An Interview with Brandi Carlile – HuffPost 10.5.09
Mike Ragogna: Brandi, how does your new album Give Up The Ghost differ from your previous releases?
Brandi Carlile: Well, the first one was recorded before we ever got a record deal, so we recorded it by ourselves with a series of pseudo-producers, engineers, and studios, and a lot of it was recorded in my house. It was supposed to be a compilation of b-sides from this really large body of work that we’d written. We recorded it ourselves as something to sell at shows, and we got a record deal when Columbia signed that record with us, though that record was more like a demo. Then on The Story, we worked with T-Bone Burnett, and we recorded live to tape, set-up in a room like it was a stage. We kind of played a show in its entirety every day, and we would choose performances to make the record with very little, if any, overdubbing. We’re proud of that record for that reason, because it was so true-to-form. But on this new one, we all agreed to take things to the extreme, not just musically, but lyrically. We recorded live to tape again, but this time, we layered things onto the music after we captured the heart of the recording. We added things like multiple harmonies and extra instruments that we don’t normally play, string arrangements, and collaborations. So we really took this record to the limit.
MR: You give a lot of credit on this project to your band members Tim and Phil Hanseroth and they’ve been with you since the beginning. What is your relationship with the brothers?
BC: Our relationship is that of a band, for sure. We’ve known each other for so long, playing as a band since the beginning of our record deal. Even before that, we played in bars together for a couple years around Seattle before we ever got signed. We go on the road, we record everything in the studio, and we also write most things together. We write separately as well, but we do a lot of collaborating and split things right down the middle which is cool, it’s like a trifecta of a partnership.
MR: What are the mechanics of writing with them?
BC: It’s really different, really random. Like sometimes, I’ll write a song, we’ll get together and practice and they’ll just learn it. And sometimes, one of them will write a song and come to practice with it and I’ll just learn to sing it. But then, sometimes, we’ll sit down with the skeleton of a song and all three of us will put it together. The way that we split things with each other evenly–not just money, but credit and time–makes it so that all of our writing is in the best interests of the song. Nobody has any questions about why a person wants to contribute, it can only be to make it better.
MR: Ya gotta love Phil’s credit on “That Year” that reads he did “absolutely nothing”…
BC: You noticed it? (laughs) I was wondering how many people would notice that…Phil Hanseroth: absolutely nothing!
MR: What’s the story behind “That Year”?
BC: When I was sixteen, I lost a close friend in high school to suicide. He was sixteen too. At the time, I had this really extreme belief system, I had no coping skills for a sixteen-year-old, and I was just really immersed in myself. When we lost him, I was able to deal with it by completely writing him off, making it out to be some sort of selfish decision-making. Ten years went by, I never thought about it or talked about it, but I had a dream and woke up and wrote this song. I just kind of realized through that process that it didn’t happen to me, it was something that happened to him, and it probably wasn’t a decision at all, it was probably really sick. So I was able to make peace with that situation by writing a song about him being my friend again.
MR: Is it a coincidence that you have that song sequenced on your album following “Dreams”?
BC: There was a conscious way of sequencing the record, like I wanted the first line of it to be “I went out looking for the answers and never left my town, I’m not good at understanding but good at standing ground.” And I wanted the last line to be, “Poor dear, out here, everybody stumbles on fear, who cares if you’re scared, everyone is on their own…” I wanted it to be lyrically cohesive.
MR: One of the great lines in your first song, “Looking Out,” is “…some people get religion, some people get the truth…” Ain’t that the truth.
BC: Yup!
MR: How did you score Elton John to play on your album?
BC: He’s been my greatest hero since I was about eleven years old. Going in to make this record, the process was so much bigger than me that I just thought, “Well, what can be larger than to have Mr. Larger Than Life, Captain Fantastic play piano on this one song that reminds me so much of the early Elton John records that really influenced me personally, like Tumbleweed Connection.
MR: And one of his great wingmen was Paul Buckmaster who arranged Elton’s strings. It looks like he arranged yours too.
BC: Yeah, it’s no secret that Paul Buckmaster is one talented arranger, he’s brilliant….absolutely and unequivocally brilliant. He was a huge part of those early records, so much so that Elton included pictures of him on the albums. So there were pictures of Paul Buckmaster on my wall when I was twelve years old. I knew that Elton John–not unlike my situation–was a band, you know?
MR: It’s like you can consider Buckmaster was part of the band in the same way that George Martin was part of The Beatles.
BC: …and Elton still has the same band he had in the late sixties.
MR: And Bernie Taupin is still in the picture. Are you familiar with one of their great mid-career collaborations, “Cold As Christmas”?
BC: Oh, I f***ing love “Cold As Christmas.” I love Too Low For Zero, I listened to that record on repeat for years. I know every single Elton John record, and people are always like, “How did you feel about Elton John in the eighties?” You know, Leather Jackets,Sleeping With The Past, and Breaking Hearts? He can do no wrong. I love all those eighties records. For the eighties, he was pretty god-damned good!
MR: He blends so well into the rhythm section on “Caroline.” How did you tuck Mr. Larger Than Life into the mix?
BC: I didn’t tuck him in, he just did what he does. I knew what he would do before I even went in there because that’s what inspired the song, what Elton John would play if he had the song in his hand. He said he didn’t know what the hell he was going to play, then he went in and did it in one take.
MR: Elton also sings background vocals on the track.
BC: He wasn’t even going to sing, I had to ask him in the studio, and he was like, “Alright, I’ll give it a go.”
MR: Benmont Tench plays on your album as well. Are you a Tom Petty fan?
BC: I’m a Petty fan from the ether. Like I love his music but I never delved into it like I should and like I will. Benmont was a Rick Rubin recommendation, he really added a lot. He played organ on “Pride And Joy” and really delicate piano on “I Will.” There’s a level of musicianship when you’re dealing with somebody like Benmont that I don’t have, I’m just not qualified.
MR: For your last two albums, you and the Hanesroths start out playing live, though this time, you’re overdubbing a lot over those performances. Does the live element enhance your studio experience?
BC: It’s easy to get a gut-wrenching, energetic live performance on the road because you have people’s energy to feed off of–you have a thousand people pouring their energy onto one point on the stage, and you feel it, which makes it easy to deliver a powerful performance. But when you’re in the studio, you’re all alone, and you’ve got to find that energy in other places and sometimes, it’s just not there. So everybody teams up to do a live performance, and if everybody’s energy isn’t in the same place, and you’re not excited, it just doesn’t happen. That’s what makes being in the studio as opposed to playing live so complicated. You have to really reach to find energy when it’s not being hurled towards you at a thousand miles an hour from an audience.
MR: It seems like there’s a general theme of “distance” or “separation” that involves all the characters, your relationships, and even in the subtext implied by the haunting string arrangements and guitars on the album.
BC: Yeah, you’re exactly right on that, you completely nailed the whole concept. That’s why it’s called Give Up The Ghost. It’s a leaving behind of one’s self. We were so afraid of writing a record about being on the road or about the inside of a tour bus that we realized that we were going to have to leave ourselves behind in big ways and write about big things in our past and our future. What was going on day-to-day was a non-relatable topic. Your subconscious is so much more honest with you than your environment.
MR: Are you writing about relationships that you actually were in or from a more objective perspective?
BC: I wish I were as talented as, like, Bernie Taupin, then I could write stories about things that happened in my mind. But, really, I’m just writing from my personal experience. Even if it is from the past, fears of the future, or dreams that I have, I’m usually writing from my own heart and mind. I haven’t figured out quite yet how to branch out into stories. In other words, I would be a terrible fiction writer. I would be in the non-fiction section of Border’s.
MR: When you write with the other guys, are you the lyricist?
BC: Often times I am, but when they’re the lyricists, it’s usually when the song is finished, because they really thought about it, poured their heart into it, and there isn’t a lot of space for change. The song “Oh Dear” is an exception, Phil and I wrote the lyrics together on that one.
MR: Are Tim and Phil writing from the experiences they’re having in their own lives or are they writing for you?
BC: Well, they’re certainly not writing for me. I think they’re writing from both of their own experiences, and they have talents that I don’t have. Phil has the talent to write stories and to use his imagination. Tim has the ability to write love songs from his heart that are sweet without any sort of malice. So, they’re absolutely imperative to my songwriting lyrically as well as musically.
MR: What’s going on with your tour?
BC: This tour is like…it’s just the best tour ever. I’m having so much fun.
MR: Who’s backing you up on the road?
BC: I’m touring with Tim and Phil, and our longtime cellist, Josh Neumann, and our new drummer who’s the best addition to our band. Her name is Alison Miller, and she’s the hardest-hitting rock dude we’ve ever played with.
MR: What other acts are on your tour?
BC: Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls is going to support soon, Katie Herzig is out with us right now–she’s a young woman from Nashville that we get all blown away by. Angel Taylor just got off the road with us, and we had this really great rock ‘n’ roll band from North Carolina called The Noises 10 at the beginning of the tour. We had four openers on this tour and I’m excited about who’s going to come with us next time.
MR: Do you feel like you’re helping some of these acts when they go out on the road with you?
BC: It’s like they’re helping me out! You just feel good and inspired. I mean, they’re just so f***ing happy to be there in their van. They’re making drives that I’m sleeping through, and they inspire me every day. It feeds the soul because we were there for years opening for bands…and probably will be again. That’s how life goes.
MR: How do you feel you’ve grown as a person through the touring, making records, and from everything that’s happened to you since you were playing with the Hanesroth brothers before you had your record deal?
BC: I think I’ve grown mostly from traveling and seeing and experiencing the things I’ve been singing about. As a person, I’ve grown closer to other people. Like, I thought that being an artist who travels on the road and is away from home a lot would make me more introverted. But it turns out that when you share a forty-five foot space with nine dudes, you actually become less introverted. (laughs) And I’ve grown a lot spiritually and intellectually. Such are the mid-twenties.