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Interview with Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile has a date. Well, a year’s worth anyway. The out singer-songwriter is touring all over the place in support of her third studio album, Give Up the Ghost. But the dates she’s most excited about include a slew of summer shows as part of Sarah McLachlan‘s newly restored Lilith Fair – a festival tour that Carlile says she not only attended but one that also helped shape her career.

AfterEllen.com caught up with Carlile to discuss Lilith Fair, her career post-coming out, and the fan campaign to have her on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

AfterEllen.com: “The Story” was just covered on American Idol. What did you think?

Brandi Carlile: I did catch that. I was really flattered and it made me really happy to see somebody singing that melody. The woman turned it into more of a ballad. I’m just really happy to hear somebody inspired enough by the song to take that risk.

AE: Think it’ll help with the Facebook campaign to have you appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show?

BC: My girlfriend told me about that! I hadn’t thought about it. I’d love to be on Ellen; what an impact that’d make. That’d be an amazing day.

AE: A lot of your career dreams have been coming true this year: Recording with Elton John, being asked to perform at the Grand Ole Opry and tour with Lilith Fair. How excited were you to be asked to be a part of it?

BC: I was completely touched because Lilith Fair has sculpted the kind of artist I am completely. In the obvious ways being that I was there for every Lilith Fair, in that I was a part of all the social consciousness and all of those amazing shows. I would get in the campgrounds with all the Lilith Fair goers and I would stand in line.

I was a part of that culture that came out of those few years but then also even if I had never gone to Lilith Fair, music festivals would have impacted my career because it paved the way for girls like me, my age, making music right now.

AE: How important are festivals like Lilith and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors to out performers?

BC: They’re imperative because those kinds of festivals are about bridging gaps, not just gaps between gay people and straight people, but also gaps between older women and younger women, men and women, even; generation gaps, genre gaps, racial divides. Those kinds of things are all going to be out on the table for Lilith Fair.

We’re going to have country music, soul, rock ‘n roll, folk and bluegrass. There’s going to be the older generation, younger generation, gay artists and straight artists. Men are going to want to come out to see those women perform, too, because the gender divide is getting narrower and narrower. It’s a great time to be alive.

AE: Which performers are you looking forward to playing with?

BC: I’ve been getting to know Miranda Lambert. I think she’s got a lot of tenacity in the country realm. She’s tough and she’s plowing through a new kind of country music with that edge about her. I’d love to sing something with her.

AE: What did your mom – who’s a country singer – think of your invitation to perform at the Grand Ole Opry?

BC: She can hardly get her head around it. I’m buying a plane ticket for everybody in my family to come out and see it. It’s a huge thing for our family. The Grand Ole Opry was the mothership growing up and it meant the world to my mom that I was asked to be a part of it. It means the world to me to be included. It means that times are changing.

AE: You just announced your U.K./Ireland and European tour dates which takes you from mid-April to mid-May. Any plans to tour solo beyond this leg?

BC: We’re going to tour all throughout the summer. We’re doing the Newport Folk Festival, Telluride, Bonnaroo; and in the fall, we’re putting together a compilation of symphony shows. We’re going to go to Denver, Cedar Rapids; we’re going to play symphonies. We’ll get like seven, eight, nine towns going with their local symphony. It’s going to be a real charge to play with a symphony. If you think “The Story” is epic, just imagine it with a 40-piece orchestra behind it.

AE: Just tell me the Hollywood Bowl in L.A. will be part of that.

BC: I don’t think I’m cool enough to play at the Hollywood Bowl!

AE: Dinah Shore weekend is coming up – have you been asked to play that before?

BC: Yeah. I got asked to play it last year; I was booked already.

AE: What prompted the Valentine’s Day EP, XOBC?

BC: Just the irony of the fact that I can’t write a love song to save my life. Because nobody does a Valentine’s Day EP, and we wanted to cover a couple of the songs and we had that song “Love Song” kicking around for a long time and it’s a really special song and I didn’t know how to use it.

AE: The video for “Heaven” from that is four minutes of pure comedy. What’s the story there?

BC: (Laughing) That’s one of my best friends from high school, Nicole Hohn. I just think she’s equally beautiful, charming and absolutely disgusting. She’s always doing this funny act where she’s this ’80s disgusting, cheesy straight person thing that she does.

I wanted to have her try and pull that off in the video and she did such an amazing thing in the video. Our lighting guy, Mario Marchio, played her love interest. Just the close-up lipstick shot and the paper airplane and the dancing and hair flips – she’s famous for her hair flips. It’s so gross, right?

AE: You recently also premiered the video for the second single from Give Up the Ghost, “That Year,” which is about a friend’s suicide. Why did you pick that for your second single?

BC: I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. I think it’s a good song. People like the melodies and the beat and they kind of stand on their own. I just thought it was a good choice. The label was a big part of making that choice. I was really impressed with Columbia for making that choice; I think it’s a brave choice for a major label. I mean, you get a major label and they so often want to hear an up-tempo single and Columbia is like, “No, we think this is the best song regardless of its tempo and radio format.”

AE: With your Looking Out Foundation, you’re one of the founders of the Seattle-based violence prevention initiative Fight the Fear campaign – your single “Let Go” serves as a fundraiser to help. What prompted your involvement?

BC: When this crime happened in Seattle, it really shook our community: the women’s community, the gay community; we all thought it was a gender-based crime and it just sent this shockwave of fear throughout the community. That kind of fear wasn’t productive; it was sort of debilitating.

So some of us got together with the surviving partner of the crime and with this woman-owned self-defense organization, Seattle Kajukenbo, and Seven Star Women’s Kung Fu, and the police department, we were able to construct a curriculum of self-defense that kind of flipped the switch in women that they have the right to defend themselves and that they are worth fighting for. What prompted my involvement in Fight the Fear was fear and the urge to fight it.

AE: What do you think of the battle for marriage equality right now? Any plans to get involved with any of those charities?

BC: I think that if the right one came along, that I would love to get involved with it. It’s something I really believe in and I’m behind that fight 100 percent. I was playing this show in San Antonio, Texas, the other night, in this amazing redneck bar with peanut shells on the floor and I was singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” by Bob Dylan and somebody in the audience held up a Legalize Gay T-shirt and it made me smile. Like I said, it’s a great time to be alive. There are a lot of great, peaceful battles happening right now and the kindest work can be done from the middle of the road.

AE: Has your “coming out” interview with the L.A. Times impacted your career?

BC: Not at all. I haven’t noticed any difference. The people that paved the way for artists like me did a really, really good job. It’s an honor and a privilege to follow in those footsteps.

AE: With all the touring you’re doing now, have you found time to write and work on another album?

BC: I just started writing again. I’ve been doing a lot of singing and I’m just getting ready to head to Europe. The EP took a little while to record … the symphony tour is going to take some writing, too.

AE: You’ve crossed a few of your big career dreams off your list this year. Do you have any new dreams going forward?

BC: Just to be able have people still show up for our shows – that’s still shocking to me.

AE: Lastly, what do you do when you’re not touring?

BC: I hang out with my family and with my band. I try and get out and do the local things if I can, and fishing season opens up soon and I’ll start doing that. And I’m going to Disneyland tomorrow before the show.

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