Formula Indie Sessions : Interview with Norine Braun
Norine Braun is an award-winning singer-songwriter recording artist from Vancouver Canada known for her soulful voice and genre-blending mix of roots rock, blues, and folk. With 15 acclaimed albums, she creates emotionally rich music exploring identity, healing, and transformation. Her latest album, A Hero In The Wind, features one-hour live-off-the-floor recordings and a deeply personal title track written for her birth father. Norine is Métis and Two Spirit and her work has earned national recognition, chart placements, and praise for its heartfelt storytelling.
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
My earliest recollection is my mother singing lullabies to me as an infant and then as a toddler I recall being at my cousin’s house, singing the Beatles song, she loves me yeah, yeah yeah, and running around the house, banging on the bathtub much to their amusement. I was teased for many years afterward. I also remember being about three or four, and I had a little record player, and I would get up really early in the morning while everyone was sleeping, and I’d play my Elvis Presley and Pinocchio and Mary Poppins records and they would give me such a great feeling.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
I was always singing my made up songs while I played as a kid and I had a fantasy my life was a musical so I narrated the events as they occurred in song. I took guitar lessons when I was 10 years old and I was disappointed in my progress. I wanted to sound like the songs on the record, but I was far from that. So I decided I would try and write songs, and songwriting came to me immediately. I was very happy because no one could compare how I sounded to the real song because I was playing the real song so I guess vanity had a part of becoming a musician and songwriter too.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
A Hero In The Wind just released, a project that captures lightning in a bottle — literally. The first five songs were recorded live-off-the-floor in just one hour each during Steve Dawson’s Henhouse pop-up sessions, a bold and exhilarating experiment in musical spontaneity. A blend of roots rock, soul, blues, and Americana, I found the one-hour format both challenging and liberating. “There’s no time to overthink or polish,You just dive in, trust the song, and let the emotion lead. That immediacy brought out something raw and real in the performances.The title track, A Hero In The Wind was written to honour my birth father, who passed away just after Christmas last year. It came from the heart — a song born of the powerful, healing conversations we shared as we got to know each other later in life,. The album continues my exploration of love, loss, identity, and reconnection with my Métis heritage the focus of the previous album Journey Toward Wholeness. To complete the journey, I added three bonus tracks produced by Adam Popowitz— “Bird With a Song to Sing (Remix),” “Eye of the Hurricane,” and “2020 Reprise” — rounding out the album with hope and reflection. All the songs words and music were written by me. The album’s striking cover art by Katarina Thorsen, drawn from a photo of my birth father, brings my musical and personal journeys full circle. Thorsen also designed my debut album cover Modern Anguish.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
Because I am a songwriter, I write in multiple genres, and my albums are a reflection of that, but primarily I record in a bluesy roots, rock style with jazz and folk influences. I also have an ambient and soul groove streak as well.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
The idea that really changed the way I think about music is that everybody comes to music in a different way. For example, my partner is a classically trained concert pianist. She has a degree in piano she understands music and can transcribe it in minutes and explain it. Whereas I am self-taught apart from the year I took guitar lessons as a kid, so I approach music from a feeling point, and every time I write a new song I’m learning new chords, so I create from feeling rather than an intellectual place. Both ways work, and when you realize you can follow your own way to creating music, the door opens wide, and then you’re only limited by your own beliefs on how music should be played, written and recorded.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
Guitar or piano though I have written on mandolin and ukulele, note pad and pen and recording device like iPad, phone, GarageBand that’s all I need for songwriting, I have left many voicemail messages to myself with song fragments over the years, a lifesaver for someone like me who can’t notate the song.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
Local band Blue Rivera song She Talks, I love their music and vibe, a great group of very talented and lovely kind young men.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
My personal experience has completely shaped my music and artistic vision. In fact, my albums are my personal and public diary of my life here on the planet . Journey Toward Wholeness, is my album about being an adoptee and meeting my birth father late in life and my rich Metis heritage. Songs for trees is about the pandemic, the importance of saving the ancient trees, and how we are disconnected from nature. This lack of reverence influences the problems that we have in society, and cause of environmental disasters. My latest album, A Hero in the Wind the title track is a tribute to my father, as well as the losses and changes of people and friends. Conventus the Eye of the Heart was about my recovery from colon cancer and the connections and unions we have in life, so you can see my art and music is literally my life’s story or things I witness and are moved by.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
I hope listeners have a catharsis of some kind when they listen, whether it is to feel hopeful , or release sadness or experience joy depending on the song.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
Music like life is what you make of it, you are never finished learning there is always something new to discover, be curious whether its a new instrument or chord progression or working with someone new. Music is full of surprises you never know where the path may take you. Enjoy the process and don’t be attached to outcome, be grateful for your own gifts and don’t compare, comparison is the thief of joy is the adage.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre would be a dream venue to sing and play under the stars between the rocks would be amazing but it would have to be safe to travel down there first.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
George Michaels I loved his dreamy, longing music and it would have been a dream to have been produced by him. There is an aching in his music I resonate with.
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
Website: www.norinebraun.com
@norinebraun is Instagram
https://www.facebook.com/norinebraunmusic
https://link.deezer.com/s/31x1cSnYoqVRhKJIFvKqT
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nj-RBCzn8JKnB3_u2TEi043-UendRXXzg
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
I am incredibly excited to have been granted a scholarship to attend a residency in Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity this February 2026 to begin work writing a new album. It’s my second residency there and the magnificent place inspired the song Sleeping Buffalo. The next album is about the 4 seasons in terms of spiritual and life journey. I begin writing in the season winter in the snowy Canadian Rocky Mountains on that sacred mountain.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
That I write from the heart, I write what I am feeling in the moment, my personal truth and that the songs are in different genres so don’t judge my work based on one song I have released over 200 songs please give a listen to a few.
