Tuned In: Sanders Bohlke

I, like many of you reading this right now, love music. A lot. To the nth degree and then some. I'm the kind of person who creates a soundtrack in her head to go along with all the big moments in her life; who wishes the world really were a stage, like Shakespeare said, but for a never-ending musical in which everyone sang their feelings at really inappropriate moments and occasionally danced down the street in cheesy, choreographed togetherness. I never go anywhere without my iPod, and if I'm at home and not watching TV, I'm almost certainly listening to one of my 8 million personalized playlists in iTunes. Or baking. Often both.

I'm pretty pleased with my music library, too. And when I say I like a little bit of everything, I really mean that I like a little bit of everything. My taste runs the gamut from Britney to Bright Eyes, Justice to Jay-Z, Dylan to Disney. (I actually have "Colors of the Wind" on my iPod, right between All-4-One's "Colors of Love" and Ani DiFranco's "Come Away From It," a remnant of my Barnard days.) Only about a third of my music is stuff I've found on my own, though. The other two-thirds came from friends' recommendations or—surprise, surprise—TV. I discovered The Avett Brothers, for example, after hearing "I and Love and You" on a recent episode of One Tree Hill. (Yes, I watch One Tree Hill. We'll revisit that topic in another post.) I opened my ears and heart to Ivy because of Veronica Mars. And I fell in love with Ryan Adams watching Seth and Summer fall in love to his cover of "Wonderwall" on The OC. Gossip Girl gave me The National, Grey's Anatomy gave me Ingrid Michaelson, and now Brothers and Sisters and Private Practice have given me Sanders Bohlke.

I first became aware of Bohlke a few weeks ago, when his song "You" played behind a conversation between Luc and Sarah on Brothers and Sisters. Only snippets of the melody were audible, but what I could hear, I loved. Then, a few nights ago, there he was again, singing "Misdirections" in the final moments of Private Practice. It was beautiful, haunting. I wanted more. So I tracked him down online.

According to his website, Bohlke is a singer/songwriter hailing from northern Mississippi. His first album had a bit of a folk slant, but it seems like his style since then has evolved and spilled into other genres, most notably acoustic rock and soul. If I had to compare him to someone, I'd say he sounds like a cross between Ray LaMontagne and James Morrison, but I think that probably does all three artists a disservice, since each has such an original and distinctive voice. Bohlke's is at once mellow and barely contained—his music is incredibly soothing, but there's a kind of energy and passion to it boiling just beneath the surface. Listening to him feels like walking but being always about to break into a sprint.

If you're interested, you can find a few of Bohlke's songs on his MySpace page. "You," unfortunately, is not available, but "Misdirections" is there, as is "The Weight of Us," which has apparently been featured on Grey's Anatomy, One Life to Live, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Clearly, someone at ABC is a fan. And now so am I.


Artist: Sanders Bohlke
Heard on: Brothers and Sisters, Private Practice
Sounds like: Ray LaMontagne, James Morrison
Listen to: "Misdirections," "The Weight of Us," "Somewhere"