Mike Mains & The Branches

Midwest-based indie rock ensemble Mike Mains & the Branches arose in the closing years of the 2000s as a spiritually focused act. Over the following decade the group delivered three albums—among them their propulsive first outing Home—alongside two EPs; after issuing a reflective second album they fell silent for half a decade, resurfacing only with the emotionally charged 2019 release When We Were in Love.

The quartet took shape in 2009 in Gainesville, Texas, built around guitarist Mike Mains, drummer David Denison, bassist Jacob Burkhart, and keyboardist Shannon Briggs—who married Mains two years later. That same year the musicians moved to Michigan, Mains and Briggs’s home state, and put out the EP The Rustic before unveiling the full-length Home in 2010. Burkhart departed in 2011; bassist Nathan Wethy stepped in. A contract with Platinum Pop Music soon followed, prompting a nationally distributed reissue of Home whose single “Miracle” climbed to number three on the American Christian Rock chart and received steady airplay. The second EP, Everything, surfaced in 2013, succeeded the next year by the band’s sophomore album Calm Down Everything Is Fine.

Personal circumstances brought another extended pause, and five years elapsed before the musicians reemerged in 2019 with their third album, When We Were in Love. Drawing influence from Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, the record was tracked in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania under the guidance of Nathan Horst and featured the tracks “Endless Summer” and “Live Forever.”