The nervous energy, the simmering anxiousness bottled up inside the willowy frame of an 18-year-old girl, bottled up until it's fit to burst, is nearly palpable as Soren Bryce, two shows into her most recent road swing across the West Coast, speaks in clipped, staccato bursts of her passion for music, the way the piano has opened a whole new door to songwriting, the way a path - sometimes followed, but hopefully blazed - can be the driving force behind the love in your life.
For Bryce, music is that path. And wandering the Pike Place market in Seattle, still sporting the warming glow of the previous night's performance in her voice, Bryce knows she's right where she needs to be - for now.
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"I was originally a violin player. I started in the fifth grade. And I felt that was kind of what I was going to do," Bryce told Headlines and Global News recently. "I thought I was going to go to school for it and everything. I even looked at a college here in Seattle for that, but I started writing music mostly because I had a friend who really pushed me to start writing and it just kind of spiraled from there. It became kind of like an outlet for me."
Bryce, an Amarillo, Texas, native who made her way toward the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles, like a moth to a light, in order to pursue music has a happy, unencumbered quality to her tone of voice. She laughs easily, if not often, heartily, if not loudly. She speaks with sagacity well beyond her years. And yet, she's still that 18-year-old girl, still just coming to grips with a burgeoning musical career she hoped for but certainly didn't expect when she sat down and worked on a song for the first time at age 14.
"I don't know if it was angst as much as nervous energy," Bryce says of what it was that pushed her to write at such a young age. "I was always kind of anxious as a kid and I still deal with it nowadays, but it's definitely calmed me down, and it was just kind of a way to get all this energy, get all these thoughts and feelings and my opinions on life out."
That energy, that anxiousness - her intelligence - leads Bryce to, as she puts it, "overthink things." Music has become her outlet, the spigot - sometimes closed tight, and sometimes opened wide - through which her thoughts, hopes and fears gush. Thoughts, she believes, can say something, can mean something.
"It kind of started just as a hobby," she says. "Like I was doing it for myself, so when I figured out that people liked it, it was really kind of shocking, so my writing style kind of shifted. Now I feel like I'm in a position to say something that means something to a lot of people instead of just doing it for myself."
Still one month shy of her 19th birthday - she considers the tour a "nice early birthday present" - it's not surprising that Bryce is still finding her way as a songstress. For most 18-year-olds, daily concerns don't go far beyond parental decision-making and romantic encounters.
For Bryce, her thoughts are consumed by sound, by love - by navigating every fork, every unexpected obstacle in that musical path, and forging ahead, likely scathed, but ultimately unbowed.
And so she picks her way along, working to develop a sound she can call her own.
"Going into working with [producer] David Kahne I didn't really know what I wanted to sound like. And I was kind of writing to write because I thought it was cool or I thought the idea was cool or the songs meant a lot to me," she says. "So I brought them in because they meant a lot to me, and we ended up kind of messing around and finding this sound that I - " here she slows, struggling to find the right words to describe something she ultimately can't, " - don't really know how to label."
But like a small raft buoyed by rolling waves, Bryce's optimism lifts her up and over the crest of her uncertainty, almost in an instant.
"But, I think it's great. I love that I have the opportunity now to gear up for another project and I don't have to focus on making it sound like another thing. I can kind of bridge out and do whatever I want.
"Just a lot of freedom."
And while Bryce does touch on more general subjects like relationships, she feels the pull of her thoughts moving her in a direction that begs for a deeper consideration, a more real, open, genuine honesty that will, she hopes, help her better understand the world around her.
"I'm writing a lot of music maybe more for myself and, not self-approving, but being introspective," she says. "And looking at the things that are honest and writing about that."
In terms of composition, Bryce, a self-taught pianist, finds herself these days writing predominantly on piano. She'll still dabble on guitar, still plays violin, sometimes doing session work for friends - though it "has definitely taken a backseat to everything else," she admits - but it's in piano that she's discovered a new branch of her path.
It's opened a new spectrum of sound, of possibility, that she hopes can help her avoid the pratfalls that she sees so many other young female singer-songwriters fall prey to.
"I was just like, 'Man, I feel like there's so much more I could be accessing and approaching in a different way,' and I just wanted to explore and experiment," Bryce says.
And much like her manner of speech - rapid-fire bursts slowing to a sudden halt, punctuated by moments when you can almost hear the gears of her mind spinning - Bryce's actual songwriting is an oftentimes explosive, even erratic exercise.
That spigot, sometimes forced closed by some unknown hand, holds the thoughts in check, keeps them bottled inside of Bryce's mind, clogging the interior pipes, backing up into various areas of Bryce's being, threatening every crack and crevasse, until finally, the stream bursts forth, and in an instant the music that has been building inside of her is freed in one great, rapid undertaking.
"I write the music first," she explains. "I'll sit and play at my piano for hours a day, just messing around and coming up with ideas. So when I actually feel compelled to write something, it happens very quickly because I already have the idea, and it's very much stream of consciousness. I'm spitting out whatever I'm thinking about or it's almost like an explosion - I know that sounds very violent. It's just kind of what comes out. And most of my stuff was written in under 15 minutes because I'll keep it bottled up so long that I have to get something out. And then it just happens."
What has happened for Bryce so far has been a steady rise, aided in large part by the success of her critically acclaimed, self-titled debut EP and bolstered by a recent video release for the upbeat, if ultimately tragic, "Ride With You."
"I just thought the concept was so interesting," Bryce says of the concept for the video, directed by Devereux Milburn. "The song is very upbeat-sounding, but if you look at the lyrics it is very negative and kind of condemning today's dating world, so I was so happy when I read his concept because I thought it really fit the mood of the lyrics more so than the music. And I kind of wanted to put that contrast somewhere so, people would think deeper about it than it just being another upbeat, kind of catchy pop song."
Another song, "Newport," showcases the versatility, the juxtaposition of sound that Bryce has, unintentionally, found herself exploring most recently. It also showcases that beyond-her-years understanding of herself, of the world.
Everyone of you is a hoax/
Everyone of you is a hoax/
But at least you have a pretty life/
You went from somebody's daughter to somebody's wife/
It's a lyric that Bryce actually wasn't sure she wanted to keep when she first came into the studio with Kahne. But he insisted. Bryce, afraid of sounding preachy, ultimately took Kahne's advice, albeit reluctantly.
"I'm glad I did because it seems like everybody really likes it," she says, a smile, colored by something like the sound of a shoulder shrug, in her voice.
But the song itself, written on her prom night in the town of Newport, speaks volumes about Bryce. A pop princess she is not. Doing her best to avoid labeling the song or her own ideals "feminist" at the same time she struggles to voice the intent behind the lyric without looking down her nose, Bryce explains that it's a piece she hopes can show people that every path, different though they might be, holds meaning.
And thanks to Bryce's path - her musical path, her limpid passion - it's a story she has the chance to tell.
"I used to have really bad insomnia and I was up until five in the morning, just playing around on guitar on someone's porch and it was kind of when I was thinking about all this stuff, I guess, so I named the song after the town," she says. "But, it's just about - people, especially in L.A., are very - they feel like there's a certain path they have to go down. And that it means that they're perfect or better or successful to go down these certain steps, like finding the perfect job, finding the perfect husband and finding a great marriage and life and everything. So, 'Somebody's daughter to somebody's wife,' just means you should have an identity outside of that."
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When we spoke, Bryce was preparing for her third show in supporting Mr. Little Jeans, a Norwegian singer-songwriter, at The Crocodile in Seattle, having just arrived into Washington state fresh off a night at the Media Club in Vancouver. The tour has three more dates, at Valley Bar in Phoenix and Soda Bar in San Diego, before one final blowout at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles.
For Bryce, now an L.A. native, the tour-closer will be a homecoming of sorts.
But the ending of the tour means just another layover, one more way station on a path Bryce believes holds greater purpose. And for Bryce, a soon-to-be 19-year-old already courting fame, if not yet stardom, that's just fine by her - for now.
"I mean, to be 18 and just to have music out or to have people even listening is just crazy to me," she says in her charming, disarming way, a laugh falling from her lips, if only for a brief moment.
"I still can't believe it at all. I'm really thankful for all the opportunities I've gotten. I think success is just find something you really care about and love and figuring out a way to make it work in your life so you don't have to do anything else but that. And I feel like that's kind of the path I'm on."
