But once in the dress, the woman who, five minutes ago, you would imagine to be too self-conscious to pose becomes someone too self-aware to not know all her best angles. Burch takes a seat on the couch, tilts her chin this way, crosses her ankles just so and waits quietly for the next shot. Everything is effortless—Molly Burch is a natural.
A natural-born singer, she would agree, and there are some incredibly cute videos floating around of young Burch warbling in her little toddler voice. But she explains that her ability to perform in front of the camera or on stage is something she’s acquired much more recently.
“Basically until I was in college, I was fighting stage fright and performance anxiety—knowing that I wanted to pursue music and singing, but not feeling confident enough to actually do it,” she says. “It took me a really long time to commit to that as my identity and pursue it as a job.”
In college at Asheville, North Carolina, Burch formed a band that she says helped ease her into performing and songwriting. The band was also responsible for throwing the jazzy Christmas parties that became the spark for her newest EP, The Molly Burch Christmas Album, dropping November 15.