Musicians Brett Hite and Caroline Schibel find new opportunity with Frances Browne

They say, “When one door closes, another one opens.”

For the members of Spokane’s Frances Browne, it’s more like “When one band ends, another one begins.”

Frances Browne is the cinematic folk-pop duo of Spokane natives Brett Hite, formerly of electro-pop/rock band FRENSHIP, and Caroline Schibel, formerly of beloved local band Mon Chéri.

With FRENSHIP bandmate James Sunderland, Hite released two albums and an EP, going multiplatinum with single “Capsize” with singer Emily Warren. After a decade together, the band called it quits in October 2024.

About a year before, Schibel was on her way to the Oregon coast with her family when she received a text from musician Dan Spalding, who owns Zephyr Lodge in Liberty Lake, asking her if she would be interested in performing in a cover band he was putting together.

At that point, it had been eight years since Schibel stepped away from music to raise children. She remembers looking at her husband and wondering if she should say yes, thinking that chapter was closed for good.

But Spalding told her to pick a couple of covers and meet the rest of the band for a Monday night rehearsal in March 2024. Schibel showed up to practice, where she met Hite, who had also been invited to join the band alongside Cruxie’s Cristopher Lucas.

Hite, who was nearing the end of his time with FRENSHIP, had never played in a cover band before, but liked the sound of an opportunity where his only responsibility was diving into other people’s songs.

This cover band only ended up playing together from April to October before going their separate ways.

With FRENSHIP and this cover band coming to an end, Hite wondered about his next step. He told Schibel it was important to him to do a solo project and asked her if she wanted to write with him. She did, and the pair started working together.

The pair had written a few songs when Hite traveled to Seattle earlier this year to work with singer Natasha Bedingfield. While in the studio one day, Bedingfield said “Indiana Diana.” Hite immediately thought that would make a cool name for a fictional character and told Schibel about it.

She liked the idea, but suggested they change the character to “Indiana Anna,” as her sister’s name is Diana. The pair also dreamed up a character named “Muscle Car Mike.”

Around that time, Spalding had invited Schibel to spend a few days at Zephyr Lodge to consider her future with music. She suggested Hite – who has also written for artists including Shaboozey and Lauv – come with so the pair could begin writing about the world of Indiana Anna.

They walked away from that weekend with four songs.

“It was coming up with these ideas of who’s Indiana Anna, who’s Muscle Car Mike and bringing in a little bit of our own experiences, slightly, that we’ve had in high school and stuff,” Schibel said.

The pair decided that Indiana Anna was the quintessential hot girl in high school, while Muscle Car Mike was the cliche quarterback. The songs follow the pair as they experience the highs of high school love and the lows of adulthood.

“We tapped into those nostalgic sentiments,” Hite said. “It’s truly some of the easiest writing I’ve ever done, because there’s no attachment to truth.”

Hite was still focused on his solo project at the time (a project he’s still pursuing) and felt like he and Schibel would simply wrap up these songs and throw them online, but the ease of writing material for Frances Browne made the pair want to spend more time on the project.

A second weekend at a recording studio, this time in Coeur d’Alene, resulted in another four songs that furthered the story of Anna and Mike.

“Little Town” introduces listeners to the pair, Mike the “cream of the crop” and Anna the “prize of the freshman class of ’04,” as they begin dating after catching eyes in class. The two were “going steady with nowhere to go.”

In “Indiana Anna,” we learn that the girl thought to be the most popular wonders what it would be like if she could choose a different life. “Muscle Car Mike,” a softer folk song to introduce a tough character, also talks about what might have been, as college coaches had their eyes on the football star yet here he is, still in his hometown.

“They are wrestling with the idea, and this was probably what taps into my life, of love being an enemy to achieving a dream or chasing a dream,” Hite said. “I can say with a lot of vulnerability that love, I’ve not really allowed it to exist, because I’ve never felt like this thing was done, chasing the dream, and if I’m being really honest with it, I think they can coexist, but at least in my everyday life, I keep them separate … I do think love enhances a lot of these things, but I think love oftentimes can cause complacency.”

After those two writing weekends, Hite and Schibel had eight songs but felt like the story of Anna and Mike wasn’t over. The pair then wrote a ninth song, “Different Shape,” that offered a sort of resolution for the former high school sweethearts.

The duo’s yet-to-be-titled debut album was recorded in Spokane and Los Angeles. The album features guitarist Harrison Whitford (Phoebe Bridgers, Role Model) and drummer Remy Morrett (Phoebe Bridgers, Lizzy McAlpine). The album was engineered and mixed in Seattle by Andy Park (Death Cab for Cutie, Noah Gunderson, Macklemore).

Though the album isn’t set to be released until early 2026, Hite and Schibel have been introducing Spokane to Anna and Mike via weekly performances at Zola as Frances Browne. The band’s name, by the way, isn’t a reference to another character but rather slight spelling changes on Schibel’s maiden name, Francis, and Hite’s mother’s maiden name, Brown.

The Zola performances began infrequently last year as a way for Hite and Schibel to initially perform the covers they learned for the previous band. Hite vividly remembers stepping offstage after the duo’s first set at Zola and feeling so grateful that the venue existed.

“It was a sense of ‘OK, I’m in the right place,’ ” he said. “There’s always this pull of ‘OK, maybe I should move back to L.A. or Nashville,’ but that was like, ‘No, this really affirms this is the path. This is the place that we’re doing this.’ ”

With FRENSHIP, Hite and Sunderland had a radio hit, “Capsize,” before they had played a lot of shows. Hite wonders now if having the opportunity to perform weekly at a place like Zola would have helped the duo when it came time to perform.

Schibel, he noted, had a lot of experience on local stages through her time with Mon Chéri and other projects and that, while that experience may get a little dusty from disuse, it never fully goes away.

Getting back on stage for the first time in eight years was a visceral experience for Schibel.

“It was like ‘Oh man, this is nerve wracking,’ ” she said. “Then I did it, and then I was like, ‘I know I can do better. I want to do it again and do better.’ ”

As the story of Anna and Mike began to take shape, those songs were added to the setlist and the pair began performing more regularly at Zola. Co-owner Jordan Piscopo has really championed the band, Schibel said.

Mon Chéri performed at Zola most Monday evenings, and Hite, who grew up playing sports, remembers watching shows there and studying the bands on stage.

“I have a lot of respect for those four walls,” he said. “It feels like a cool, special place for us to be trying to grow this thing.”

Hite and Schibel will play 6 p.m. Thursday at Zola, and then at 7 p.m. Dec. 18 they will perform their first full band show  with Marc Herring on pedal steel guitar, Adrian Saludes on bass and Brandon Vasquez on drums.

Neither Hite nor Schibel had written from a narrative perspective before, so as they’ve been performing at Zola and have gotten more comfortable with the songs, they’ve been able to lean into the characters and better embody the stories of the songs.

“Some of the songs have already morphed into becoming more comfortable, and then the way you play it changes ever so slightly, because you’re not looking at words on a sheet to remember what to say next,” Schibel said. “You’re feeling it a little bit.”

Hite and Schibel have a full-band show and an album release on the horizon, but they’re working on not looking too far into the future, a change of pace from Hite’s work with FRENSHIP. He told Schibel early on about musicians he could probably get to feature on Frances Browne songs before Schibel asked, “Do we want that?”

“I remember I asked ‘All right, are we doing this for ourselves and no one else and not going to think about how to market it or anything during the creation of it?’ ” Hite said. “And she’s like ‘Yep.’ That was then part of the process, which I would say has been different from the FRENSHIP process. We’re making this and the only question we’re asking is ‘Do we like it?’ ”

“ ‘Are we having a blast?’ ” Schibel said. “That’s been our thing. ‘Are we having a blast?’ ”