Almost exactly a year ago, Brandi Carlile took a bow with Joni Mitchell at the final “Joni Jam” concert at the Hollywood Bowl and the next morning hopped a flight to New York.
Full of feelings after closing a chapter in which she became Mitchell’s muse and champion, Carlile retreated upstate to meet with The National’s Aaron Dessner, himself a guardian of the introspective as a producer and songwriter.
Alone in a barn on Dessner’s property, Carlile wrote a poem that became “Returning to Myself.” Her words became lyrics and eventually, the title track to her eighth studio album out Oct. 24.
Four years since her stunning Grammy-winning “In These Silent Days,” Carlile, 44, has released 10 potent songs focusing on the reflection that comes with aging (“A War With Time”); love for her family including wife Catherine Shepherd and young daughters Evangeline Ruth and Elijah – (“A Long Goodbye”); and the visceral rocker that reminds of the power of the First Amendment (“Church & State”).
Teaming with Dessner as well as Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, pop-rock maestro Andrew Watt – a kindred spirit since working with him earlier this year on “Who Believes in Angels?,” her project with Elton John – and lifetime collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth, Carlile extracted various vibes for her new songs.
She’ll take her new tunes on the road beginning Feb. 10 in Philadelphia for a North American arena tour with The Head & The Heart (tickets are on sale Oct. 31) and debut a couple of the tracks during her fourth career appearance on her favorite show, “Saturday Night Live,” Nov. 1.
Carlile will also perform at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Nov. 8 in Los Angeles, which airs live on Disney+.
Chatting from her home in Washington state while receiving a vitamin IV following a long flight back from the East Coast, Carlile is typically contemplative, candid and wryly funny as she talks about midlife crisis, Mitchell’s funny response to Carlile’s new song about her and why Elton John threatened to spank her.
Question: I was going to ask how these past years spending so much time with Joni and Elton informed you as a songwriter and musician, but that you have a song called “Joni” on your new album answers some of that.
Brandi Carlile: Oh, I got so much unintended wisdom from both of them. Joni doesn’t dole out advice. You absorb through osmosis, the telling of the stories. Elton blew apart any semblance of any musicalboundaries. I had rules and templates and Elton just taught me how to be – and Joni, too – decisive and to stand behind my first instincts. Neither of them is going to sit around dithering. Know what you wantand do it.
A lyric in “Joni” refers to her as a “wild woman.” Do you call her a wild woman when you’re together? And the line that “she’s a game of solitaire” really stands out.
Joni is a wild woman in the sense that she’s utterly and totally untamed. She can’t be known or predicted or convinced. She is a completely unlocked woman. And she plays solitaire! One of my favorite things to do is sit in her kitchen while she plays and tells me stories. I sit there like a little schoolgirl.
What did she say when she heard the song?
She was so cool. Everybody always worries because Joni is a formidable character and the sheer amount of respect people feel for her might make them intimidated of someone who is really just fun. So she called me an asshole and it made me feel seen. (Laughs)
I knew the song “You Without Me” sounded familiar and it’s because it’s also on your album with Elton. Why did you decide to put it on this album as well?
Elton believed it belonged in both places. When I played (“Returning to Myself”) back for Elton he implored me to put in on the new album. To be exact, he threatened to spank me!
You produced the album with Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, who all have very different, very distinctive sounds in their songs.
Sometimes I was getting three vibes in one song, like “Human.” If there was a song that one produced, the other would play on it. I don’t know if records are made as communally anymore, but they should be. It gets everyone invested in the spiritual health of the project.
In the artist notes for the album, you talk about writing in Aaron’s barn in upstate New York and how being totally alone was an anomaly for you. Was it really that different for you to write that way?
I do often write by myself, but … there was no one there in that barn and I was on another coast from my kids and my wife. There’s being alone and being alone. I know how to be alone in a crowded room.
In “A Woman Oversees” you have a lyric about being north of 40 and all of “A War With Time” deals with aging. Do you feel you’re at the point of, not a midlife crisis, but a recalibration?
Oh, you can use the term midlife crisis. The most comforting thing about all humans is when we realize we’re all a (expletive) cliché and no one is special. I’m probably having a midlife crisis but I’m not buying a motorcycle or having an affair.
“Church & State” is such a great rock song, but also very powerful with the part that quotes Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association about the First Amendment. How did you decide to include that?
I was thinking of ideology on its way out. That as it’s exiting, it’s as loud as it came and I do think it’s darkest before the dawn. So instead of a guitar solo I thought of commentary. I just decided to read it. I didn’t even know if I would keep it in there, but it’s the essence of the song.
And live, you’ve been shouting that part.
I have a tendency to shout in the mic and I have no idea why (laughs). I thought maybe I would rerecord it shouting, but it sounded hysterical. The way it’s on there, not every part of it is easily understood and that might lead people to go on the internet and find (the text). Its inclusion should offend no one. And whoever is offended by it, that’s part of the problem.
In “Human” you sing, “shake your fist at the city, let it rip at the seams.” Is that your way of expressing the anger and exhaustion that so many people feel in the country right now?
Yeah, like how to strike that very fine line of learning how to be happy for a short time on Earth, but not being apathetic about activism. Shake your first, but be human. Let the bitterness die, but when you look in the eyes of a stranger, you must feel human. Do both things. Speak truth to power, but be human. It’s easier said than done.
