Vid Pick: Jane Ellen Bryant – Too Smooth

One listen to Austin, TX, singer-songwriter Jane Ellen Bryant’s latest single, “Too Smooth,” and you’re sure to be wowed by the country pop tune that features an infusion of Motown soul.

The song is off her recently released EP, Let Me Be Lost, and lemme tell ya, you’ll be glad you found her music.

Wanting to know more about her, and her work, I caught up with Jane Ellen Bryant to ask her about the retro vibe of “Too Smooth,” the wide variety of genres she embraces, and what she’s found by being lost. We also discussed rotary phones, children’s Christmas concerts, and adult coloring books, because … journalism!

Everything about “Too Smooth,” from the song to the video, has a very cool retro vibe. Is any part of you an old soul?

Ooh, good question. I like to think so, but I guess you can’t really know for sure.

I feel like I identify with old souls.

I’m probably in-between somewhere, where I want to be young still, but I have a deeper understanding of things, maybe.

Were the boombox and rotary phone from your house? That would be a pretty clear indicator.

{laughs} They were from my best friend’s house, but I do have all old furniture, and things that would have fit right in with that video.

You have a best friend with a rotary phone? How old is she, 80?

Nope, she’s my age, but she, like me, collects old things.

That’s very cool. You could really hang those up, like get angry at someone and slam the phone.

Oh yeah, it’s so much more satisfying than pressing “end” on your screen.


Speaking of all things old school, let’s dive into your history. What records do you remember hearing your folks play when you were growing up that, in retrospect, helped shape you as the person, and artist, you are today?

I remember falling asleep at night and hearing my dad play Sheryl Crow albums. I just love her production, and her songwriting, and the pop commercial success it had without losing this edge, cool, individual thing that she had. So she was a huge influence.

I was also a ‘90s kid, so of course the Spice Girls, and Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks had their influence, but my dad introduced me to all the great rock n roll legends, and a lot of folk, and old school country. It was a pretty wide scope, but Sheryl Crow, and a Shawn Colvin album called A Few Small Repairs, I remember vividly paying attention to the sounds, and the production, when I was in elementary school, and I always wanted to be one of those singer-songwriters that really had this unique songwriting, unique voice, unique production.

Were you a talent show kid, or did you not showcase your skills until you were a bit more grown?

I was always a performer, but it started more so with dance.

I would take voice lessons, and be singing at home, but I didn’t sing as much publicly until junior high, or high school, in school, or in a church. Pretty much anywhere that would let me on a stage, I would find it.

I started songwriting more in high school, so the path became more clear when my guitar, and piano playing, and songwriting came into play, but always a performer, always making my siblings sit down and watch me. Poor things.

The dance routine from elementary school, is it on a VHS tape somewhere?

{laughs} It totally is. There’s hours of VHS tapes of my sister and I singing the Spice Girls, or doing the “Macarena,” just terrible shit, but I do remember specifically how making up dances was my way of expressing how powerful the song made me feel.


Do you remember the first song you performed on a stage, in front of an audience that wasn’t your family?

This may not have been the first, but I remember in sixth grade my friend and I did a duet for Christmas of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and it had this part where I had to sing really high, and in Latin, and I felt like that was really cool, being able to do that. I remember it went over well, and it got me wanting to get in front of an audience more often.

So you were the bright spot in middle school Christmas shows, because usually those shows are an awful mess.

Oh yeah, and I’m a voice teacher now, so I have to sit through those things, and they are awful, so if you have somebody that isn’t awful you all remember it, and you’re sure to tell them.

Moving to the present, “Too Smooth” is wildly different than the two singles that preceded it, “Attention,” and “Take Me as I Am.” How did you come to embrace so many different styles of music, and what do you feel is the common thread, or theme, that can be found throughout all your work?

That is the ultimate question in my life these days.

When I wrote these songs, like before you hear the production number, and you just hear the bare bones of them, they didn’t feel all that different to me at the time.

I knew “Attention” was more pop, dance, oriented, “Too Smooth” was a little bit more country, and with “Take Me As I Am” I wanted to do a digital pop thing. I just decided to change each song fully to what that song was meant to be, and I didn’t think as much of what Jane Ellen Bryant is meant to be, so there is a little bit of a disconnect there, but it all came from me. I just tried to chase what I heard the potential of those songs being.

The “Attention” video was such a trip. It was a crazy idea. I was thinking, “Damn, what would I do if I wasn’t scared about this at all, and just went for it?”


I wanted to dance, and I wanted to have this crazy storyline, and I wanted to experiment with what people would be the most drawn to after they saw it all, and maybe that would show me the way to lean towards the next consistent record sound.

I didn’t intend for the songs to be so different, I just sort of chased each of them to their fullest potential, and I got very different results, but they always came from a very genuine spot. They were written by me, and performed by me. I don’t know, maybe I’m just all over the place.


All of those songs are off your new EP, Let Me Be Lost. What have you found can be discovered by being lost?

Great question. You can discover things that you don’t know about yourself, and about others.

It’s given me a kinder understanding of people around me and what they’re going through, and how easy it is to see it from an outsider’s perspective, and how difficult it is to understand when it’s your own life.

This year for me has been good, but it’s been hard. It’s been full of change, and full of closed doors, and full of a lot of ideas that didn’t work. A year ago I wouldn’t have said that. A year ago I would have told you I knew exactly how this year was gonna go, and that was naive.

I hope that by being lost that I am closer to finding who I am as a person, and where I want to go, and what I want to represent as an artist.

All I can say is that I genuinely put out things, and I didn’t try to compromise myself. I showed people that yeah, I’m a little bit confused right now, because I can do this and this and this. Let me be that. Let me be where I’m at, and tell me what you think, but also accept me for where I’m at. I hope that people understand that, and that maybe it helps them reflect on their own life.

Taking the concept of being lost in a completely different way, what’s the most lost you’ve ever been while on the road … or has GPS made it impossible for anyone to get lost anymore?

I think miscommunication is the closest thing I have to being lost, because GPS typically takes you where you need to go, but if some booking agent, or somebody told you load in was at a certain time, so you take your sweet ass time, and you’re like oh cool we have all day, let’s go to this White Sands desert of New Mexico, and let’s go here and there and there, and you show up in Arizona thinking that you’re right on time, and it turns out you’re missing your gig, and everyone’s pissed, and you’re like, shit, it’s not my fault, I was told this time, but I’m the one who’s definitely gonna have to suffer the consequences and take the blame for this.

There are days like that on tour, especially when you’re getting started. You’re like oh my God, why did I drive all the way to Arizona to make $25 and play to nobody and have everyone yell at me?

That’s confusing, that can definitely make you feel lost, even if you are technically at the address you were told to go to, you’re not really sure why (you’re there). There was a lot of that when I toured last year.


Finally, in a question I rarely get to ask – tell me about your coloring book!

I became obsessed with adult coloring books at around the time my Twenties EP came out (in 2016), and I thought it was a good way to stick with the theme of not quite being ready to grow up.

It was a fun, unique thing to have, and the girl who illustrated it was a young 20s girl, and she had a great perspective. That was fun.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about yourself, your music, or the world?

I guess if people like a certain song, or if they’re gravitating towards something, to let me know, to give me a follow, to share with others, because when you’re just getting started, or it feels like you’re just getting started, every little bit, every opinion, and every fan, goes so far.


For more Jane Ellen Bryant, check out janeellenbryant.com, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.