I’ll be honest – it took me a while to warm up to Brandi Carlile. She’s local to Seattle, more or less, and people had been telling me for years to catch her show. It wasn’t until I saw her sing “Hallelujah” that I slowed down long enough to listen. It is, we’ve established, an over-sung song. Too many people do it; they attack it motivated only by the fact that it gives them an opportunity to show off how big they can sing. Carlile flipped that around and sang it for the places where it challenged her big voice to cram into smallness. She sang what was inside the song, not just the song itself.
Since then, I’ve watched her put out a few records, play a few shows, and grow into the over-sized coat of her voice, which Paste apparently just named the best voice in indie rock. I can’t argue.
I’ll comment at length on her new record Give up the Ghost (out Oct. 6 on Columbia) later. For now, I’ll just say it’s a very good record, full of the kind of potential energy which hints at an artist who may yet make a truly great record. It’s better than her last record, which was better than the one before that. It’s the kind of record which makes it fun to watch an artist grow, and I plan on continuing to watch.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar, she grew up singing classic-style country music in the little rural towns outside of Seattle. At some point, she found Elton John and cottoned to British pop. Whatever she does now is a fairly even blend of those old Tammy Wynette tunes she sang as a kid, John (with whom she sings on this record), the Beatles, and whatever else she and her collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth (guitar and bass, respectively) have happened upon since. Sometimes she lets the twang come out front and center, if the song calls for it. Other times, she kicks that same energy into the distortion pedal.
At any rate, here’s what she had to say for herself in what turned out to be a fairly productive phone interview today. I was going to save it and quote from it in my review of the record, but instead decided to share its entirety.
Kim Ruehl: Tell me about your new record, the title, and where that all came from…
Brandi Carlile: Well, it’s called Give up the Ghost… and it’s our third record. Basically we’ve been told for as long as I can remember that it takes your whole life to write your first record and then you have to write your second record in a matter of months. Which is totally the truth. You don’t do anything from the time you put out your first record to the time you put out your second, except for tour. So it’s really impossible to incorporate any real-life, tangible experience into your songwriting except for the road. I think we have enough records about the highway and the mountains and missing someone in the crowd…I think we have enough of those records in the world for right now. We went into the songwriting process really conscious of that. I realized I need to do some deep-stretching to remove myself from the smallness of my unrelatable situation and write about bigger things outside myself, aside from what was happening on the tour bus.
Where did you start?
I started writing about a year and a half ago.
I assume you’ve clocked more hours onstage than you have in the studio. Is it still a little weird in the studio? Are you comfortable yet, or are you still working that out?
I’m not comfortable. I don’t appreciate being there. I feel like we can’t breathe in there, we feel like caged animals. Somebody’s always pushing their agenda. Somebody external from the band has always got something else to prove. We just don’t appreciate it. What we end up doing is bringing our live band-ness, our essence of live performance, into the studio and we do it that way because that’s who we really are.
What’s the difference for you, as a performer and a music fan, between recorded music and live music? Do you look at it as two separate things or is it two sides of the same thing?
It doesn’t have to be. The one thing that’s difficult to capture in a recording that’s so easy to understand in a live performance is dynamics. You might have a slamming drum solo live that drives the audience crazy every night. You try to do it in the studio and it ends up sounding limp. You may have to [add] another electric guitar to elevate it. There are little nuances you can add to elevate the experience of the song, but the differences don’t have to be that vast. People can still record live vocals and live performances, they just don’t.
How do you think it changes the song? I was thinking about “Dying Day”…it’s a completely different vibe on the record than what you do live. When you record something like that, does it change the way you do it live, or is that something you leave behind in the studio?
We don’t leave it behind, for the most part. It’s interesting you think that song has a different vibe [on the record] because my perspective is that it would be the exact same vibe. That’s what I love about the way people hear things differently, it’s the same way we taste things differently. That song was recorded with two arch-top guitars and a kick drum. Then we all grabbed percussion instruments and went into the room and recorded what’s known as a party track – where we all played percussion at the same time so it sounded like live people playing percussion – and then we opened up the bass. That’s how that song was recorded. To me that’s the same vibe, but I guess I’m not part of the audience. For me, a better example would be a song like “Pride and Joy” where, live, it’s a rock and roll song with electric guitars, bass, and drums. In the studio it’s two acoustic guitars and a string arrangement.
That was an interesting tune…you got Paul Buckmaster for that song, who did an incredible job. Did you get him from the Elton John connection?
Yeah, that’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid to have Paul Buckmaster do a string arrangement for one of my songs. I know that sounds a little bit advanced for a 14-year-old, but when Elton John put out those early records, he would include a picture of the producer and a picture of the arranger on the record packaging. So I had a picture of Paul Buckmaster on my wall and I was able to associate his face with all those wonderful string arrangements we were hearing in the early 70s. So when I started writing songs I thought it would be amazing to hear Paul Buckmaster to do strings.
How did you get him?
I asked him. I called him on the phone. It was amazing. We had some of the longest conversations. I went over to his house and listened to him work on it with this program he has. He cooked for me twice. It was amazing. The man’s gotta be in his 60s. He’s a total genius, an amazing Englishman.
Where do you go for the next record? How do you top the dream of singing with Elton John and getting Paul Buckmaster to arrange for you?
I don’t know. I think about it every time I get in an airplane. I’m sure it’s going to crash, you know. I’m positive this is it, I must be done. The only way I can top it is to keep living my life and be open to whatever happens to me.
You’ve always had a really great voice, but this record, at least to my ear, seems to come more from your vocals than the other records. When you’re singing, are you consciously thinking of all the layers of complicated emotions in the song, or is it just instinct at this point to tear the wall down and let the sound out?
Sometimes I am. I’m conscious about the lyrics, but like I was saying earlier, being in the studio is a difficult, awkward place for me. Those places in my life are either opportunities for creativity to really flourish, or become stifled. During The Story, I think there were a few times where it became stifled. On this record, it most definitely was a platform for me to express myself vocally, so I did.
Was it the circumstances of the recording, or was it just where you were at creatively and personally?
Maybe I was just mad, you know. Or maybe I was really tired. Or maybe somebody had just gotten a great take and I was really excited, or maybe I had just heard the news that Elton John was going to sing on the song. Things happen when you’re in the studio that make you happy and sad. There were songs I woke myself up at 7:00 in the morning to sing, just so I would sound as tired as I was.
What about live?
Live it’s more about an exchange of energy between me and dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of people. It feeds the performer side of me, it feeds my emotions and causes me to sing the way I do. When that energy is gone in the studio, I have to find it on my own.
Is there anything you won’t sing about? Is there anything that’s off limits?
No. Nothing. Nothing and no one…[laughs] Everybody’s a target.
Let them be warned! I read something somewhere where a reporter quoted you as saying you like to hold onto songs until it’s the right time and place to record them. Were there songs on this record you’d been holding onto for years? And if so, what about this time and this particular collection made you think it was the right time?
Let me think about that for a second, let me go through chronologically and see if I recorded all the songs I wanted to record… No, actually. There were no songs I was hanging on to. No, wait…there was one, and we did it and it didn’t end up right so, again, I took it away and held onto it for another time. There were more songs that didn’t have a place in the world of this record that I held onto for the next record.
Are there songs you’ve written that you’ll never record just because they wouldn’t make sense on a record?
Yeah that happens every record. You know what I mean? It’s like a sculpture…. Think about this abstractly for a moment. If you think about a sculpture. A brilliant artist once said it’s already there. all they do is take away pieces of it until it shows itself. That’s what you do with a record. You write, and the record is there in the middle somewhere, but you can’t find it until you take things away. You put songs you’d written for it away, you put ideas away, and you let go of things until the record presents itself. That’s why there are songs that don’t make a record. They’re just pieces of a sculpture that have to be taken away to show what’s really there.
What about songs you’ve recorded….are there any you’ll never play live because they won’t make sense onstage?
Yeah. Sometimes I just don’t want to [play them live]…we’ve never played “Gone” from our first record. Or “In My Own Eyes.” Let’s see, what else. We never play “Losing Heart,” because I’ve kind of lost heart for that song [laughs]. Um, we never play “Again Today” because for two and a half minutes, there’s no rhythm, it’s just free flows. I’ve never been able to count the band in correctly. Yeah, you’re right. There’s studio magic stuff that just doesn’t translate right to the stage. But there are also stage songs that don’t translate to the studio.
Now that people are downloading individual tracks from iTunes…you put out a record and a good amount of people are probably only ever going to hear six songs off of it. Are you thinking about that at all? Does it come into your mind when you’re making a record, or is it like what you said before about the sculpture: this is a body of work.
I think of it as a body of work. I can’t comply with the trends of the times when it comes to making music, because that’s not what inspires me. There are pivotal points and points of vulnerability…it’s a project. I don’t see it as three and a half minute snippets. I know some people listen that way. I can appreciate that – I listen to the radio. But when you’re making a record, it’s important to remember that a record is a record.
Going back to Elton John, I know singing harmonies is half as much about matching the notes as it is about matching tone and inflection and the other person’s voice, etc. What did you and Elton do to get that point-on match-up? Was it just a bunch of run-throughs, or is he that fabulous that he matched you out of the gate?
He’s that fabulous. He’s like a wrecking ball of amazingness. He just sat down and played piano on the track like he wrote the song. He said, and I quote, “I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to play.” That’s what he said. He played exactly what my brain wanted him to play. When I wrote the song, in the back of my mind, that’s what I was hearing. He played it. it was so awesome, and he started to sing. Basically he didn’t sing a harmony. He sang the lead over my lead vocals that were already there, so he matched my inflection on my lead vocals. His lead was so good that I took mine out and decided to do a harmony and let him have the lead. He did piano and vocals within an hour.
I’ll ask you the question my Twitter followers gave me. I like to source a question from them every time I interview someone. They usually come up with something smart and interesting, but this time they derailed pretty quickly into talking about your dog. So, how’s Bailey?
Bailey, yeah. She’s great. She’s so cute and I just bought her a new collar from Mud Bay – they have these collars they’re like fifty dollars but they’re so great. It’s purple and it’s got hearts on it. she’s doing really good. She’s as cute as ever. She’s really calming down in her old age and having some arthritis problems but, for the most part, she’s really good and really special. But I’ve been riding my horse lately, more importantly.
Brandi Carlile’s tour dates are available on MySpace. photo © Jeremy Cowart
