Brandi Carlile at the Anthem with Hanseroth Twins opening
After almost two decades of relentless touring, Brandi Carlile is — sort of —taking a break from the road.
The Grammy Award winning songwriter, activist, and author has scaled back this year, scheduling only a few festivals and select dates through the end of 2024 with The Hanseroth Twins, her longtime collaborators.
But when the opportunity arose for Carlile to honor close friends Elton John and Bernie Taupin at the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Tribute this week, she couldn’t resist an opportunity to stick around Washington, D.C., and play a couple of magical shows at The Anthem.
The seated shows — few people sat — in the 3,200-seat venue quickly sold out. Audiences on both nights were treated to evenings that felt large but also managed to be remarkably intimate and joyful — feelings that describe Carlile in a nutshell.
On one hand, Carlile has become friends and collaborators with music icons she grew up idolizing — Annie Lennox was in the audience along with Carlile’s parents on Thursday — as her once slow building career has exploded. At the same time, she still has the ability to turn a cavernous venue into a house concert, complete with stories, jokes, and anecdotes.
With a broad smile that rarely left her face, Carlile greeted Thursday’s audience with “Hello, my friends” and left two hours later with a simple wave while mouthing “Peace.” In between, she played more than 20 original songs and covers with Phil and Tim Hanseroth, who opened the show with a short set of their own.
The twins, widely acclaimed and respected for their songwriting and harmonizing with Carlile throughout her career, played their first opening set as a duo on Thursday. They played “Remember Me,” their debut single that arrived on Friday and will be part of a full-length album later this year, as well as a lovely cover of Erasure’s “A Little Respect” that primed the audience for Carlile’s performance.
The three strode onto the stage and opened the show with “Follow,” the first song off Carlile’s first record. She broke out into laughter when a flub about 30 seconds in forced them to restart the song, noting she was happy to get “that out of the way” before nailing it on the second take.
After “The Things I Regret” and “The Story,” Carlile segued into “Broken Horses,” which won two Grammys and served as the title of her memoir. She then took a moment to discuss another song off the same album, the stunning acoustic version of “Right on Time.”
“Our albums are getting further and further apart. It takes us a while,” she said of the process leading up to 2021’s “In These Silent Days,” the follow up to “By the Way, I Forgive You” that served as her true commercial breakthrough. “You get new album and then you start to rethink everything before you do the next one. For the record company, you have the album and then a year later you have the ‘bonus release,’ but that feels expensive and exploitive.”
Asked to provide a bonus release to “In These Silent Days,” Carlile said she agreed only as she could “go into the woods near where we live” and “reconstruct and redream” every song. Her favorite track from those sessions, which were dubbed “In the Canyon Haze,” was “Right on Time,” which features harmonies from the Hanseroth Twins on the chorus that send chills down your spine.
“That Wasn’t Me” from the album “Bear Creek,” prompted a long story about her father’s battle with alcoholism. Carlile said she wrote the song “to save my own damn self,” while praising her father and saying she was “proud of the way you gave me all of these songs.” Her performance prompted a huge ovation.
“The Eye,” prefaced by a story about giving the song to Graham Nash after introducing herself on an airplane, led into an impromptu version of “Just Kids” requested by an audience member. “That’s the deepest album cut. I love that song,” Carlile said. “Thanks for knowing such a weird song.”
Solo, Carlile played “The Mother” — dedicated to “anyone who finds being a mother a little strange but beautiful” — and then brought out Sista Strings and the Hansforths out for the rest of the show. They played the hit “You and Me on the Rock” — our “one very derivative” Joni Mitchell song.
The buoyant tune — Carlile and Lennox backed up the iconic songwriter on “I’m Still Standing” during the John/Taupin tribute — was followed by a cover of Mitchell’s “Carey.” Then it was time for “Whatever You Do,” a song Carlile said she hadn’t played in years, but the chorus — “I love you, whatever you do / But I’ve got a life to live too” — seemed to particularly resonate with the crowd.
Carlile then played “Madman Across the Water” and “Skyline Pigeon,” the two John/Taupin covers she had performed during Wednesday’s tribute. The latter song represented a “full circle moment” for Carlile, who had done a book report on AIDS victim Ryan White as an 11-year-old growing up in Washington state. John, who became friends with White, performed the song at a tribute to the young man, who died in 1990.
“It was because of Ryan White that I discovered Elton John,” Carlile said, recalling getting the CD with “Skyline Pigeon” on loan from the local library. “I heard that song and said, ‘I’m going to do this.’ That song may be the reason I write songs today.”
The final third of the show, which included a four-song encore, became a communal showcase for the audience and a larger spotlight for the Hanseroth Twins and the SistaStrings. With the Hanserorths, Carlile opened the encore with “Beginning to Feel the Years” while the three stood in the upper tier seats. Then, as they made their way back to the stage, SistaStrings played an exhilarating five-minute instrumental jam that left Carlile bowing on her knees at the end.
Following the rowdy stomp of Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls,” Carlile closed the evening with “This Time Tomorrow” from “In These Silent Days.” It was a perfect way to finish what was, in many respects, a perfect show.
Find tour dates and more info on Brandi Carlile on her website here: https://www.brandicarlile.com
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Show Review: Brandi Carlile at Red Rocks