Brandi Carlile shines bright on stage and off

By Lacey Korevec

Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile never completed high school, but was thrilled at the chance to perform for college students on Tuesday, Sept. 27. She opened for Howie Day in the Bart Leudeke Center Cavalla Room and received a warm response from students.

“I am ecstatic to be playing to a college crowd because everybody’s so much younger and less jaded and totally open minded to new music and new things,” she said. “I am excited.”

But Carlile is no stranger to the stage. At the fresh age of 24, the artist has already spent time on the road with many well-respected musicians, including Tori Amos and Dave Matthews Band.

“I played to like 6,000 people [while opening for Tori Amos] and it was amazing,” she said. “As far as I could see there were so many people. It felt like I was outside because the ceiling was so high.”

Hailing from Washington state, where she was born and raised, Carlile admitted that she had never heard of Rider before now.

“I barely even remember what my high school was called,” she laughed.

While on tour and far from home, Carlile relaxes by popping in an Elton John album. Still, she misses home, she said.

“I miss my animals the most,” said Carlile. “My animals, my family and food. I love to cook and it’s like one Taco Bell after another out on the road.”

According to Carlile, she wrote her first song when she was only 4-years-old and her second, a slightly more serious one, between the ages of 10 and 11.

“It was just like a cowboy song,” she said.

Her song-writing style has always steered away from lyrics about love and breaking up, which she said sound “redundant” to her.

“A lot of the songs I write are about things that kind of keep you up at night, that you’re puzzled about or confused about—things that aren’t quite right,” she said. “I tend to write about the down side of things so that I don’t focus on them in my daily life.”

In recent years, she has become well known after releasing a self-titled album and an unplugged, acoustic album, in addition to contributing a song to the The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants soundtrack. However, Carlile’s career actually began decades ago. She has been performing music since she was a little girl but she admitted, after all these years, she still finds it difficult to define her genre of music.

“I could tell you what it’s not,” she said. “I don’t think it’s country. I don’t think it’s folk. I definitely think it falls under a way more generic category like rock, especially if you saw us live as a band; I mean, we’re a rock band. I’d say it’s like an acoustic rock ’n’ roll thing.”
Rock or not, Carlile said she still has never completely broken away from the music she preferred in her younger years—country.

“It’s the only thing I thought existed then,” she said. “I have this country twang that I can’t get out of my voice.”

Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and The Judds are among her musical influences, Carlile said.

“Just a whole bunch of really old country stuff,” she laughed.

Her most recent record, Brandi Carlile, was recorded in her log cabin in Seattle, as well as her home in Maple Valley, Wash., because of the peaceful atmosphere.

“It was vibey as hell,” she said. “During the day it was hard to concentrate because there was so much more to do. You wanted to go out and throw a stick with the dog or kick a soccer ball around or go hiking or catch frogs or whatever people do. But as soon as the sun went down and, you know, we started lighting candles and stuff the atmosphere got really good.”

Having recording tools in the middle of her living room for four weeks “disrupted” her life, she admitted, but it was well worth it.

“You know, I couldn’t live in the recording studio so I loved it,” she said.

As far as the future goes, Carlile is looking forward to releasing a third album, which she said will feature “a little more electric guitar.”

“There will still be little acoustic things,” she said. “But it will have more of the big giant songs.”