Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Brandi Carlile

Episode Date: October 9, 2022

Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell and Elton John count among Brandi Carlile's heroes. With eight acclaimed albums and six Grammys under her belt, the singer-songwriter can now count them among her fans. On this week's "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist gets together with Brandi Carlile to talk about her path from rural Washington to selling out Madison Square Garden and to the IMAX stage for her latest album In The Canyon Haze.    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. I've got a real treat for you today with one of the most powerful, soulful, beautiful voices in all of music, Brandy Carlisle. Brandy is someone who grew up very poor in the state of Washington, but my gosh, she was born with a gift in that voice and just the talent and the grind to work and work and now getting the due. deserves. She's got six Grammy Awards to her name. If you didn't know her up until the 2019 Grammys, that might have been the moment you were introduced to her with an unforgettable performance at the 2019 Grammys of her hit song, The Joke. The Joke is an anthem to people who feel left out, people who feel marginalized in our culture, people who weren't quite sure where they fit.

and she's given them a voice and a face and saying, I am you. She has been an inspiration and an icon to a lot of people in this country. And my goodness, is she talented. She's got a new album out called In the Canyon Hays. It's a deluxe album that's really just new arrangements of all the songs from her album in these silent days. So we got together at a studio in New York City for a great, really deep conversation about who she is, her inspirations, and now who she, is inspiring. And then it was our luck that there was a red piano just behind where we were talking. We wandered over in that direction. And when I tell you to stand that close to Brandy Carlisle while she's

playing the piano and singing with that unmistakable voice, it gives you chills. So I'm going to let you enjoy it and feel what I felt. A beautiful rendition of her song This Time Tomorrow following our conversation right now with Brandy Carlisle. on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh my God, thanks for having me. When you walk into a studio like this, is it hard for you not to sit at the piano

or not to pick up the guitar? Yeah, my eyes are just darting around at all the possibilities. It's like when an NBA player walks into a gym, he can't not pick up the basketball. Like, this is your home. This is where you make your living. Yeah, it could go the other direction. I could be like the landscaper with the gravel yard

or the painter with the shabby exterior. the house. It's like I could just see these instruments and just be like, yeah, right. But no, I'm still, I'm still wanting to get my hands on. Okay, that's good. That's important because you've got a big show tomorrow morning. We're just talking about that. And man, are you tuning up your voice and tuning up your body? And you were taking this seriously. I love it. I'm prepping for this. I'm not going to let this pass me by. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. So I'm hydrating, I'm sleeping. I'm not drinking alcohol until the moment it's over. And then I will. The moment it's over? So at like 9 a.m.

I'm saying, mimosa is anyone? Have you ever done a show at that hour of the day? Eight o'clock in the morning? I can't imagine you would have. Not a show. No, this is a show. This is a rock and roll show with excited people and like, I have to bring it. So no, I haven't. They're probably, I don't want to make you nervous.

They're probably lined up right now about 20 blocks from here. Really? Waiting for you. Yeah. People get there early. They sleep over. Amazing. It's a thing.

It's a thing. They're excited to see you. Right on. They've got their little seat and bags and their pride flags and everything. That's it. They're going to be there for you. Has it been fun, Brandy, to get back out in front of crowds and to do all the things you did before the pandemic

and just feel that energy and feel music again? I know it's been great to go to shows. How's it been for you out on tour? It's been so much fun. I mean, I didn't realize I've been thriving on it, you know, so completely since I was like eight years old. And I thought it made me who I was, you know? So on some level, it was good to know that when it went away

that I actually still existed. you know, in some other dimension. But it's really beautiful to be back doing what I feel like I was meant to do again and just connecting with people. I need people. I just double down on codependence. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, and you spent the time during the pandemic making music, making your album. What was that time like for you? What did you want to say on this new album, which we'll talk about the new version of it, which is really cool as well, that you're putting out. but what did you want to say during that pandemic time that ended up on the album? Well, you know, we all live together. My wife and I and our kids and our band, you know, we all are married to each other's siblings and we've got all these kids

and they're all, we're trying to navigate school and being parents together. And it's interesting, it's like they say that it takes you your whole life to write your first album, and then your second one you have to do in about five and a half minutes. Right. And so that first album is always about coming of age and love and loss and heartbreak for the first time. and you know, that you're lucky if you still have your parents. And then the second album is about touring. And no one can really relate to it until you're sort of Saturn return.

You start approaching later in life. But there's a predictable trajectory. And what artists had during the pandemic was they had a new thing to write about that the world, as we know it, hadn't experienced yet. And so I was fascinated by what do we learn about ourselves in this time? Because we learned new things. And, you know, there was a lot. lot of conversation about it. We've got this place in the woods that we all go down to every day

at five o'clock and drink and try out conspiracy theories on one another and all that stuff made its way into the album. Yeah. People think you're joking. This is how you live. You live on a compound with family, bandmates, kids, animals, all kinds of stuff. Oh yeah. What is that seen like on a typical day? I mean, it's, it's there, we can't see each other's houses. We just sort of get to each other's houses on four-wheelers and stuff. But we always know that we're there for each other. And when tension arises, we just go back to our little corners of the woods or whatever. But we try to make time to come together, you know, for holidays or like happy hour, like

I was saying, down in the woods. And we've been a band for 22 years writing songs together, living and dying and fighting and going through rehab and just being, you know, in each other's extended families as well. So I think it's fascinating, you know, I just spent some time with it. Elton John talking about Elton and Bernie. It's fascinating because we write about each other. And so I know when the song's been written about me, and I have to sing it.

You know what I mean? Or I know that they've written about something difficult that's happened in their family. And just from pure empathy, I can barely sing them words without crying. And the fabric of that relationship, it makes, I think, our writing prolific, but authentic because I'm not interpreting.

I'm in the story. That's so cool. It's such a great way to put it and to think about it. I never thought about that. Somebody else writes you into their story and then you have to sing about yourself effectively. In these silent days, you've got songs about motherhood. You've got songs about being married. You've got songs about your faith and that journey you've been on. Did that all come to you during the pandemic? Were those new looks at those things for you? You've written and sung about those themes before, but did you get a new perspective on some of those ideas that made it out of the album? Yeah, well, it was like I was saying, it was such a magnifying glass. You know what I mean?

And also during that time I had written a book. Yeah. And that's crazy. When you go to mine, mine your life and emotional trajectory chronologically like that, it stimulates the memory. There are sort of smells and memories, sounds and genres and animals and drama. And it plays out in a linear way. and until you actually sit down to write it into something like a book, you're not remembering those things.

So I got to have a real broad view of my life, as insignificant as one person's life can be. And yeah, maybe you want to write 10 albums. I'll probably write the next album about that too. The book, which was a number one bestseller immediately, by the way, which you point out, that must have been crazy just to think, I'm going to sit down right through my life. I'll put it out in the world.

We'll see what happens. What was it like to have it just explode the way it did? Man, I'm so proud of it because, I mean, for so many reasons, I think one of the main reasons is that because I didn't, because I dropped out of high school so young. And I have, like, diploma nightmares all the time where I'm, like, in school and I don't have my pants on and I need credits and I'm not going to graduate. And I'm, like, 35. You know, I think that having that book come out and do that well made me feel like in some ways like I finished something unfinished that had always sort of plagued me.

It's like I've always really worried about whether or not I am fit to sit here and do these interviews and to express myself this way. And the book, you know, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Like it really changed my outlook on myself at this point in my life. Was it hard to sit and just kind of pour through your life? we had Matthew McConaughey on the show not long ago talking. In his book, unbelievable. He literally went to a cabin for weeks and went through his old diaries and he said he didn't

love some of what he saw about himself. He loved a little more, other things. He didn't realize he loved. What was that journey like for you to sit down and say, all right, here we go. Here's my life. Well, it was so effortless. It just flew out of me. So it came out of me so fast.

I basically had written the book in like five weeks. And I thought a book was like a thing was going to take me a long time. I had like two years planned, you know, to work on it. And it just poured out of me. And then I had to go back and look back at it. And the things I was realizing about myself were the things I didn't necessarily love. Like I think a lot of things are funny that are not funny. You know, I have maybe a, I'm quick to anger.

I'm quick to judgment. I'm quick to things that I didn't think I was quick to. And I'm reading my own words. And I'm like, did I say that? Do I think that's funny? How am I going to feel when so and so reads that? So there were a lot of conversations after the fact that did not go well for me and grew me up. People who read the book and kind of challenged you on some of those things?

Sure, yeah. And then I had some conversations where I had to set a healthy boundary and hold my own and say, well, actually, this is my story to tell, you know, too. And so it's a very complicated line when you do this job and you become a public person because people in your life, if you're lucky enough to have them alive, no matter what your past is, they didn't sign up to be a public person. So what do you do? Right.

I'm glad I didn't overthink it because now I don't know if I could do it again. Well, right. If you want to tell the true story of who you are, there's going to be some uncomfortable stuff in there that might not make everybody happy. So we talked about some of the songs on Silent Days, and now we've got this, I guess you call it, you'll describe it better than I do, but sort of this stripped down version of the, album, the Canyon Hays, what's different about this version than what we heard last fall when it came out?

Well, it's everything's different. It's almost like the upside down of it, you know, with the ethos being to kind of conjure the sunsets in the Southern California folklore and the beauty and the lushness and the harmonies of the Laurel Canyon scene. And so we sort of decided to just to shine, this lush light on these songs and create this in the canyon hayes squishy gorgeous fun version of all these songs and so it's kind of cool because anything on the album that was up tempo is like now a ballad and vice versa and if it was on piano now it's on guitar if it was stripped down and just me alone now it's like five-part harmony with mamas and papa's colonnance are beautiful things and it was just honestly a joy it was a lot of work to create it but it was a joy i got a little

listen to it and I knew the album it was based on. Yeah. And there were moments where I said, which song is this? And so you just take you a minute if you're kind of cross-checking, oh, right, okay, that's broken horses. Got it. Yeah. That must have been tough though, right? Why did you want to do that instead of just, let's put out another album of all these songs I've got in my head? I mean, I'll do that too. But it was, it was just, I don't really like to do things halfway. And when everybody was talking about the concept of a deluxe, you know, it's kind of like the thing now everybody like throws a couple extra tracks on their record and changes the cover and then you know all the fans got to buy the record again and i was like well we're going to do a deluxe like let's just

really lean in and like put in the work let's reimagine the entire thing aesthetically musically emotionally and um and just really go there so we did we shut down our lives and and i think we made a really beautiful thing you're the first person i've talked to that's heard it so what do you think It is beautiful. And I loved silent days. And in this, like you say, this was sort of, that's a good way to put it inside out. It's sort of flips it on its head. Yeah.

It's beautiful. It's truly beautiful. People are going to love it and they're going to love that there's some David Bowie on there. Yeah. Wow. Where did that come from? That's amazing. I mean, towards the end of, we were recording the song for a movie.

And towards the end of in the Canyon Hays, I was like, this is a project that I love, But this is not really the direction I'm going in as an artist, but it's just, it's this, it's sequestered off. It's its own island, you know? So I started feeling like, I don't want people to think this is like what I'm going to do next, you know? So I wanted to just like throw that David Bowie song on there at the end and be like, just kidding.

Glam rock. Oh, my God. It's such a nice gem dropped in there. Is that fun to sing a song like Space Oddity? Oh, my God. It's deliriously fun. It's like wildly exciting. I've been doing it live every night.

And it's just, oh. unapologetic drama. Yeah. I mean, it sounds amazing. It sounds amazing. And you kind of capture his essence and his voice, that big thing that he does on that song. Man, that's a big old compliment. There are many people who could pull it off. You can. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

Stick around to hear more from Brandy Carlisle right after the break. Welcome back. Now more of my conversation with Brandy Carlisle. Speaking of that big voice of yours, you talked about growing up in Washington, rural Washington, when did music come into your life? I guess how did music come into your life? It seems to me, and you can correct me on all this, but you weren't like playing video games like suburban kids. You guys were outside. It was kind of a rural life chasing each other through the woods. I did love my video games. I still love my video games. Oh, good. You're a game. So, but when did music enter the picture for you? Well, you know, my family,

always did music and my grandfather grandpa Vernon he was like a country yodeler and he was this just worthy pastoral you know proper patriarch and we all loved him so much and he got ALS and he died really young at 50 and my parents were young parents and so I just with all of that was really vivid and the loss of his voice I remember being a paramount turning point for my mother who was also a country singer.

And when he died the way that she, you know, I think the way I feel the way she coped with her grief was to dive into singing. He always wanted her to do it. And she's painfully shy about it. She's very good. And so she, you know, took a little bit of the money that he left,

a little bit of money that he left and bought a PA system and started like a bar band and auditioned down at a community theater and involved me because I was so, interested and I was only eight maybe at the time. So I got up on stage for the first time in a community theater called the Northwest Grand Old Opry at about eight and started singing. And that became what the Carlisles did was. Grandpa died.

Now we do music. And so it had a weight to it. It was really sacred to our family. And I still love country music to this day, classic country music. Because I feel like it, you know, it raised us and got us through such a traumatic time for our mom. And when it did enter our life, though, it's certainly outshone video games and anything else that we could do is all I could think about was being famous, getting on stage. Is that right? Hearing applause.

Oh, yeah. From eight years old, basically. Yeah. This is what I'm going to do. Oh, yeah. And it was never just music for the love of music. It was music for the love of people. The band.

The people are there, the crowd, everybody in that room sharing something. Yeah. Just people. Yeah. It's want to be with people. At what point did someone in your life say, hmm, her voice is special. There's something extraordinary about what's coming out of her mouth. She's not just getting up there and wanting to be famous.

She's got a gift. Did someone say that to you at any point? Or did you realize that I can really belt it? I think I thought I was special long before I was special. You had that swagger? I remember, oh, singing in the dentist's office, singing. on the bus, just singing for anybody that would listen and feeling

really special and not being, you know. But just wanting to be, really, really wanting to be. And just eventually started to like study it and take it really, really seriously.

So that I could get to where I wanted to get to. And I see it. I see it in other young people, too. The audacity. The American exceptionalism. It's embarrassing, but it can sometimes lead to a really beautiful life. It's not bad to have a little confidence, even if you haven't earned it yet, right? No, no. And sometimes for kids, like, it was all I had, you know?

Yeah. And for kids like me, I recommend a little bit of audacity. If I went back and listened to you singing as a teenager, say, would I hear any of the voice I hear on stage today? None of that. Totally different. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You'd hear no...

like power or drama or technique or any of the things that I really thrive on right now. I mean, I feel like right around the time I was 13 or 14, my love for Elton John and just, honestly, the gay 90s and the drama therein had formed to a point where I was wanted to sing like Freddie Mercury and there was, I wanted to have some glamorousness in my life vocally and some elegance. And so I started to sort of, um, dream of doing that, you know. Did they give you some sort of beacon as a young gay woman living in rural Washington? Like, okay, there's a place I want to go.

Yeah. And being raised in country music and being such a Gemini, Scaliwag, Trailer Park Country Girl. And then here's this elegance. And this elegance is really intertwined with queerness in a way that I couldn't even articulate, but I just knew I just wanted it. I wanted parts of it. you know but i wanted to retain the rugged right authenticity of who i am too and i i hope that i'm achieving that and then i'm you know setting myself up to honor both of these weirdos

well you're you're doing that and then some um so then as you move on you do start to find that voice that i might recognize a little bit better put out your first album in 2005 but you'd been you'd had some success before that people were noticing you and At what point did you feel like, okay, this is going to be a career? This isn't just something I think I'm good at. This is something I can maybe do for the rest of my life. Do you remember when you felt like you made it, so to speak? The entire time.

If I won a karaoke contest, if I was busking and there were 30 people when I opened my eyes, the entire time. It was actually ridiculous. It could have been quite a miss. Where does that come from? Where did that confidence come from? I don't know. I don't know. But it's like, everybody always talks to me about, well, you've worked so hard at it.

You know, you've worked so hard. You've worked so hard. You've worked hard. And I'm like, I did. You know, I don't know if it really feels like that. When you really, really love it, you all, you kind of tend to feel successful even in really hard times. And even rejection just feels like a fluke. Right. You know.

Right. They don't get it. Yeah. Their loss. Yeah. Yeah. So was there a gig or something, though, where you, like, I'm playing a big enough place now? I mean, I mean, you know, did you step on a stage at some point and go, this is different.

Here I am. Turning point. Like a turning point gig. Or an album or an appearance or something that made you feel like, here we go now. This is what I've expected since I was eight years old and now here it is. Just I've always had such a skewed perspective. And I've always believed that it was happening even when it wasn't happening. And now what will happen is I'll stand it on stage and Madison's,

Square Garden and I'm in disbelief but I'm in the same disbelief I was in you know in a club in in in in in in in in the mercury and so it's really hard for me because I look back on it and it's just really felt like a kind of one big victory just to get out of where I was and and and to get this way but I think that the moments that really stand out in my mind as like oh my God like this has happened are the ones that. that like involve my heroes. Like getting to sing with Elton or, you know, watching Joni come back to Newport in the way that she just did.

Those are the moments where I really realize that I've made it in a way that is a part of history and not just a part of me enjoying my life, which I do. I love this. You're like, you can ask a hundred different ways, but I always knew this was going to happen. Even when it probably wasn't going to happen. It's so good, though. It's so good. But I think it's fair to say, let's take.

the story, for example. That was a breakthrough moment, wasn't it? A very popular song, gets picked up in a commercial, runs during the Olympics. Everyone goes, ooh, what's that song? Who sings that? Was that a milestone, at least, in your career? Yeah, and the story was like, it was the most unlikely decade long, it took a 10 years for it to really have, you know, impacted in such a way that, like, would be, like, considered a hit, you know, because I've never had one, not on radio, not in life, you know? And so I've been able to make sort of the trajectory of my career or my catalog like the hit as it were. So I get to pick the songs I want to play on stage and all that stuff. But every night I sing the story because there's that note, you know, there's that moment of total triumph.

There's that Freddie Mercury moment that I just can't do without. I'll give you another moment. The Grammys, 2019. Oh, yeah. I actually watched that this morning. That moment. I'm not ashamed to tell you that I was watching it in a commercial. break of the show I host, and I felt a tear coming down my cheek. And I mean that because

the performance is so good, but the message of the song resonates with anybody who's thinking about themselves or their kids or somebody they love. But also, to me, it was just like a woman who had her moment. This is it. Let's see how you do it. And just blew the roof off the place. How great did you feel after that night? I mean, you saw the end of the performance. I'm like literally jumping up and down, which. I didn't even know I was doing in the moment, but I really saw that as my big opportunity, the whole day I knew that it was. And when I got out on stage to do it, as soon as I finished the song, I was like, this will change my entire life. And it absolutely did change my entire

life. How so? Everything changed after that. I mean, the shows got bigger. You know, the audiences got bigger. We started to make a little bit money. People called me, you know, cool people and famous people and I got to I got to start hanging out in circles that I was just reading about and a lot just changed I just feel I felt like you know I was looking at 40 and I had made it made it yeah yeah yeah so you're right I guess you're more of aware of those big well it's undeniable life-bending moments than I am when you watch your performance and then even the cutaways of the people in the crowd these are huge artists going my like they're kind of like they're just being blown out post malone cycle yeah post malone

I love that's my favorite bit. In his own way, he loved. He was like, okay. He's actually pretty legit. He is? He is really, oh, yeah. Do you play the guitar? Mm-hmm.

And he's, he just like gets it, you know? Yeah. I think I was at Bonneroo. He came out on stage dressed in a suit that was just like a hundred different versions of Dolly Barton's head. Oh, I saw that. So cool. I saw that. I saw that.

And I was like, he's okay by me, man. Exactly. He's pro-Dolly. Yeah, he passes the Dolly test. Yeah, that was, no, that was an amazing, a moment. I also love the high women. what you did with that. And it gets to something you were talking about before, which is lifting the profile of women, not just in country music, but in music broadly. It's a tribute,

obviously, to the highwaymen of your. Yeah. What was the idea behind that? Why was that so important to you to put that group together and you guys have succeeded so much with it? I mean, the group of the high women has just become so much more than the band. It's just, it's a conversation. It's a movement. And it's evolving to this day, you know, to shine a light on the people that country music um leaves behind frankly you know so many of us live this these rural lifestyles and we love these themes of family and values and faith and you know living on the land and working with your hands and these things are ubiquitous therefore people of color therefore there for there for LGBTQIA plus people too and country music tends to really

acknowledge only one kind of person and since country music raised me And it was the only thing for a really long time in my life that I was given access to. Those themes of only one kind of person, they didn't help. They didn't help me when I reached my adolescence. And I needed to see myself in the music that I loved. And I found it where I needed to find it. But I can relate to what it feels like to watch that message slip away. And even when I was young, I didn't have much to complain.

about because we had so many more diverse country singers than we do now. That's jarring. It's progress moving backward, which I think we're seeing so much more than we want to see. And why is that? Why do you think that is in the world of country music? Because you're right, you think about Tanya Tucker and Loretta and Dolly and all the people that you've worked with. You don't see as much of that today, do you? You really don't. No. And even like 80s and 90s country, you know, everything from Trisha and faith and the Judds all the way to the chicks and all of these things that were so you know omnipresent in our lives on the radio you know uh VH1 behind the music documentaries you're just diving into the lives

honestly of women and to be clear mostly white women um but at least i was seeing themes i could relate to and i feel like quite critical of country music now particularly mainstream country music where we're really hearing a lot about women only belonging and pickup trucks sitting beside a man in some little shorts with a coozy. And like, that's not the message I want my daughter to hear. I think you'd be hard pressed to even find a conservative American that wants their daughter to think that's all she is. And so the high woman serves this message for, I think for everyone, frankly.

It's a bit of a protest and it's a nice bonus that the songs are amazing. and you guys are so good together. It's kind of an invitation, too. It's like a bus ticket. Yeah. Come on, join the High Woman. Right, right. Tell your stories.

Stick around for more of my conversation with Brandy Carlisle right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Brandy Carlisle. Have you felt over the years Brandy excluded because you are a gay woman living in this world that, you know, it's Americana, but it is country. You know, you step into that world as well. Have you felt like, hmm. Where's my place in there? From like roots music, country music. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. From country music. But from many other genres, not in a conscious way. And I do sort of feel like I want to shine a light in those corners to people that may not know that they're excluding other people, you know? Because even I've excluded other people in my life. And until it was explained to me until I understood that I wasn't making an effort, you know, to paint. with a broader brush. I didn't. And so I have faith in the genre that it can evolve. You mentioned all these legends that you've worked with. And one of the great things you do is

sort of elevate them again. You know what I mean? In many ways, with Joni Mitchell being the most extraordinary example recently at Newport, just this summer. Can you take us inside some of those jam sessions we hear about at her house where I think this idea was sort of born? Like, What's it like? Because we understand no cameras, no nothing. Yeah. Lock it down. She's like, park your pistols at the door.

That's what she says. And so what's it like in there to the extent you can say publicly? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's incredible. And it's unifying. You know, it's not overly glamorous. It's very musical. Everyone's nervous.

No one's famous. You can be sitting there with, you know, Joni's neighbor and a friend from Canada and Harry Stiles. And everyone's the same. You know, he's just as nervous as they are. And it's amazing because it sets up, you set a bar for yourself. I set a bar for myself as a songwriter after the jams. And I was talking to Russ Kunkle who played drums on blue and so many other amazing albums that he's incredible drummer. And I was telling him about these jams and I was like, man, this is what's going on.

is that Joni invited us all here and told us that we were just going to jam and play music, but she started singing and no one expected her to start singing, and she's singing beautifully. And he goes, don't get it in your head that you orchestrate any of this. He's like, Johnny Mitchell always has a plan. And I have had that in my head for the last three years, that wherever this is going, Joni knows. And if I can facilitate in any way, that's my job. But I don't subscribe to this kind of like,

ableist belief that there's anything that I'm doing for Joni that she can't do for herself other than just love and support her and be in awe like you are of what she's accomplished with her body and with her music while she's been here with us on earth. I was saying to you earlier, I didn't realize it's been 20 years since you've done a live show like that. Did it take any cajoling or was this the plan? She invites you over and says, hey, the voice is here. If you want to hear it again, did you have to twist her arm at all? Or was she excited to come to new? port with you. There was a moment right before we left

where I think that she had a she hesitated for a second because she was worried about what her level of involvement was supposed to look like, you know? And I think if she had set down and let herself go, this is my return to the stage,

that she might have gone further down that path of second guessing it, you know? So we had a FaceTime and I was like, Joni, since you've introduced me to this group of people by allowing us to come together in your living room and play our music for you, you know, and set these barometers for ourselves.

We've been on each other's albums. We've known each other's families. We write songs together. We play concerts. We go and tour together. Like you've created a family, a scene based on your living room, your recovery, and your music.

All we want to do is tribute you. So if you just sit there, let us sing to you and thank you. And she's like, I get the spirit of it now. I'll be there. You know, we're doing this. And then she opened her mouth and singing every song. Yeah. No one knew.

Oh, is that right? She was going to do that. Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah. She surprised you with how far she went with it. With what, how far she went, how loud she sang, how confidently, how beautifully she sang when she stood up and played that guitar part. We'd all heard her fiddling around with it, but we had never heard her do it to that extent where it was just like an absolute triumph. And we were crying and, like, carrying on because we were.

were just as moved as everybody else was and totally blown away. Well, that was written all over your faces too. I mean, you look a little shocked and then just overwhelmed for for obvious reasons, completely understandable. I look back at the footage. I'm like, I look hysterical. Well, you did a good thing talking her into it on that FaceTime, so well done. Is that a surreal thing for you to be able to even have a FaceTime with Joni Mitchell, to be invited to Joni Mitchell's house to go on vacation with Elton John, given where you've come from, going back to those days, singing on that stage with your family, to think, oh, Elton John and I are working together. What does that like? It's so, it's just so beautiful, and it's so hard

to fathom. And I just, I try to strike, I was telling you earlier, I try to strike this balance of just staying in my body, recognizing that it's a, absurd and it's something so wonderful like no one deserves it. So to be in this place of like total awe, but then also don't fan girl out too much and freak out to the point where it looks like you don't belong here. You know, so you have to strike this balance in between. So I guess the best thing I can do is just have like enormous gratitude but stay in my body so that I don't lose sight of the fact that this is happening to me in my life, you know?

That's what, that's how I get to live here. right now. Does it ever strike you? You've earned your place on vacation with Elton John. You've earned your place playing a guitar next to Joni Mitchell because of how extraordinarily talented you are. I mean, you are one of them, whether you realize it or not. All my friends that are musicians, and they're just in vans, and they're just working so hard and they're so good. And some of them are so much better than me. It's hard for me to be like, well, I've earned my place. But I do feel very proud of myself. You've come a long way. Thanks. You've come a long way. What about the idea that the way you looked up to them now?

There are young artists who say, I want to be Brandy Carlisle. I want to sing like that. I love that. I want to perform the way she performs. What does that feel like? I believe it. I accept it. I take it all in.

I accept the responsibility of it that comes with it. And it's what I always wanted. And it's a distinct honor, especially. people that are at risk, especially people that are underprivileged and that don't feel seen or represented, even in their own families or their schools or their church, like to know that they're looking at a concert or reading a book or listening to a record and going, there's another side to this. You know, I get out of this eventually and maybe it's that for me. You know, I really relate to it. Well, that's the more profound piece of it, which the music is one thing. They want to be like you on stage, but the way you talk about Ellen DeGeneres, young kids and, you know,

young women and young boys talk about you. That's kind of kind of melt your brain a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I see them from stage and stuff too, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I get really excited in my head about it when I'm out on stage. I'm looking out of people. And I'm like, yep, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me, and that's me. It's amazing. Quite a ride, right? It is quite a ride. Okay, so you've worked with almost everyone I think you want to work with. Who's still out there? Do we need to send a signal right now to someone? I've really been thinking about this lately. Do you know what it is? is that Elton John's been my greatest hero since I was 11 years old.

It was a major turning point in my life in almost every way that a person can affect another person. But I still have never got to perform with Elton John. Never? No. Oh. Can't we just make that happen? That's what we got to do. I mean, but we don't know because the tour, you know, it's like when's he going to be?

So, yeah. I think he may show up at one of your shows. I'm going to put that in the atmosphere. Maybe I'll show up to a couple more of his. I feel like this is already happening and this is you're very good at like just planting a seed that's what I wonder sometimes has it already happened? Do I just really wanted to happen

or did it happen in some other dimension? There's that confidence again. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. So Brandy, what do you think you want to play? It's called This Time Tomorrow. The song, Love of My Life by Queen influenced my arrangement of this song. When the fire inside that burns so bright begins to grow faded,

it can be hard to see the ground on which you stand. Though you may not be, you will feel like a stranger in this lane. You can try to call, but a broken spirit may dry up the bone and the edges of the night may cause your sorrow. You know I may not be around, this time tomorrow but i'll love and there are no words of comfort to be found they still haunt us like the ghosts of

babylon you know i may not be what a treat what a treat thank you for saying that thank you brandy what is the thing to the layman the brandy carlyle the voice what the little thing you do at the end of a line a little cracking in the voice. How do you describe that more technically than I am right now? I don't know. I think it's like a mid-break, kind of a yodel thing

that I learned from mimicking Patsy Klein. Everything any singer ever does is from mimicking. And if you want to be unique, you just have to mimic a lot of people. So she was one of the heroes growing up. Absolutely, one of the heroes. Vocally, you know, her voice was just so loud and bold. Yeah.

And actually, if you marry Patsy Klein with Freddie Mercury, You know, or Joni Mitchell. You get really interesting. Wow. Some interesting techniques out of that. Well, we just heard a little of all that, didn't we? Didn't we?

I don't know, maybe. That was great. Thank you, Brandy. Thank you. My big thanks to Brandy for that incredible performance and for truly just a great conversation. You can check out her album, In the Canyon Hays, wherever you stream your music. My thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of my conversations with our guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode.

And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sitdown podcast.