Song Exploder - Brandi Carlile - You and Me On the Rock (feat. Lucius)

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Brandi Carlile is a singer and songwriter from Washington State. She's  released seven albums and won six Grammys. Her most recent album is In These Silent Days, which debuted at number one on Billboard’s folk and rock album charts. It was named one of the best albums of 2021 by Rolling Stone, Stereogum, and more. It was produced by her longtime collaborators Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings. In this episode, Brandi breaks down her song "You and Me on the Rock," and how it was influenced by her wife, by their home, and by Joni Mitchell. To learn more, visit songexploder.net/brandi-carlile.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Did you do a lot of rehearsal pre-production of this song before you started actually recording it for real? No, I'm very anti-rehearsal prior to recording. Why's that? Well, because I'm superstitious, I believe that every song has a moment. And it's a really fragile moment where you write a song. song and you know it, but you don't have it yet. Like it's still a risk. It could still derail.

Anything could still happen. And it's really the difference between take one and take three, where you go past that moment and there's none of that anything could happen tension anymore and you're past the take that you should have kept. So if that happens to you at rehearsal, the song loses its rock and roll, you know, and I think rock and roll is a risk instead of a genre. My name is Brandy Carlisle. Brandy Carlisle is a singer and songwriter from Washington State. She's released seven albums and won six Grammys. Her most recent album is In These Silent Days,

which debuted at number one on Billboard's Folk and Rock album charts. It was produced by her longtime collaborators Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings. In this episode, Brandy breaks down her song You and Me on the Rock, and how it was influenced by her wife, by the pandemic, and by Joni Mitchell. Everything had been shut down. All my summer shows had been canceled because of the pandemic. My life changed really fundamentally. And my wife and I, who have been married for nearly 10 years, I'll be 10 years in September, we were shut in with our two kids full time all the time. And I'm the kind of person that has to maintain a certain level of adrenaline and workaholism and that I could not abide a total pause on my life or a shutdown. So I built a garden at a garden. like stacked stones, and I made these raised beds and planted a whole bunch of vegetables, and then it was like an immediate pouring myself into this project. The lyrics came to me one day out in the garden as I was working with these rocks, with these

stones. I remember the Sunday school song that we used to sing in church when I was a little kid. Build your house on a rock. The concept of it was, don't build your house in the sand, and don't build your house in the stream. Build your house on a rock. Build Your House on something that can't be shaken, something that can't be dissolved. And I realized no matter what the world had to throw at me, even if it challenged my very identity, which is what I had done by taking away my ability to play music in front of people,

that I had managed to build my house on a rock. And I wrote the lyrics of that song in my mind about my wife and kids. And then I started thinking about Joni Mitchell, of all things, because there was something sunshiny to the song and it really got me thinking about what an influence she's had on me particularly in this era of my life having interpreted the whole Joni Mitchell Blue album at Disney Hall in L.A. and at Carnegie Hall in New York City

and those experiences were like really immersive that's kind of thing that will change your songwriting and I was really thinking about it I was getting heady I was thinking man I'm 40 years old I can't sit here and be derivative at this point in my life. And then this other little voice chimes in, and it's like, but you can once. Why don't you just give yourself permission to go there, just on one song? And so I did. I gave myself permission to fully dive down the Joni rabbit hole on you and me on the rock. And I remember telling Tim and Phil, I got some lyrics, and I really

want to embrace the Joni influence one time so I don't do it in every song. So I think we should write a song on The Dolsmer. Hanseroth and Phil Hansiroth twins are my collaborators, my band. We're a trio. We've been a trio for about 21 years, 22 years, something like that. And we write all our songs together and we actually live together as well. In fact, they helped me build that garden. I had no sense of melody on the song at all or even rhythm of melody until Timmy brought

that dulcimer out. And the lyrics that I had written just started. to appear. But when I've recorded the demo, I never meant for anybody to hear it other than me and Tim and Phil. I didn't even want to send it to Dave Cobb, you know, because I knew that he would say it's too Joni, and that's really what he said, too Joni. Joni Mitchell first entered my life in a couple of really profound ways. T. Bone Burnett played me blue when I was making the story with him in my early, mid to early 20s. And we listened to all I want first, and then we got to the line that said, I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you. And I was appalled. I was like,

turn it off. No, I cannot abide that lyric. I can't, I cannot forgive it. I couldn't forgive the innocence of it. I couldn't forgive this. It felt submissive to me. I couldn't forgive it for being what I believed was so feminine. It made me uncomfortable. I mean, first of all, I don't know if I'd been in love at that point in my life. I certainly didn't ever want to shampoo anyone at that point in my life. But I just, I couldn't because it just didn't feel tough to me. And there was something about it that I needed to shut down. Cut to, I meet my wife. She's from London and I'm from the U.S. And so we don't get to date. If we're going to go on a date, it's going to be like a week somewhere in a hotel or a cabin when we're going to be going at the dinner and like thrown into

the fire of seeing if we can coexist. And so we had this cabin in Northern Michigan, and we each brought an album, and hers was blue. And she put blue on. And I laughed at the lyric, and I was like, oh, God, turn it off. The song is, I can't, I cannot with that lyric. And she stops it, and she's like, I don't know what this even is if you can't get your head around Joni Mitchell. Like, you're 30 years old. It's time to pull it together. I was like, I just don't think it's tough. And she's like, do you know what Little Green is about? And I didn't.

And she told me that Little Green was about Johnny Mitchell, getting pregnant on her own and giving birth to a little baby who she tried to support for the better part of a year and then wound up having to give up for adoption. And she puts this song on. And I'm in floods of tears because it was the toughest song I'd ever heard in my life. It wasn't just like, Oh, Little Green is very tough. it was like, I have been wrong my whole life about what tough even means. It was that much of a revelation and a pivot.

So Joni hasn't just changed me as an artist, she's changed me as a woman, you know, because she's giving me some insight into it. It means to be tough, what femininity really means, and that vulnerability is, in fact, tougher than anything I had been able to understand prior to that experience. So we were in the studio and we had transferred the song from Dulcimer to acoustic guitar because Johnny owns the dulcimer.

Tim plays guitar. Dave Cobb was playing lead guitar, like some kind of picking thing and he gave it a little bit more of a country lilt. And it started to get grounded in some of the Americana music that makes me really feel like who I am. Phil plays bass. And he's actually quite an under. rated bass player. And then Chris Powell's is an amazing, incredibly musical drummer that toured with us for last couple years. It's an incredibly busy drum part. But he was playing so light. It felt like with pencils. We record our whole band in one room all at once because

that's really what we know how to do the best. Everything else comes off disconnected for us. Even if we play like a big stage, we're so close together that we're hitting each other with the heads of our guitars because we have to play off each other. We actually don't know how to be separate. So in a studio, I can't be isolated and they can't either. It just doesn't work. We're not who we are that way. I was thinking back to my childhood and I remembered my bus stop used to be across the street from a pond and I used to love this little pond and it was like seasonal, you know? It would be dry or it'd be there. It would freeze over. We'd go out there and try.

to ice skate on it and it was really dangerous. Years later, I grew up and I remember driving past the place where the pond used to be, and there was a house on it built on the area that I knew full well would be a pond in a couple of months. It was a brand new house with fences and the rolled out lawn. And I was like, well, they don't know. That's going to flood. I know, but they don't know. I was able to find, like, I guess a little bit of humor in it, but I still feel bad for the family who, yes, I drive by and see it slutted all the time. Shooter Jennings is playing the piano. This song's very fluttery.

It has the ability to just take off and fly up into the air without anything holding it down. There needs to be some weight. And that piano makes what I'm saying sound important. I also like that you can hear me and all the guitars and everything in the room in those piano mics. The garden was a place that I would go to work. and to get my heart pumping, but also to have some control over something, you know.

There was a lot of chaos in the world. And I would go out there and work in the garden while my wife, my buddy, was out on these walks. And it occurred to me that, you know, that was all the distance that I needed really from her. There was something really feminine about the sentiment. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I thought, well, you know what, I don't want to hear guys on this song with me. I just wanted it to sound like women, like the connection between women. And so I recorded the harmonies myself at first, but it just sounded like three mees.

And then I thought of Lucius. The band Lucius sang in my blue band. Their background vocals were just so perfect. And so I sent it to them and they wrote the background vocal for it and took the song to a totally a totally different place. There's nothing in that town I need after everything we've been through me out in the...

And you out all can take without listening to you talk I need their money, baby, just you and me on the rock. I feel so much more comfortable with my femininity in and out of music than I ever did before. I realize it's not tied to the way I look.

it's not tied to whether or not my voice is low or high in any given song. It's not even tied to my lyrics, you know? It's innate. And I'm raising two little women and I'm married to one. The feminine is central to my life. It's a big sea, but I can't touch you and me. It's just no water for you. I knew the song was really special, and I knew it was very Joni, and I knew I was going to have to play it for Joni someday. I became friends with Joni after her 75th birthday celebration. In a fluke situation, my wife wound up spending an afternoon with Joni. And by default, I get invited to dinner with Joni Mitchell as like my wife's date.

And that's when me and Joni came up with the idea of doing jams at Joni's house once a month to do music together. So I see the song through. and I just took the unmixed version of that song straight to Joni's house. Have a glass of wine and play her the song. And I told her everything that I've said today. You know, she nodded, but she didn't offer any commentary. And she said, all right, well, let's hear it then.

And so we go into the living room, and I put it on, and she's leaned forward in her chair with her wine and her hand. And she's kind of grooving to it a little bit. And I'm watching, and I'm just thinking like, oh, my God, what's she going to say? This thing's going to end, and she's going to look at me, and she's going to say, you know, you're too old to do this. You need to carve out your own path.

There's something that would, you know, destabilize me. And the song ends, and she looks up at me, and she smiles, and she goes, sounds like a hit. Sounds like a hit, she says. From my family, I just decided to just not be apart from them if I can help it. So I guess maybe the longest I've ever been away from my wife or kids, probably five, six days. And even then, I've totally panicked. I'm quite a codependent person, and I think I'm going to have to wear that as a badge of honor

because if I was ever going to learn to be alone, I would have had to do it before 40 years old, I think, and having my family with me is it's important to me, but I can see now that it's important to them too. We're doing this together. When we got shut down, we don't like to talk about it, but we did worry about money. And when I was in that garden writing that song,

I was thinking about what, what enough is enough looks like. Do I have what I need? And I did. And now, here's You and Me on the Rock by Brandy Carlisle in its entirety. Or visit SongExploder.net. You'll find links to stream or download this song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh, Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wynne,

rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live.

That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. This episode and the show's theme music were made by me, with editing help from Craig Ely and Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma, music clearance by Kathleen Smith and production assistance from Chloe Parker. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent,

listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at SongExploder.net slash shirt.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Thanks for listening.