While her Total Request Live contemporaries pile onto arena bills, eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter Michelle Branch has taken a page from the punk rock handbook and planned an all-ages club tour for next month. The native Arizonan, whose single "Everywhere" proved one of 2001's few organic moments in pre-twenties pop, will launch her first headlining stint February 6th in San Francisco, winding through the Rockies, the Midwest and East Coast before closing at Atlanta's Cotton Club on February 26th.

Branch, whose The Spirit Room album (released last August) was recently certified gold (sales of 500,000), says she hopes the tour will create some distance between her music and that of other teens with whom she's often grouped.

"I've always wanted to do a tour like this," Branch says. "Something intimate that everyone can come see. Most of these clubs are places the people who like my music might not ordinarily go to, so it'll be a neat way for them to have kind of a more rock experience."

Following the U.S. tour, Branch expects to visit Japan and other Far East points on a brief promotional run before returning home for more gigs.

On Friday, Branch will perform "All You Wanted," the follow-up single to "Everywhere," on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Although she'll stop by TRL this Thursday to debut the recently filmed video for the song, Branch hopes folks can recognize her outside of Carson's carnival.

"I kind of get lumped into that scene because of my age," she says. "But at the same time, if people really look, they'll find younger people making so much great music, people like [Atlantan singer-songwriter] John Mayer. There are more people out there doing what I'm doing; it's just a matter of finding them."

Michelle Branch tour dates:

2/6: San Francisco, Slim's
2/8: Los Angeles, The Roxy
2/9: Phoenix, Bash on Ash
2/10: Tucson, The Rock
2/12: Boulder, CO, Fox Theatre
2/14: Minneapolis, TBA
2/15: Chicago, Park West
2/16: Detroit, St. Andrew's
2/17: Cincinnati, Bogart's
2/19: Boston, Paradise
2/20: New York, Irving Plaza
2/22: Philadelphia, Theater of Living Arts
2/23: Washington, D.C., 9:30 Club
2/24: Norfolk, VA, TBA
2/26: Atlanta, Cotton Club

GREG HELLER
(January 15, 2002)