Brannen has a ravenous following which is rapidly approaching cult status. -L.A.Times, Entertainment Today
A Classy Debut - Brannen is one to watch! - Billboard (New and Noteworthy
John Brannen's songs are haunting. Most are meditative, rather sombre pieces in minor keys, and they evoke mythic cowboy life and a rootless "road" existence.
There's a song about a scarecrow who wants to "leave these fields behind," another that ended "So red the roses, so blue the sky, so lonely the sound of goodbye." Most memorable of all: "Hey Madonna of the Moss, the fields are wet and green out where our stars were crossed, and loving you will mean that paradise ain't lost, Madonna of the Moss." It's Brannen's (and his audience's) luck that he looks like the music he sings. Handsome in a weathered kind of way, with flashing teeth, long legs, and a mass of curly dirty-blond hair, he looks to be in his mid-thirties, just the right age to have plausibly suffered the emotions he sings about. On stage, he's an electric personality, and he both reaches out to his audience and pulls it in toward him.
