Butterfly Boucher is riding the wave to fame that very few artists get the chance to see. She has been steadily working and lining up big gigs, and this is all before her album Flutterby was even released (it is released today). It was during the recent stop to the Wachovia Center with the Barenaked Ladies tour that The Quad got the chance to sit down with Boucher in her dressing room and talk about the ride she’s on. “Its been go, go, go, since January,” Boucher said of how 2004 has been for her.
Boucher originally hails from Australia where she is the middle child of seven. She admits that her first name is unique, but she likes it. When she was born, a family friend suggested the name to her mother, who was hesitant and rather keen on naming her Gracie (Grace ended up being her middle name). With only a week to name the new addition to the Boucher family before the hospital would name her, Boucher’s mother began to see signs telling her to name her child Butterfly.
The first came at her mother’s dance class. “This woman always wore a black leotard. This week she wore a butterfly leotard,” Boucher explained. The second came when her mother was walking down a hall with bare walls, save for a painting of a butterfly. The third sign was when her sister was sent home with a 45 record, which her teacher had pointed out had a track which was titled “The Butterfly Song.”
Before embarking on her solo career, Boucher was part of her sister’s band, The Mercy Bell. “It was her thing, her baby,” Boucher explained about the band.
She said that there were no hard feelings when she left the band for her own project. “It was always assumed I would go on. We had gone through a lot. We had just gotten dropped by the second major label and were really all burned by music and the industry.”
On Flutterby there is one song, “Another White Dash,” included from the band. Because Boucher sang lead, which was usually her sister’s job, and it didn’t really fit with the band. “My sister was playing keyboard during the song. She felt kind of stupid.”
After deciding to set out on her own, Boucher moved to Stockton from London, where she said she hung out waiting for studio time. The reason she ended up moving was because it was a “busy place with people just trying to make rent,” Boucher said. “I was staying on couches out of the kindness of people’s hearts.”
It is because of those hard-ships that Boucher is being a little skeptical. “Things are going smoothly, a little too well.”
Boucher lined up the current gig of opening up for Barenaked Ladies after BNL’s lead singer Steve Page saw her perform at a show in New York City. At the show last week, Ed Robertson from BNL actually came out and personally introduced her to the audience and said that her album is one of the band’s current favorites.
She has only been together with BNL for about two weeks. But prior to that, she hadn’t even heard who they were. “I knew the Chinese chicken song,” Boucher admitted, referring to the song “One Week.” “I knew the songs that made it to Australia.”
Up next is another high-profile slot as the opening act for Sarah McLachlan (who was at the same show Page was at) on her sum-mer tour. The tour will be at the Wachovia Complex at the end of July.