Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Brandi Carlile

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Brandi Carlile sought out some alone time to work on her newest album, “Returning to Myself,” but she came out of the experience realizing she needed the people around her more than ever. Brandi talks to Rachel about owning different sides of her identity even when they’re at odds with each other and shares her memory time machine trip with Joni Mitchell.To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Rachel. I have got some really exciting news to share at the top of the show. Wild Card Now has our own YouTube page. You can subscribe to it by searching for at NPR Wildcard. Not only is their video of today's episode with Brandy Carlisle there, but we've also got videos from a whole lot of our favorite conversations from the past year. With Michelle Obama, Mark Marin, Zadie Smith, John Green, Brett Goldstein, Brune, Brown, Harrison Ford, and so many more. and I'm telling you, being able to see people laugh is contagious. And watching their faces as they think through our questions or tap into something emotional gives our show a whole other dimension. So go check it out and make sure to subscribe. Again, search for at NPR Wildcard on YouTube.

Okay, on with the show. What have you found surprising about getting older? What I've found surprising about getting older is that I really like it. I like the way it feels in my heart and mind. I like the way I look. I like the way my face looks. I don't think I love being young or having that kind of chaos meteor tail behind me, you know? I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard.

The show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is Brandy Carlisle. One part of me wants to done a sequin suit and belt out a power ballad on stage at Carnegie Hall. And the other one wants to be in rain gear, filthy, dirty, on a fishing boat, catching halibut. You know that band or musician that keeps you company on a long drive,

or while making breakfast on a Sunday morning, or on your worst day when you can't see the light in all the darkness? For me, that is Brandy Carlyle. And it's mainly because she makes music and poetry. out of ideas that are already swimming around in my head. That's why her songs feel so personal to so many people. And she's won 11 Grammys as a result. She's also pretty good at singing and wears really awesome suits. Her latest album is called Returning to Myself.

And I am so happy to welcome Brandy Carlisle to Wildcard. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, me today. First three cards. Memories round. You pick one, two, or three. Two. What do you think your birth order says about you? What do I think my birth order says about me? Where are you in your birth order? I'm a big believer in the birth order kind of concept. It's just, I've seen it too many times that your birth order affects who you are. I'm the eldest daughter. So I was just had an inflated sense of self-importance, like from the get-go.

And I think it says a lot about who I believe I am in the world. You know, I have a pension for matriarchy. And I strive for like to be in a leadership role whenever I can. And I get into trouble with with those concepts. What did that look like when you were when you were little finding your leadership way? I just, I don't know. I just used to like lay in bed just dreaming I was saving the world or saving my family from a burning house or that I had a black belt and karate. And I was just like I had like all of these fantasies of just being, I don't know, like having people need me, want to be near me.

And being able to provide in ways that I think, I don't think my brother and sister even crossed their mind. Were they cool with this dynamic or they're like, Brandy, we're good. Step off. Yeah, I think that one. I think Brandy were good. Step off. For sure, yeah. And to this day, I think that the dynamic just plays itself out as accurately as it did when we were little babies.

Isn't it so weird how you get together with your siblings? I totally become the exact same person I was. There are three of us, too. And all of a sudden, I'm, I don't know what I'm. Which one are you? I'm the eldest. Okay, you're the oldest. And I have a brother and a sister, a younger brother and a sister. Yeah. And yeah, same. All of a sudden, I'm the person who's, they're like, they gang up on me and I like tell them what to do. And I'm like, how did I fall back here? Right. And then you're right back in that space again, just taking responsibility. You want to hear something crazy now? Yeah, I do. So I am the eldest and that is like intrinsically woven into who I think I am. But I found out that my dad, that my dad has. had a daughter before me. Oh, see, this is fascinating, I think.

I found this out when I was, like, 13. And we just never talked about it again until I was, like, in my 30s, and I found her. I went and found her. So you did not have a relationship with this person? No, no. You did not know this person existed. I found her for my father and my brothers and sisters.

I felt like, you know, it was my job to find this woman. And I found her, and I called her, and it was a long journey, but I figured it out a lot of face, book sleuthing. Wow. But I called her, and I don't know why these words came out of my mouth, but I was like, you know, I'm your sister. Why don't you come and stay with me for a while? I invited the stranger to my house for like a week. She said yes. She said yes. She drove from Oregon to my house with her husband and three kids, and the minute I saw her, I knew her. Whoa. But I still

felt like the oldest, even though she's older than me. I don't know why. Did she know about you? No, not for a really long time. She knew that, you know, some other guy was her dad, but she didn't know about me or who I was or what I did or my brothers and sisters or anything until I reached out and found her. No, I'm really getting into it with you, but just for clarity's sake, did your mom? My mom knew.

Do you want to know how my mom knew? How? Okay, this is actually cinematic. So this was like, my dad was young. I want to say he must have been 17, 18 when he got this woman pregnant and she her parents freak out right because my dad's like the town problem child they freak out they make them sign a thing don't ever reach out to us you do not exist they left the state to get you know and it was like okay fair enough and my dad wore like all leather and drove a motorcycle and everything so they

leave they you know she goes off and has this baby he meets my mom almost immediately and gets my mom pregnant with me and she's just getting ready to have me and she's on the phone and she's on the phone with her little friend, right? She's literally like a teenager. She's on the phone with her little friend, and she's scribbling on a pad of paper with the side of a pencil. And as she's doing her little doodles

and making her drawing, this writing starts to appear because my dad had written a letter on the pad too hard, and it created these indents. So these words start to appear, and my mom lightly colors in this whole piece of paper and sees this entire letter

that my dad had written the mother of his other child. That's how she found out. What? Yeah. That's crazy. I know. I know.

And then they told me when I was 13. Oh, my God. There's so many follow-up questions I have, but we have so many more cards to go through. No, no, no. This one is so intriguing enough to go down that road. Wow. Also, okay, so your parents are very young. They are very young.

My parents are like 63 and 64, and I'm 45, so they're, yeah. And are they still together? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That is so cool. Yeah, we're really, really, we're. We're all really tight, really dysfunctional.

It's fabulous. And your sister, your newly found sister, is she been integrated into the family? Fully. And in the most inexplicable way. She's just us, and we don't know how or why, but she just is. She's funny. God, she's funny. What a lovely thing.

But when you're all together, you're still like, sorry. Oldest child lives. It has not shifted my identity at all and I know who I am. You can come into our family as long as you know that I am the oldest. Right. Oh my God. That is a crazy story. I know.

Sorry. I figured you can edit them more much than that out of you want. Okay. Three new cards. One, two, or three. Okay. Memories. Still memories.

We're still in memories. Okay, great. Yeah, we get three in each. All right. What you got? One, two, three. One. One.

Where did you shine the most as a teenager? Where did I? Shined the most. Where did you feel like you? Shown. Shone. Shown. Shined as a teenager?

I feel like I came into my own when I cut off my hair and came out of the closet. How old were you? I was 1997 when everybody came out because Ellen DeGeneres came out. So that means I was born in 1981. Does that it make me 15? Yeah. It was right then. I had a real coming of age moment where I just sort of claimed myself.

And then I feel like even though it didn't make me popular in a small town, even though I'd never met a gay person in my life or had a girlfriend or anything, that that sort of like self-assuredness was the first time I think I ever really shone. Yeah. It's a weird word. I'm changing it. Yeah. We'll go with it.

Somewhere there's an English teacher just like, ugh, grins. Was it Ellen, really? I mean, that was a really big part of it. I heard the Indigo Girls for the first time. I had about four years into being the biggest Elton John fan on the planet. So the movie Philadelphia, there were a lot of turning points, but Ellen DeGeneres coming out was a big one. Yeah.

Did you cut your hair first or have a conversation with your parents first? I cut my hair. Cut your hair first. Yeah. My mom was really disappointed. I worked at a grocery store and there was a supercuts next to it. And I just went in and I'm like, off with it. Yeah. And I don't need to like, even now I know my hair doesn't make me gay or not gay.

It doesn't really say anything about my gender. But for some reason it was symbolic at that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was my separation moment, I think. And how was your mom? How was your dad? Oh, my mom was so bummed. She was bummed.

Yeah, but my dad wasn't. And so it was a long process. for my mom especially. Yeah. Three more. One, two, or three? I mean, I got to go with three because I already did the one and two. You choose, lady.

What's something that clicked for you in your 20s? I mean, everything, if you're doing it right, that's when the clicks happens. That's when the clicking starts. You know, in my 20s, I got a real. record deal. Yeah. And we bought a van, me and my band, and that's when I first started to travel out of Washington

State. I didn't even see an airplane until I was 17. And I went to Manhattan for the first time in my very early 20s. I want to say 20, 21. And seeing a city like that after being. you know, coming from such a small place, but dreaming of the whole world, dreaming of the whole world was just when it clicked how big the world is and how we're all just these like specks of dust. And I realized that I had so much to learn about a world that I really, really love.

And you wanted to be out in it? I wanted to be out in it with people all the time. What the van look like? It was white Ford-A-Connor line and yeah we drove it we put

tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of miles on that van and then you know what's so cool is during the pandemic our little

like hometown record store easy street easy street records they were like because everything was shut down they were doing

record vinyl deliveries to people's houses and they were going to this burger joint called Dix and getting burgers. I know dicks.

You know dicks? I know dicks. Oh, it's the best. I went to college in the Pacific Northwest, yeah. Oh, the dicks jokes. I know. They abound. Plentiful.

There are many. He would go and he would pick up burgers and fries and shakes and bring people vinyl. And we gave them, we donated our van to them. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it was such a good feeling to see it go to something so worthwhile and indie and music-oriented. At what point when you were in your, your 20s when things are clicking and you're like, I got a record deal. I got a band. I got a van. I can afford to fly. Did you ever feel secure? Like this is happening. I got what I wanted and I'm on

the trajectory and dreams are coming true. Yeah. I felt like that the whole time. I felt I felt like that from the beginning. I always felt I had made it or was in the process of making it and that it was a foregone conclusion. It just never occurred to me that it wouldn't happen. And I'm looking back on it now a lot because I'm in my 40s and my niece is trying to do it. And she has that same thing, that willful ignorance blinders on. She doesn't see that she's climbing. She's just moving forward.

And it's like I've felt that way. I've really felt secure and safe like I had made it. We're going to talk about the album. Congratulations. Thank you very much. It is beautiful. Thank you. I mean, how does it feel to be performing these songs? These songs are about, I mean, the whole thing is called returning to myself. So these are, there's a very personal story. Your music is on the whole very personal, but this is a different project for you. It is a different project. I think if you can address and almost kill identity.

your prior identity as an artist and like let yourself free fall by starting over, it's the only way to like authentically feel the way I feel right now when I'm playing these songs. Like I've never done it before. Like I don't know what I'm doing. I want to, I want to feel like I don't know what I'm doing when I take the time to reinvent myself as an artist and that's how I feel. Why was that, why did you feel that craving? Like what about all your success made you feel like this is not me? I got to return to me and I don't know what that is necessarily, but I got to, I mean, in your words, like kill your own identity. Yeah, it's like a lot of the artists that I love the most have done it. They've had eras where they've looked a certain

way, acted a certain way, sounded a certain way, written a certain way, played a certain kind of instrument and then just like death to that thing and and switch because like maybe they i know but with myself i start not believing myself i start becoming an entertainer i love to entertain i sing background vocals for an Elvis impersonator from the time i was like a teenager and i love Elvis Presley and i love like the great entertainers who they have a grandiosity about them and a sparkliness but there's also a selflessness in setting self aside to entertain to make someone laugh or cry or dance you know and i think that to keep that fresh you have to kind of kill the entertainer in you every every so often and that's what i've done

and she'll come back when she learns the songs and feels a little less vulnerable sing a number right now she's not there and it needs to be that way um the whole thing I've heard you describe it as a U-shaped journey for yourself. Yeah. Not YOU. Not Y are you. The letter U of in the course of rediscovering who you are, going deep in that self-exploration, when you're stripped down of all the artifice and the entertainer, but who are you, Brandy,

and then the U-shaped comes up on the other side and then you come out of that. Yeah. But you're in the bottom of the U. you've said. You're still. No, I'm out of there. Oh, you're out. Yeah, I did it. I'm not staying in there. It's been discovered. It's been discovered. We've moved on. I want people. It's like, who am I? So you go down and then you figure it out, maybe, maybe you don't.

But you decide to come back out, just like water. You can't stay under there forever. Yeah. And you come out, you go in there saying, who am I? And you come out saying, I'm yours. You know, I belong to other people. That's what I want for my life. Were you unsure about that in the beginning? Like what provoked the whole thing anyway? Well, you don't want to have a made-up mind, you know, but I've always been accused, maybe appropriately, of codependence.

I mean, I feel like we should just take a pause and explain how many people people you live with. Yeah. I actually can't even count. There's so many people. Yeah, yeah. You say. I don't know.

I mean, it's a beautiful community. I've lived in the same log cabin since I was 21. I'm 45 now. I have twin brothers in my band. Twin brothers are codependent by default identical twins. They don't even have their own face. They share everything. Yeah.

So there is no sense of anonymity or agency, really, in relationship. with people like that. Twins are fascinating beings. Right. And they are, just to be clear, they are not your brothers, but they are twins. Well, they aren't, except the one of them married my sister. And then, you know, then the niece and nephew were born and they're like, that's my family. And they are also my next door neighbors. So we all live on one property together. And then Phil's twin brother, Tim and his wife Hannah and their two kids, Wilder and Waverly, they live with us too. So they're on there. And then my wife, Catherine, She's got two sisters, and they fell in love with people in my band, married people in my band, and then they moved out there with us.

So the two sisters, one's married to the cello player, one's married to the engineer, and they live there. And then my ex-girlfriend lives also next door. Oh, wow, I didn't know that one. Yeah, that's very lesbian. And I think there's a couple of more, if I'm honest. So that's my whole family, and we do our holidays together, and we do our loss together, and we do, and we have fights and we have, we get together and, and we get together and, and suss through conspiracy theories and have interventions and talk with someone. But that sounds beautiful. That doesn't feel, that doesn't seem codependent.

I don't think so either. That's what I think I've learned in the U-shaped journey, is that actually it's okay to just belong to other human beings. Yeah. You know, what do you like when you're alone? I don't like a being alone. That is not your preferred state of being. No, do you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

What do you do? I mean, stare at a wall. I like, I can do anything. What do you do with your mind? Well, there's a lot going on in there. But I have had to learn which interactions restore me and which ones deplete me. And I'm a person who will go hard, external. for a while in a certain circumstance and then I got a retreat.

But that is not you. Yeah, don't want to do it. No, I mean, I feel like I can retreat right in front of you. Like, right in front of you, I will just play Zelda. Like, you can come over to my house and, like, you know, I'll show you where the fridge is and there's food in there. But I, like, may stay in a bathrobe and not talk to you for two hours because. Yes. But it's like, but I would love that you're there.

Yeah. I love that you're there doing you parallel to me doing me. And it's like I think that that's where I'm at. And maybe I always have been. My brother and sister certainly have accused me of being unaware of how the way I'm acting affects other people. But I think I know how to be alone and surrounded by people at the same time. I do have to ask you about the song, the tribute to Joni Mitchell. Oh, I love this.

I know. It's such a good song. I mean, they're beautiful songs. there, but there is a song, Joni Mitchell has been a long time inspiration and friend of yours. Are you a Joni fan? I'm a Joni fan. So, did you hear it? Yeah, she heard it.

Yeah. Was that crazy to play it for her? I was really worried to play it for her because one thing about Joni is like she won't be sussed out. Right. She won't be figured out. Right. So I don't know what she's going to think is funny and what she's not going to think is funny.

I don't know, I don't know with her until it's happening in real time. So I just, she's not going to blow smoke in your direction. God, no. She's going to tell you, this sucks or. That's fine, brandy. She would, yeah, she would. She wouldn't say this sucks or something. She would say, oh, that sounds like something I've heard before.

Or, you know, she would say like. That's worse. Yeah, you know. Or she'd make a smart-ass remark or something like that. But, yeah, I drove that one up to her. house because I couldn't handle the anxiety anymore of her having not hurt it. Yeah. But it came out in such an honest way that it was almost like an inside joke.

I didn't know if Joan was going to get. And then when I realized that she did get the joke, I felt so loved and seen by Joni in a way that was actually like transformative. When I tell you, tell me, okay, I know you believe and that's love. And it kind of wrapped up the last six years with such a sweet bow of like, oh, we do think the same thing. Yeah. You know, it was really cool. And it's such a lovely placement on this album, which is about you doing your own journey, but remembering and coming out on the other side, remembering that you are a people who needs people.

Yeah. And so much of your career is belt on these beautiful collaborations that you've done with other artists. Yeah. And so it was lovely to see like an explicit shout out to her. Yeah. And she does not need people. Yeah. She's not that girl.

So it was, when I played her returning to myself, and it ends with, you know, returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do. She was just looking at a mirror and putting butterfly clips in her hair and listening to that song. And it ended and she just looked at me and went, no, it isn't. That's so awesome. It was really awesome. Yeah. Okay. We're going on. Round two. Insights. Insights. One, two, or three. Three. When are you the truest version of yourself? Flip. Okay. I want to know that because I am fascinated with people who ask other people questions. I want to know this about you.

Yeah. Well, it took me a long time to figure out what work I wanted to do that was going to make me feel like the most true version of myself. And I did a lot of other jobs that I felt like I was supposed to do. I was the anchor of big news show. And it was generally important work and I feel good to have done it. But doing this, I know this sounds cheesy, but this is what I want to do. All I want to do is talk to other people who I don't know, strangers. Yeah. I want to talk to strangers. And I want to tell them things about me and I want them to tell me things about them because that's how I think we build empathy in the world. Yeah. And so I feel really lucky that way.

Yeah. And also when I'm home in Idaho, that's the other place where I feel. Idaho, where? Idaho where? I'm from Idaho Falls, five generations. Cool. Yeah. That's where I took my very first flight was to Idaho. Oh, really? Yeah. When you were 17? You had to go see a girl. And I went to, I was called McCall. McCall, Idaho. Out middle of nowhere. Not a great place for a lesbian to go see a girl. Not really. I can't even believe that happened. Listen, when you take, you got to take the risks sometimes. Yeah. You do. You got to take the risk.

Okay. Trueest version of yourself. Where? Wait, I have to answer it now? Yeah, you still have to answer it. Fishing. Fishing. When I'm fishing. Yeah, a while ago, I, and it's like, I don't like choosing one because there is, I got my proper Gemini where one part of me wants to do in a sequin suit and strike a Shakespearean pose and belt out a power ballad on stage at Carnegie Hall. and the other one wants to be in rain gear and filthy dirty on a fishing boat catching halibut offshore in the Pacific Northwest.

And I don't, and reconciling those two things is what aging is about for me. I actually went and saw like a hypnotist one time about this, like a psychosympathetic nervous system sort of specialized speech. therapist person that does a hypnosis type thing because right around the time that I got nominated for all those Grammys with a joke, I started getting sick every time something big would happen in my life. I would get sick. You know, I couldn't sing. I had chest colds. And so at one point I had got asked to sing on some big award show and I was sick again and I got recommended to go talk to this therapist. And she basically told me to like, close my eyes. And, and, you know, and, envision myself like on the stage like the world stage and I could even like see what I was wearing

I was like wearing a velvet suit it was really glamorous and then she asked me to like visualize the opposite self of that that like exists in me and I saw myself in a place called Nia Bay which is a is the Macaw reservation at the northernmost tip of the west coast of United States and and And then I had to have those two women have a conversation. And the conversation was, which one of these selves is true? Which one of these selves is truer? And are you willing to co-exist and listen to one another? Which when one becomes ignored, it will do something to your body to make sure you're paying attention to the other.

And that is how I stopped. getting sick and letting pressure drive me to, paying too much attention to one and not the other. Into the other one, just wanting to get into my sweatpants and get a trout pole. Yeah. You know, it's like now if I feel like I don't want to do something, I have to say no instead of say yes and get sick.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's my truest self is I think whichever one I'm listening to more. Uh-huh. Yeah. And that equilibrium between the two halves of you. One, two or three. Three new cards, by the way.

Okay, two again. What have you found surprising about getting older? What I've found surprising about getting older is that I really like it. Hmm. I really like it. I like the way it feels in my heart and mind. I like the way I look. I like the way my face looks.

I think I always believed I was older. And now I sort of feel like I'm coming into a zone that I, I prefer being in. I don't think I love being young or having that kind of chaos meteor tail behind me, you know? I feel really settled into the aging process

like I'm where I want to be. And I got a lot of older friends like we talked about. And so I can see the end of the road. I know what it looks like and I feel like I get a little bit of a sneak peek into what the second half could be if I'm contemplative and present for it. And that doesn't wig you out, that doesn't intimidate you, it just is. I mean, I'm terrified of like death and I'm not a big mortality Zen person, but I do like being getting older a lot.

Do you? That's a lovely position to be in. I feel, I feel embanked. Do you? I'm a little older than you are, Brandy Carlisle, and things start to happen to a woman's body. And there are parts of the aging process that really suck. Yeah. But, I mean, I do hurt. I mean. The aches and pains, that's a bummer. That's a weird joint pains. That's a bummer. I know what you mean. I'm like super scratchy on my back all of a sudden. Scratchy. Yeah, I don't know. There's all kinds of weird symptoms with mental pain. to pause. I digress. But I do like being in a place where I don't care so much. Yeah, that's the best. It's really a freeing thing. And to release, that's kind of what we were talking about before, to release other people's expectations about what I'm supposed to be or what success looks like. Yeah. And just to be like, I don't care what anyone else thinks. This is kind of what.

what I want to do and how I want to be and how I want to present in the world. And, you know, I want to wear weird clothes to my kids baseball games. All that is better than not being sore, honestly. It is. It outweighs, like, the downsides of the aging right now for me, too. I guess. You talk me into it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure. I'm into it. Let's do it. Yeah. Just embrace the eating pad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do. I have three heating pads now. Three. Oh, my God. You know, I'm not trying to name drop, but. My friendship with Annie Lennox consists of us sending each other pictures of our heating pads

in our bed before we go to sleep in random hotel rooms. When I met, Alanis Fawcette in May, she's sent me three heating pads since I met her. She's got like all of these heating pads that she recommends. Come on! Yeah, that girl is all about like taking care of yourself. Yes. Yeah. And the heating pad is a magical, magical thing that more people should understand and use on a regular basis.

Uh-huh, underrated, and they can go anywhere. Commercial flights. I mean, people look at you funny, just take them out, plug them in, and just be comfortable. That is a great idea. I know. It may be the most important thing I've learned today. Yeah. Okay, three more. Last one in this round.

One, two, or three. Three. What does age teach you about love? I think age teaches you that love isn't a feeling. Hmm. I think age teaches you. you see that love is an action. It's a, I don't want to say,

I don't want to sound too dutiful or too eldest child, but that it's something that you do. It's a commitment to a certain kind of fidelity and an honoring of someone else, even if that someone doesn't love you. And then that frees you from wondering what this means if the feeling changes, you know. It means that the feeling changed. It doesn't mean that the love changed.

And that if love is something you do, that it endures. And you can come in and out of entertaining and understanding the feelings. But it's something that you do as you love. This has been a recent epiphany, or do you feel like you've always gone? kind of known that or is it genuinely something that has come with time? Not really recent. I think everything that's happened to me big in my life has taught me more about unconditional love, commitment, and fidelity, whether it was my relationship with the twins, my acceptance, good humor, forgiveness, and admiration for my parents when I reached a certain

age and saw them differently. falling in love with my wife, which started as a feeling and has evolved into something so much more all-consuming. And then having children is like, I think the purest, one of the purest forms of like recognizing what love in action can look like. And then finally, the world that we're living in right now, learning to love complicated people who have complicated beliefs that don't. align with my own and my feelings don't love those people but my actions have to do you have because I'm genuinely curious are there people like that in your life where you get to work on this on a day-to-day basis oh girl yes I live in the mountains yes yes I'm a fisherman and I ride a four-wheel I guarantee you. I'm surrounded by complicated people.

And it's, yeah, it's brutal and really mind expanding. And a practice. And a practice. Yeah, totally. Meditation even. Totally. Round three. Brandon Carlyle.

Almost done. Three new cards. Belief. Belief. Belief. The big ones. One, two, or three. One.

Are you preoccupied with the past, the first. future or neither. Oh. Well, my parents are really impulsive. Like, my parents are really exciting. Yeah? They're young. They're very impulsive. They're addicts. Oh. They currently. Well, practicing and non-practicing, you know, my dad, I was, I was raised by an alcoholic. And when you're raised by an alcoholic, everybody gets to be an alcoholic. You get the privilege of all of those character. Everyone's open. You know, defaults. And I was raised in Al-Anon and everything, just understanding the concept of addiction and how impulsive it is. And so I think that all of us have that in us.

And that puts me in the moment all the time. You know, if I have $100, I will spend $100. If I have something I want, I will get that thing with absolutely no thought to what I'll do the very next day. And it's been like that for me since day one. And there's something about that pattern of impulsiveness that has lent itself really well to what I do with art. So I would say I'm pretty in the present. But not always in the healthiest way. Just in that I absolutely don't know how to think about the next moment.

Wow. Does that mean you can't think about consequences of things? because that's maybe a negative of that. Yes. I actually read this amazing article that talked about the kind of like, I'm going to really paraphrase and make it dumb it down because this is how I understood it. Yeah. The like the stupidity or the audacity in like believing in yourself like unconditionally in this way that like the confidence that it takes to do my job is like a lack of intelligence.

It's not like an extra layer of it. And they sort of likened it to like athletes who do like penalty kicks or or free throws that like basically, and it's been this way since I as a little girl, like if my job is like free throws, like I absolutely do not believe that for any reason I will miss. It's not possible. And then when I do miss, it's like, that was a fluke. That'll never happen again. And that's how I feel. about failure or the waterfall ahead of me on the river or the future. It's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. And then if it's not, it's like, that was weird. That was just like, that's not going to happen again. Tear in the space time continuum. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it goes back to what you were saying about being able to do this in the first place. Like, if you start, you become so encumbered by self-doubt, then you would never like, try to be a musician in the first place.

It's just untenable. You've never seen like penalty kicks? Or what are the kicks at the end of the soccer game? My daughter plays soccer. What is that called? It's a shootout. Yeah. How do they do that?

You know? It's like that's the thing. They don't believe if they don't believe that they will miss, chances are they won't. And if they do, they don't believe they'll miss again. That's a very in the moment of flow state. And that's never been shattered for you. For some reason, no.

No. Let's keep it that way. That's a beautiful thing. One, two, or three. Three, two or three. Three. What's your best defense against despair? I mean, it's going to sound simple.

My best defense against despair is singing and praying. How do you pray? I just say prayers. You do? Yeah. Yeah, I just hit my knees any time of day wherever I am, bow my head, sneak off into a bathroom and say a little prayer and, you know, ask God to be the outcome of whatever it is that I'm about to do. And I feel despair when I am afraid. So that's, I think, what leads me to prayer.

Is God real for you now at 44? God's more real to me at 44 than God ever was. And they say that that happens to spiritual people. They have a second calling. Like there's the faith that you were raised with or the faith that you were sort of most, you know, steeped in growing up. And then there's something you find. later on and that's the one that that's the one that sticks that's the one I have and that's the

one I spend all my all my time talking through with my kids yeah yeah um you were raised in a religious environment yeah off and on uh-huh yeah but it wasn't it was something that you left behind or did was it always with you this is just a new incarnation of it I think think when so when I was a little kid you know I had I got meningitis and I was in a coma and I had really young parents and so when I came out of the coma and I lived through that um my parents got a pretty religious after that I think for quite a while and you can understand why um and it was a really beautiful thing for me then I really felt saved and like there must have been a purpose you know to me sort of coming out of that and stuff that gave me,

it's fed the inflated sense of self-importance we touched on earlier. But that faith was always with me and a really innocent, whimsical and artful belief in Jesus, in the Jesus story. And I had a lot of heartbreak and trauma with that when I read. realized I was gay as a teenager. I think a lot of LGBTQIA plus people in the West, but particularly in America, walk around with quite a lot of hell trauma. And it took me a long time to walk that back. And I read books by spiritual leaders that I really loved and loved now, like Richard Roar and Rob Bell. Are you? The Universalist.

Christ? Naked now? Yeah, that's amazing. Rachel held Evans when she was alive, Nadia Boltzweber, some really amazing leaders that spoke to me in a language that I understood and that I feel like I was born to understand. And then I found my faith. Like Kim Ritchie says, I lost my religion and I found my faith. I'm still working on mine.

I mean, we always got to be working on it. There can be no end. Okay, last one. One, two, or three? Two. What's an experience you wish you could give every person? This is the last question? This is the last question.

So I didn't do a skip. I hope that's not disappointing in the game, but I'm definitely not skipping this one. Good. Because I wish every single person could get up in front of an audience and sing. I really wish that. Yeah. I don't think that there's much more.

in the world that gives you that feeling of love and safety and just being understood, you know. And it's a very powerful thing, and I'm so lucky to get to do it. I don't know who I would be if I didn't get to do that. So I wish it on everybody. And I actually think that every show I sit up there and I look at an audience and I go, I wish you could all experience this. This is why karaoke, when done well, is a magical. religious, beautiful experience.

Don't you think? Can we just sit with that for a second? Let's sit with it. The truth in that statement. That's what it is. It is. Yeah. I've had incredibly important, like, spiritual experiences in karaoke.

Yeah. Where it is this safe place. Yep. And who knows who's walking in the door. Some stranger, some little old lady who lives down the street, some guy who just closed down working at a bar down there, some working mom, everybody comes in. and they have their moment.

They've got their song. They feel good about their song. They've got their song. They've got their comfort songs. Yeah, they got their moves. They don't even look at the screen anymore. No, they know how they're going to sing this. They know how they're going to present.

And everybody is so into it. They're so happy for them. Yep. And it is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. So we can't all be pop stars on a huge stage and have that adulation. I can't even imagine what that feels like if having like thousands of people. But you can recreate it in small.

Everyone can sing karaoke. Everyone can take that experience up a notch. Gaybar karaoke. Dude! Yeah. I know! I bet you gay bar karaoke. That's the way to do it.

Amazing. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. You pick one moment from your past to revisit. It is not a moment you would change anything about. Just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. A moment this... that I that haunts me that I come back to all the time and have such complicated feelings about was possibly the moment that led to this album which was the Hollywood Bowl with Joni Mitchell

the second night sitting next to her best seat in the house shotgun seat next to Joni Freakin Mitchell for the last time while she sang both sides now. And I knew it was the last time. And there is a last time for everything and you won't know. You won't know when it is, you know. But that was the last time I got to sit there, that that got to be. My role and my spot was to be with Joni when she sings that otherworldly once every thousand. year song. And I go back there and I feel like so proud and kind of grief-stricken at the same

time because that was a step away that I had to make myself take. And that was a moment of teetering on the edge. And I think that's probably one of the most powerful moments of my life as an artist. Wait, why did you have to make yourself do it? Well, because Joni is very, very special. And when you're with Joni in music and community and you're working on art with Joni, it's all you can do. I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't focus or think about or talk about anything else. And I knew I just felt it end. on both sides now. And it was like a beautiful end, like amazing. And it was something I was choosing.

And I also knew Joni was probably not going to do that kind of thing again either. And so it was just such a complicated feeling. I mean, of course there are other moments, powerful moments in life that have to do with my family and children and my faith. And then my love of nature and times in places when I've experienced really important things in the world. But as an artist, which is kind of my principal life, I would say that's probably one of the most important spiritual artistic moments I've lived through. Brandon Cowell, this was so fun. Thank you. I loved it.

I could talk with you all day. Thank you. The new album is called Returning to Myself. It is out now. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. If you like this episode, I recommend going back and listening to the conversation I had with another Grammy winner, Casey Musgra. She gave this beautiful description of the plot of land that her family owns where she grew up.

It was sort of a cozy story and also it freaked me out a little bit. So perfect for October. This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolana Sangweni and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.