Music

“Oh, come on,” Brandi Carlile says, motioning me into a booth and pointing to three pizzas on the table between her and her wife, Catherine. “You can’t not have a slice. It’s so good.”

It’s midafternoon in Nashville at the Urban Cowboy Bed and Breakfast, where Carlile is hosting a listening party for her new album, Returning to Myself, and though I just ate lunch, it’s hard to resist grabbing a plate: when Carlile tells you to eat the pizza, you eat the pizza (and she is right). In a few hours, this room will be filled with friends and collaborators like SistaStrings, Brandy Clark and, of course, her bandmates, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, who whoop and cheer while the record plays. By nightfall, she’ll be a few cocktails deep into a karaoke set at lesbian bar the Lipstick Lounge, high-fiving the crowd and belting out the Chicks. Lately, she’s been feeling a little like a kid again, “just sitting in my bedroom, wishing I could get a ride to Seattle from the trailer park.”

Carlile has, for the past five years, been in a constant state of yes. She has made records with her idols, Elton John and Joni Mitchell, produced albums by Clark, Lucius, and Tanya Tucker, and been a part of country supergroup the Highwomen, not to mention running multiple annual festivals and a charitable foundation. But when she stepped off the Hollywood Bowl stage after organizing and performing at Mitchell’s two-night Joni Jam stad last year, she was just plain exhausted.

“Everybody came out of Covid with all this toxic energy, including myself,” Carlile says. She’s wearing a striped blazer over black trousers, her hair with fresh streaks of blonde. “I just wanted to explode onto the scene and accomplish and collaborate and be everywhere and do everything. And I think there’s been a little fallout from that. People pushed themselves to the limits of their mental health, in terms of what they were willing to do to make up for lost time.”

Carlile hadn’t been thinking about making a new record when she agreed to fly to New York and meet with Aaron Dessner, the day after she finished that last Joni Jam. She had a general idea that, when she got around to it, she’d make an album with Andrew Watt, producer of her John project, Who Believes in Angels. But when she found herself alone in Dessner’s barn, hungover, lonely, and even a little bit panicked, the silence set it. No applause, no entourage. Who was she without a stage filled with collaborators? And was that even a question she wanted to ask?

She wrote a poem that spurred the core question of the album: “how is alone some holy grail?” Except Carlile didn’t know the answers, nor did she want to make the sonic version of some self-improvement book that lectured instead of questing. That poem became the title track, “Returning to Myself.”

“The writers of those books, they’ll all let you down,” she says. “I love a writer who writes something when they don’t have it all figured out, and they’re grappling with things at the same time you are. That’s certainly how I make albums. I didn’t make By the Way, I Forgive You because I learned how to be a forgiving person. I made it because I hadn’t.”

A less subtle artist might have decided that pure isolation was the secret to unlocking these answers, but Carlile instinctively knew that being alone didn’t actually have anything to do with self-discovery. She didn’t need mirrors; she needed clasped hands for a foothold. Returning to Myself was made with Watt and Dessner co-producing at studios on opposite sides of the country, with help along the way from Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver. It explores the ticking hourglass of life, inspired as much by Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball as the Nineties Seattle sounds of her youth. For the first time in her career, the album contains no three-part harmonies with the Hanseroths, with Vernon as the only other voice on the record, propelling the hauntingly introspective “A War With Time.”

Carlile interrogates her own relationship, mortality, and even moral obligations as much as she does her own ego. “Human,” one of the album’s centerpieces, is about trying to find a way to live in a world that is constantly on fire while tracks like “You Without Me” examine her future as a mother who no longer has any kids under her roof. But they’re fluid, too: when Jimmy Buffett’s widow Jane heard “Returning to Myself,” she immediately texted Carlile to tell her it mirrored how she felt, figuring things out after losing her spouse. It’s a record about navigating the second half of life with fortitude and not fear; and how the best way to do that is to remember where we came from, and who we got there with. And Carlile has always been, and will always be, a collaborator.

Plus, she’s got “old friends,” as she puts it. John, Mitchell, Tucker. She’s been to the movies, she’s seen how it ends. “I go to a trainer now, and I used to want to just have hot lesbian shoulders,” she says. “Now I go to prevent myself from ever falling down. Because if you don’t learn to not fall down in your forties, you’re going to have your hip replaced at 65. That applies to emotional and philosophical growth, too. But it’s also why I think finding oneself by learning to be alone is a horseshit, self-care, Instagrammy kind of trip. The most life-affirming thing is to choose yourself, with other people around.”

You’ve become known as a consummate collaborator and a community builder. But that must get a little heavy at times, no?
No, not doing it is heavy. That’s purpose, that’s getting out of bed for me. And it’s not like I’m an altruist. I’m not a perfect person. I’m not even good, but I hate being alone. I despise aloneness on a low that I can’t even really articulate properly without sounding unevolved. I even hate eating alone. I hate watching a movie alone. So, if I have the chance to be with other people, to collaborate, I don’t pass it up, because it’s where I’m the happiest.

And you confronted that by finding yourself alone at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in upstate New York. Boom — you’re by yourself, directly after being surrounded by all your friends and collaborators at Mitchell’s last show at the Bowl. You didn’t even think you were going to make an album that soon, right?
I didn’t know what I was going to do. I felt like I was at the end of an era. I got to New York, opened my day sheet and I was like, “Oh, there’s a rental car.” I had to get in and drive to the middle of fucking nowhere at night. And there were Trump signs everywhere, and that’s how I knew we were going to lose [the election], by the way. I maybe spent 20 minutes with Aaron before he was like, “There’s a blueberry muffin on the counter and this is how to use the coffee machine. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Strangest feeling. I was alone in this barn, feeling a bit of grief, and I wrote that poem. I was in a place I’d never been to before and was violently forced to start over.

Is that Dessner’s process?
I don’t know, I didn’t know him and he wasn’t part of my community then. But what I basically realized is, when you write with Aaron Dessner, he plays you this musical piece and he names them things like “Snowcap” or “Everest” and then you write or sing to them, or you don’t, and he doesn’t care. He’s kind of no-pressure, nonchalant, hardly pays attention to you at all.

Did you know about his history of working with Taylor Swift, or anything about the Long Pond studio before you got there?
I had no idea she’d even been there before. I’m so far up my own ass sometimes that I can miss huge moments in pop culture because of my obsessions, and up until that last night at the Bowl I thought of nothing but Joni and getting through that. It never occurred to me until I left there for the second time and started going, “Oh, this isn’t just a barn, this is a famous place.” But Aaron isn’t going to tell you that, you know what I mean? He’s a man of few words.

And then you go to Los Angeles to make the rest of the record with Andrew Watt, who is from a totally different world than Dessner, and work with Justin Vernon. How did all that come together so seamlessly?
Andrew likes the National and Bon Iver, but he’d never met either. Andrew’s got bleach blonde hair, jumps when he walks, scream laughs, has big white teeth and wears suits without a t-shirt underneath and is a fucking wild man. He’s very brave and chaotic, and unapologetic about everything he does. He’s a total rock & roll pop guy, but that’s not why I chose him to make the album with him.

What was it, then?
It was a decision totally based on love, and I thought that was kind of radical. He’s also a Jewish grandmother, so if he notices you are not eating, he brings you a Saran-wrapped plate of food. If I’m sniffling, he’s like, “I’m calling a doctor, you’re getting an IV.” He’s a thirty-year-old guy, but he has a soulfulness to him that not everybody knows about, with this other side that is totally extreme, pop culture balls to the wall. Getting those guys to meet each other was really interesting. Aaron is scary quiet and tasteful and unobstructive, and they completed each other, because of Aaron’s adherence to tastefulness and Andrew’s brave chaos. And then Justin came in and sprinkled fairy dust on it all. He made us all like each other more.

I thought a lot about Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, when listening to this record: another artistic journey through isolation.
I’ve become more influenced by that album in the past few months than prior to making this album. Justin and I have the same exact heroes, the same exact idols. He’s got Indigo Girls lyrics tattooed on his chest, his favorite artist of all time in Bonnie Raitt. He’s so in touch with his feminine side, but he’s not feminine at all. The guy is like, the dude. You’ll play a rock & roll song and he’ll go, “That fucks hard!” But when Justin came into the studio, do you know what he was wearing?

Well, of course I want to know.
An Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball shirt. He’s an intuitive man. We had beers and listened to songs and he was crying, and I asked, “Will you play on this?” And he said, “I’d be fucking honored.” He’d stay until three in the morning and touched about every song, played on many of them. The way all the guys agreed to work together and share credit and have no ego? It was a situation of extreme generosity.

Did you have to have a hard talk with Tim and Phil about your plans for the album?
They don’t make me do that. They’re beautiful, magical people that just seem so happy to support what’s best for art, and women. We met in 1999, and when a 17-year-old girl says, “quit your job, follow me, I’ve got a plan,” and you’re two grown-ass men and you fucking do it? Do you know how extreme that is? And they don’t just do it. They continue to do it. They are two strong, tough, capable, brilliant men who have decided that they believe I am telling the truth and make good plans and have good ideas. I really fucking wish that on everyone, especially every young woman.

Genre-wise, the album is pretty agnostic. But you’re still comfortable existing in the Americana space, right?
I really do believe firmly that an artist is in whatever genre they believe in, and what community they put their heart and soul into. The gay in me rises against disenfranchisement and says, instead of us all sitting around deciding what we aren’t, let’s lean into what we are. It’s also a genre where you can find people who aren’t white. And I just don’t have time for a life with all white people. That’s not fun to me.

With the Grammy Awards adding a Traditional Country album category, is that where the the Highwomen would live? What do you think about that new category?
That’s what I was wondering, too. I couldn’t see ever putting out something traditional country though, unless I made something very intentionally traditional, which I have talked to Sturgill Simpson about doing. I’ll tell you what, so you know how far this is from a cop-out, call me the day of the nominations, and then I’ll know what’s what!

Deal. I even feel a little bit of Nineties R&B and pop balladry here, in terms of the vocal performances on this album, but maybe because I saw you bust out a cover of Mariah Carey’s “Hero” at Girls Just Wanna Weekend in Mexico this past January. 
I’m going to think about that, but I think you’re right. My love for Stevie Wonder is enormous, and a lot of that comes from Joni’s love for Stevie Wonder. Stevie was the one person I was always trying to get up to the Joni Jam, but he is so elusive. Though I’m not convinced there weren’t a couple he showed up to at 3 a.m. when the gate was closed, because that’s what you hear about Stevie Wonder. When I wrote “A Woman Overseas” I really felt him, but I found out I am a different singer when I am playing the Rhodes [electric piano]. That’s just one take, me and Andrew Watt sitting cross-legged across from each other on the studio floor.

The vocal performance on this album is so confident, though. There isn’t a giant note moment, like on “The Joke” or “The Story.”
I didn’t realize that until it was done. I did another playback recently, and this lady didn’t think I could hear her, but she leaned over to her friend and went, “She’s not wailing!” But I don’t think I fronted a rock band on this record, so I didn’t have to have a fireworks show. I just said what I was feeling and sometimes I said it in ways that I’m not sure I won’t regret, like on “Anniversary.”  

How so?
It’s just an intimate portrait of a marriage that was in a strange moment. An anniversary that was once a day you never forget just slowly fades back into the calendar, because it has to. And lesbians are women. We set ourselves aside, and when two people are setting themselves aside what’s left but a big empty space? I’m sounding a five-alarm fire with that song and feeling really embarrassed about it, and didn’t even know if it should have gone on the record. But fuck it.

I heard you first play “Human” at Girls Just Wanna Weekend, and it was very different then – big and bombastic. What changed?
I realized I didn’t like it. We played it in a totally different time signature, like David Bowie. I remember being on stage singing and going, “This is not getting me off.” This is “The Joke,” but not as good. And I went back into the studio and insisted on a total tear down. I thought about Joshua Tree, and I felt like “Human” had to have that tempered, somber acknowledgement. It’s not celebratory. What I’m saying is, we’re here for a split second, a blink of an eye. We’re in a trauma reactive world right now, and I’m not promoting apathy or complacency, but what I am saying is you have to find a way to be happy, amongst all the chaos and sadness.

It’s not one of those “let’s all get along” songs that we see in country music, especially, that just wants to please everyone and take no real assertive sides. “Church and State,” too, is very direct.
I find those nauseating on a level I can’t really grapple with. What I’m saying in “Human” is kind of fucked, you know what I mean? You know everything is on fire, but to live in this world, you have to find a way to tend to that fire and find the beauty in the sun at the same time. And that’s a complicated thing.

At the end of the day, it’s a survival song. What are we going to do to survive this, to help others survive, but also find the humanity in the day to day of life?
Yeah, because what’s the point? It comes back to the old friends thing: I can see the end, and let’s not miss it all because we’re pinned to the internet. A phrase I hate, “touch grass,” but also, touch grass! I’m not trying to make light. You have to be an activist and use your voice and whole body to resist, but you have to find a way to be happy or you’ll waste your life believing there is nothing good about it. And there’s everything good about it.