Indie interview: Butterfly Boucher

It’s not every day you hear that an artist is trying to shake their major label deal but that’s exactly what singer/songwriter Butterfly Boucher was doing for three years after releasing Flutterby on A&M in 2003. The album was full of catchy, melodic hooks and Boucher had all the makings of the next indie music starlet. Music supervisors from many popular TV shows took notice and songs were licensed to Grey’s Anatomy and Charmed. With that momentum, Boucher was off on a tour across the globe opening for Sarah McLachlan who was a big fan of Boucher.

Things looked promising but amongst all of the success, A&M, like many labels that fail to see the point anymore in developing an artist or seeing past the next quarters numbers, failed to promote the album. “They’d say that I was too indie for pop and too pop for the indie scene”, Boucher says in her bio. The label even made her go back into the studio to re-record the word “can’t” in a more American accent for radio.

Though those years and chaos Boucher was resilient. Fueled with a passion for music that was born amongst her close knit musical family and indie determination, Boucher sold over 20,000 copies of Flutterby on the Sarah McLachlan tour dates alone. She would stand for hours at the merchandise table meeting fans and signing the CD. 


“I’m sure from the outside it looks very indulgent”, Boucher said, “…it’s a very hard thing to be successful at.” What kept her going was a friend telling her to look up to the people she admires, Patty Smith and David Bowie, and realize “in their careers they never stop, they just keep going, they do music and that’s what they do.” So that’s exactly what she did. Boucher started working on her sophomore album when she finished the tour with Sarah McLachlan. Working in her home studio she recorded the pre-production guitar, bass, keyboard and all vocals tracks for what would become Scary Fragile, Boucher’s newest album released this past June 2nd.

Waiting to get into the studio with producer David Kahne for over a year was worth it. 


“This is exactly what I wanted… he had incredible respect in my project.” Boucher said that in conversations about her vision for the album he never took notes but he always remembered everything she said. “If something doesn’t sound quite right you actually physically feel it – it pains you… my stomach turns” said Boucher. David once spent almost 30 minutes finding a note that was missing in the song they were working on to perfect it and two hours working on a snare fill. That attention to detail as well as his and Boucher’s careful steps to keep the album fresh produced a great record that offers up fun surprises the more you listen to it.

Some of my favorite songs and sounds on the album are the tracks that were recorded in Boucher’s apartment. From the light switch in her apartment closet on “They Say We Grow” to the door closing on “To Feel Love” and there’s more I’ll let you discover! “When I hear that (the light switch) it really takes me back to that time of my life.” That personal, organic imprint is just one of the things that make this album what her fans have been waiting for so long.

Originally intending to record with a live band, David decided that Boucher should play all the instruments herself and they even opted for some of the original home studio recordings on “I Found Out.” The James Bond style guitar lick on “The Keeper” is another personal snapshot of a specific time in a Boucher’s life. She said it was the first lick she ever wrote on guitar when she was just seven years old!

Scary Fragile was originally finished in January 2006, but because Boucher’s label didn’t know how to market it she was led to a UK label where she re-recorded the album for that market because the first version, which is what’s imprinted now as Scary Fragile, was too American. They ended up not being able to release the CD and for the years between recording and being negotiated out of her contract one of the only things that seemed to work in Boucher’s favor was the support of music supervisors. If the last track, “A Bitter Song”, sounds familiar that’s because it was licensed to Grey’s Anatomy in February 2007.

It’s hard to pick one or even a few songs on the album that stand out because they are all so melodically and lyrically beautiful. When I told Boucher how much I enjoyed her lyrics she was genuinely surprised saying that lyric writing is what she is least confident about. “I have to spend a long time on lyrics before I’m sometimes I get a line, or a sentence.” That’s exactly what she said happened with “Gun For a Tongue”, where the first line came to her and then she plotted out the rest over time. It’s a great thing she did, the single is the most memorable song on the album and Boucher’s fans seemed to have a lot of fun recently recording karaoke versions of the song for a contest.

Fans can catch Boucher on Twitter where she posts photos, tweets and replies regularly. She is incredibly humble and still celebrates all the wonderful little successes in her career. You don’t usually see someone at her level appreciating those things so its very refreshing and inspiring to see someone not jaded and overworked by the business but thriving in it and laughing it off. There seemed to be a lot of posts on Twitter about her drinking coffee leading up to the album release so I had to ask her: Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? I didn’t get a clear answer but she did say she likes Americanos with one sugar sans milk.

And when I asked her what advice she had for other singer/songwriters she admitted what a hard question that is because everyone is so different but that the best advice she could think of would be to be determined. We also talked about the stresses of touring and got into how sad it is to come home to dead plants after being on the road, Boucher’s advice was to get some cacti which I am definitely planning on doing!

Boucher is currently touring on the West coast with more tour dates in the works. You can download Scary Fragile on iTunes or pick up a real CD at a live show.

Learn more at ButterflyBoucher.com