.”
“But I think at this point in my life, I just want to write really good songs. That’s more important to me than selling records. I already have a job, I have a vocation. I’m not a kid anymore. I’d like for more people to hear them but I don’t really want to hang all my hopes on making it a career. I would much rather have the respect of other songwriters, as cheesy as that sounds.”