As a teenager trying to find her way in the world, Bonnie Paine looked for guidance in the stars.
“I was 14 or something, and my mom for my birthday got me an astrological reading that said I would most likely be a singer,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Mom, no way am I singing in front of people. This thing is so off.’ It just seemed impossible.”
Like most of us who dare question the cosmos, the burgeoning musician eventually surrendered to its vision. A founding member of the Nederland-born folk outfit Elephant Revival, Paine would go on to grace big-time stages, including multiple headlining slots at Red Rocks, Planet Bluegrass and performances with the Colorado Symphony.
But as a bashful Oklahoma kid who shrunk from the glare of the proverbial spotlight, she had good reason to believe her horoscope was bunk.
“I was so shy that whenever you had to say ‘here’ in class, I would literally puke in my mouth,” the 43-year-old Lyons resident tells Caribou Current at the outlet’s South Boulder headquarters ahead of her upcoming Fox Theatre show on May 16. “I hated it so much, I never dreamed I would be so comfortable singing for so many folks. Now I feel pretty fearless when music is happening.”
The path bringing Paine to her current position as one of the state’s most celebrated songwriters wasn’t a straight line. She rotated instruments from guitar to bongos (“I had this whole fortress I could hide behind”) before beginning her journey as a singer with the band Mighty Kind in the early 2000s. By the time she co-founded Elephant Revival a few years later with fellow locals Dango Rose, Bridget Law and Daniel Rodriguez, Colorado’s laid-back jam session culture had helped her brace for the attention that comes with being a world-class musician.
“That healthy balance of challenge and comfort is important to feel alive,” she says. “I don't know that I would have ever developed the way that I did if I didn't have those off-the-stage opportunities. It’s a different tone whenever you're performing right off the bat, versus getting to have those intimate moments where you’re sitting around the fire and passing a guitar around.”
Now Paine is stepping into the spotlight like never before with her debut solo album, Unseen. Released via Raven Song Records in conjunction with her upcoming Boulder performance, the new LP traffics in hushed and tender folk ballads guided by Paine’s gossamer melodies and multi-instrumental prowess. On a personal level, it feels like a full-circle for the former shy kid from the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
“It’s been a long time coming,” she says of the record that has consumed her creative energy these past few years. “I write a lot of songs, and most of them wind up in Elephant Revival, but these have a bit of a different tonality — a little more ethereal, building into a rocking kind of a vibe. They felt like they had a nice home in this solo project.”
After decades of dreaming and tinkering with songs, Paine’s new album first began to come together in the studio of another local music icon: Gregory Alan Isakov. The two had been close friends and collaborators for years when the idea of working together on Paine’s solo offering began to finally seem like a reality.
“He said, ‘Play me a song,’ so I played him something I was working on. He was like, ‘Let’s go record right now,’” she recalls. “That cracked the seal to get over the feeling like it has to be this perfect moment when you begin. I mean, it was pretty perfect.”
After laying down those initial tracks with Isakov, Paine finished the record with co-producer Daniel Sproul at a studio designed by her husband Oracle in Ferncliff, Colorado, followed by a stint with the legendary T Bone Burnett at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios.
Even with the wind of music royalty in her sails, and a cache of songs that had been simmering for decades, the idea of releasing an album under her own name felt uniquely vulnerable.
“That’s probably why it’s taken me 20 years,” Paine says with a laugh. “I was still a very shy person when I first started with Elephant. When we would do interviews, I would look at Bridget [Law] for every question, and she would answer for me. I got to ease into having people put so much attention on you. That part is not my favorite, honestly, but the music part is so fun.”
Given her reluctance to put herself in the center of the frame over the years, the title Unseen might at first seem a bit ironic for Paine’s grand solo debut. But just like the configuration of moons and planets that first lit her path during a fateful teenage astrological reading, she says it’s about those imperceptible forces that shape our lives forever.
“The most profound things that end up making our life in the long run mostly intangible and not seeable — very subtle things end up being the most important things,” she says. “It felt like these songs had been percolating for so long in the dark, and now they are going to be revealed.”
“It’s about this thing we’re all part of — the magnificent, unseeable forces that move our bodies around, make us feel the feelings and do the things, and make the wind blow,” she continues. “It’s an homage to whatever you want to call that beautiful thing we are all inextricable from.”
ON THE BILL: Bonnie Paine with Her Mana. 7 p.m. Saturday, May 16, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $37
