Brandi Carlile – HuffPost 6.4.12

Mike Ragogna: Brandi, I asked you this before, but what is your advice for new artists?

Brandi Carlile: My advice for new artists? You know, I’m not sure what my answer was last time. I’ve been cultivating this theory for a while. My advice to new artists is to embrace a broader concept of timelessness than vintage or retro. I think that our generation is in danger of becoming a conglomerate of the last four or five decades, you know? Stylistically, we tend to cling to decades or a genre, like we play ’70s music and we dress ’70s and we listen to ’70s snippets and clips and talk show hosts, and we get into these sort of ground swellings of cultural times or decades. But we definitely need one for these fifteen or twenty years, so I would encourage new artists to embrace timelessness over the concept of being retro or vintage.

MR: Nice. And how do they get to the timelessness part?

BC: I think that they should set the standard on great and become less intertwined with listening to classic music and classic artists and trying to mimic that in this decade, and better focus on their own feelings and their own writing and what’s around them within their immediate present. The other piece of advice I have that’s really important is that community is so much more powerful than just one singer-songwriter trying to climb the ladder. Find the five singer-songwriters that live on your block or live in your neighborhood and put together an open mic night and learn how to play other instruments. Play nice with others, and you can get somewhere with your friends.