Peak summer was fading into fall, but Brandi Carlile gave no indication that 2023’s heady months of post-pandemic concerts were over.
In early September, the multiple Grammy winner performed at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. There, she and her wife, Catherine Shepherd, wowed with their churned-down version of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” hot off the Barbie soundtrack. A few days later, she joined a friend, fellow Washingtonian and country musician Brandy Clark (“the two gay Brandys”), at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles for a performance supporting Clark’s eponymous album that Carlile produced.
Carlile traversed the country this year with live performances, several at stadiums with Pink. And she kicked off Pride Month with a history-making three-day festival at Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State. It was a display of musicianship and sisterhood, where she acted as host for her friend Joni Mitchell — it was the “Big Yellow Taxi” singer’s first ticketed performance in more than 20 years.
Before the world went sideways in 2020, Carlile performed a soaring rendition of her Grammy-winning song “The Joke” at the 2019 Grammy Awards. Since that career tipping point — she recorded her first studio album in 2005 — Carlile’s reach has been boundless. She thinks Pink is the “hardest working woman in show business.” But Carlile is also tireless. She’s a wife to Shepherd and a mom to their daughters, Evangeline and Elijah. She’s a performer, collaborator, producer, cofounder of the Looking Out Foundation nonprofit and XOBC Wine Cellars, and author of the memoir Broken Horses. She even has a hobby of finish carpentry.
Carlile calls herself a in 2022. In those instances, many view her as someone to provide hope, healing, and an acknowledgment of dark times.
