With Brandi Carlile gearing up to produce more and some recent publicity rounds (Sept 2023), we thought we would take a look at some interesting take-outs from two recent interviews specifically. We have gone through the videos and supplied some fantastic insights below – however we urge you to watch them yourself, give the channels a like and subscribe.

Producer Spotlight: A Conversation with Brandi Carlile & Emily Lazar | soundBoard sessions – Ep.01

The first interview, released around 28th September, was with Emily Lazar – the Grammy award winning Mastering engineer and founder of The Lodge studios in New York. Emily also raises up women in the business and runs We Are Moving The Needle – a non-profit looking to promote equity and inclusion in the recording industry. soundBoard as part of We Are Moving The Needle is a group of women who provide mentorship to artists. Brandi Carlile is a soundBoard member and advisory Board Member of We Are Moving The Needle. On the video, the credits say :

Shoutout to Change The Conversation, Equalize Her, She Is The Music, SoundGirls, Women’s Audio Mission and Women in Music for working towards a better future for underrepresented voices in music. About us: We Are Moving The Needle is radically reshaping the future of the recording industry. Founded in 2021 by GRAMMY-winning and 8x nominated mastering engineer, Emily Lazar, WAMTN empowers women, non-binary, and trans music creators to succeed at the highest levels.

The whole interview is here (or you can watch directly below).
Here are our top-ten takeouts – little nuggets that were revealed:


1. In reference to Joni Mitchell’s style of minimal encouragement – Marcus Mumford, who Brandi says is invested in the Joni Jam, was questioning something he was playing, and Joni leans over to him and says “Your instincts are good” – and Brandi says “He went straight to a piece of paper, and said ‘write that down’ – and he got that tattooed”

2. Favourite snacks in the studio (while recording Brandy Clark at Shangri La – Rick Rubin’s studio) – Lobster Burrito

3. Favorite Mic – Shure SM7

4. Favorite engineers working with – David Spreng (recent Tanya Tucker, Sweet Western Sounds) and Brandon Bell who she says “my boy Brandon Bell. He’s really special, he’s really important to me. He finishes sentances for me. It’s got to the point now where he’s probably the only person in the world I’d leave the room and let do a vocal comp of my own voice…. “

5. Of having confidence as a producer, on Trina Shoemaker, Brandi says “I think probably one of the first people that I feel gave me permission to have ideas at the console would be Trina Shoemaker.”

6. When discussing her producing style, Brandi Carlile describes it as

“…it’s really a primal artist-led experience for me and I like that because my job as Brandi Carllie is so ‘me centric’, and it’s really kind of one of the most therapeutic and intensely immersive ways to get outside of myself and into somebody else’s life and art, in harmony with other people because I can’t do it myself obviously. ….. I don’t produce my own stuff unless it’s a like an ‘On Assignment’ thing because the directions decided – it’s like I have to make an incredible legendary song honor the creator and honor the project. okay great I can do that, but if it’s like who’s Brandi Carlile going to be next year I need somebody else to get in that passenger seat right and help me decide. I know I can’t produce myself right as an artist. But I can really work with other artists to the point where I feel sometimes like it might be more my calling than anything else. I’m really more drawn outside toward collaboration so that every five years when I do go in and go ‘what’s inside of here?’ I’m not bogged down with a bunch of ego.“

7. On Catherine Carlile, “she’s definately my focus group, she’s got that impeccable British taste, she’s so honest, well she as honest as Joni, and she’s just wonderful. She loves that Brandy Clark album and she was a big champion for me at the end of the day I would come home and she’d be awake and we get in bed and talk about brandy, brandy brandy brandy brandy -Clark! and I play her the rough mixes and Brandon was always sending me my roughs and everything…”

8. ‘Go to’ studios that she loves…. Brandi says “well I love Shangri-La. I think that place has a really flowy beautiful light angelic vibe….. I love RCA in Nashville the Dave Cobb space….I’ve worked in there a lot and it’s really mystical and ghosty and awesome…I love Bear Creek in Washington State… I love Electric Ladyland here and Jungle Studios … I love my own studio…I feel like a kid in there. That’s the thing. I feel like a kid like I can try broken shit, like if that whulitizer’s got a buzz I’m like awesome. Everything can be haphazard sub-standard, strange and then when you mix all those kind of like funky little-broken-little-kid-in-their-attic ingredients together and you windup with these really unique sounding things that you don’t get in some of the big city spots that have like impeccable equipment.”

9. When asked if Brandi is a fan of any mixers or any producers…her response included, “Historically, I love Brian Eno, I loved Daniel Lanois who I learned so much about Daniel Lanois from Trina Shoemaker.” She also mentions her work with T-Bone Burnett and Rick Rubin, Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings.

10. On women producers and engineers, Brandi mentions Jordan Hamiln (who has produced Indigo Girls, Lucy Wainwright Roche, Rachael Yamagata, Missy Higgins and Audrey Assad). “Jordan has given me so many ideas over the years and so much information she’s such a bizarre intellect, I can’t get enough of her” she said.

The Brandi Carlile Interview | Grammy Award Winning Producer and Artist

The full video for this is here. Or below.

The second interview released around 30 Sept 2023, was with the hugely popular YouTube channel Produce Like a Pro, and it’s founder, Warren Huart. Warren is a LA based, British music producer who has worked over 20 years with some of the best in the industry (Aerosmith, The Fray, James Blunt) . He was also an engineer in the studio Swinghouse when Brandi was recording early demo’s in LA in the mid-naughts, right before The Story. Brandi references Swinghouse in the interview as the place she went to in LA when first brought down there by Rick Parashar trying to a record deal in the very early 2000’s.

Our favorite take-outs.

  1. The interesting observation from Warren on it’s not usually the ‘lead artist’ that transitions to producer, its the bass player or drummer. Brandi’s reaction at not knowing that has her reflecting on her perspective “I think because the first two producers I worked with were such strong characters like they’re just icons you know like you could trace the silhouette of T-Bone Burnett or Rick Rubin and show it to me in black andwhite and I would know who they were you know or or even like say someone like Don Was – like these people have anaesthetic, a presence, and a character, and so I didn’t really think of a producer as more of an unassuming presence when I went into that role I I thought about T-Bone and Rick.”

  2. Discussing how each artist has this ‘shiny new tools that I get to use‘… She talks about Brandy Clark
    “for instance Brandy Clark’s shiny tools that I don’t have or the ability to write a three and a half minute song without any ego you know to understand the art of synthesis, knowing what the important things are and how to distill that instead of believing that what I have to say is soimportant that everything should be six and a half minutes long you know that’s where I need help from a producer so I got to use the tools of her egoless and intuitive songwriting…”

  3. Talking about T-Bone Burnett… “I just actually saw T-Bone Burnett again a couple of months ago at Joni Mitchell’s house, we had a dinner and we were hanging out and we were laughing and drinking wine and I was sort of like I was retroactively making fun of myself and some of the things I said and believed back in my 20s when we worked together and I remember him and I was kind of sort of apologizing and he said ‘God you were so Punky you were just so Punky’ you know and I really didn’t feel Punky like I felt like this cardigan wearing folk singing lesbian from Seattle I felt like it’s the total nerd. But I guess I just really insisted on holding on to myself and then you know people like T-bone Burnett who probably had a whole other vision of how I could have achieved greatness on on albums like The Story or Give Up The Ghost, at some point they had to go ‘okay hold on to yourself’ you know and they did that. That is a real talent in production when you know best allowing another path to be taken knowing that this artist may achieve shedding this affectation without you on on the next album you know but just knowing that you’re a part of the journey is I think reward enough”

  4. On how she likes to receive just phone demos from an artist… “I remember when I used to have to make demos that I thought were really evolved to get the record label to let me record the song or give me the money to go into the studio or say you’re ready okay this collection of songs is is going to work for us. And I remember sitting there thinking ‘well they’re not going to understand this as a chorus unless I get three-part Harmony into this son of a and then you know it’s like I swear to God this thing needs to be three bpms faster or they’re not going to think it’s Up Tempo enough and they’re not going to give us the money’ and you know that way of thinking was just so formulaic that it actually I think kind of whittled away at my craft in those moments you know? And it actually wasn’t until I met Dave Cobb that the first time I sent him a demo with three-part Harmony in a chorus you know or the demo that was obviously Tempo mapped in one way or another even though I don’t even record records that way he said no no just go into voicemails on your phone and play it with your guitar and send it to me ‘just the verse in the chorus too, I don’t need the whole thing’ …”

  5. On the Golden Hour “I really believe songs have like moments like they have agolden hour and it comes right after you learn the song and right before you’ve got a hold of it and if that happens on your demo it happened on your demo and I actually think that’s what demo it is and I’ve had it I’ve had it too many times to count so I know like I’ll I’ll go back to my early demos and I’ll hear the golden hour on you know one of my favorite songs and I go God I wish I’d been in the studio“

  6. On Joni Mitchell’s Hejira Brandi share’s that’s Joni’s favourite album.

  7. On Trina Shoemaker “...if it’s a residential Studio or it’s not a residential Studio she’s going to live there with the gear she’s going to put a pillow and a blanket down and that’s where she’s going to sleep. I mean she’s told me on numerous occasions ‘I don’t leave the gear. I don’t leave the gear till the record’s done’ that sounds fantastical but that’s really how she is like – it’s bizarre.“

  8. On Bernie Taupin, two unreleased co-writes with Brandi Carlile, and Breakfast In Birmingham co-write with him for Tanya Tucker’s lastest album. “well I love Bernie top and BernieTaupin is my hero, he’s been probably my all-time favorite Lyricist since I was 11 years old because the first time I ever read lyrics and they came off a page and I realized that songs were written by people. I didn’t really understand I knew people sang songs and I sang songs you know. It was Skyline pigeon Bernie Taupin and I mean that is a beautiful lyric and esoteric lyric and uh I you know started writing him letters. I’ve written a letter many times throughout my life I’ve probably started writing in letters when I was 15 16. Back in those days I doubt he ever got him I didn’t know where to send them you know we didn’t even have Google we couldn’t like figure out like what’s what’s Bernie’ mail box number. I just started random letters but when I did figure out how to get letters to him he did respond. We just we had a fast friendship based on mutual respect and I told him my dream was to write music to his lyrics someday and he said well I’ll send you acouple things and so he sent me two songs Brush Fire and The Gift and I wrote music to them, loved it, then he sent me Breakfast in Birmingham and he said how about this one for Tanya Tucker and as soon as I got to the line about the bacon I just knew that was gonna sound so great.“

  9. On Rick Parashar (original owner of London Bridge Studios in Studio), “who brought me to LA the first time was Rick Parashar. So Rick Parashar lived in Seattle, introduced me to the twins and made all of my early demos and and work and was like probably one of my biggest mentors while I was a teenager, took me all over the place, put me on an airplane for the first time.”

  10. Brandi spent some time discussing the famous “crack in her voice on The Story” :

I’ve never been able to make it happen since and on that day I did it like three times in a row really yeah it might have just been some weird anatomical thing but there was definitely an emotional thing happening too. I was feeling Punky as T-Bone put it. The first time I did it I almost burst out laughing because I thought it was such an ugly mistake.
Yeah and it was T-Bone that came running into the iso booth and I flung the door open and he said ‘do that again if you can do that again do it again‘ and you know and I was like ‘oh that was good?’ I love it now and I appreciate it and I wish I could do it again yeah. You know who could do it – Sheryl Crow could do it she knows how to create that sort of squeak Bridge moment in a vocal. Like I can yodel but it’s like a cross between a yodel and a screem – it’s like a scream yodel or a distortion.

Yeah we developed these little like ticks you know. T-Bone hated this really repetitive crack in my voice at the time which I still have um but I use it’s like I use it less often you know. I think it was a crutch back then for one reason or another but boy. It started driving him crazy by the end of the record and uh yeah it was it was like a it was a part of my personality at the time.”

11. On recording the Joni Mitchell – Live at Newport album when asked if she had planned to be releasing a record going in:

No way I was not planning for it to be an album I didn’t even know if it would happen. I did not know if it would happen until it was happening and then when it was happening it was it was euphoric. But I still felt under so much pressure and stress that I I just I just didn’t know what would happen until it was like over.

I didn’t know if it would go forward for so many reasons and then once it was going forward there was like cops on the side of the stage that were going to unplug the PA if we went over time and so I had all these like timing constraints and like I knew if we went over by one minute it was going to be it was going to cost us like fifteen thousand dollars and then if we went another five minutes it was going to cost us this and then in one second over they were gonna unplug you know and like you know you’re getting close to the time when you like see the cops or whatever and I mean I was just sitting there dying inside just feeling a lot of pressure from it all and when it was over the feeling of oh my God it just happened.

Like I just watched 20 000 people cry their eyes out to both sides now, like there was just this fracture in the world that I felt opened up where everybody decided to be just can cool to each other for one minute and that for some reason Joni at Newport created this Vortex you know for people at the time when it was happening. I wasn’t fully conscious of it. I was still a little bit too nervous so was I planning for it to be an album? Like absolutely not, but the mics were there and they’re set up and they always are because I record every show I ever play.

There was a lot of post-production that went into it because well the first thing I wanted was for Joni to hear it properly because I really wanted her to hear what she’s done. Like I knew she’d remember it but I really wanted her to hear it so Brandon and I mixed Summertime and Both Sides Now and as I got into the mixes with Brandon we were able to create moments of bravery that that we couldn’t really pull off in real life.

Because so much of what was happening was unexpected and improvisational that you know things that were done off mic tentatively we were able to bring them into reality. Moments of singing that in essence may have been really loud in the presence of the show because the front of house person was prepared for Lucius or Taylor or me to sing those things could now be tucked behind Joni’s radically interesting timing and Harmony that she pulled out for the first time in that moment. So we were able to create moments of confidence that we didn’t have on stage.

So we were reacting. We were doing things quietly slightly off mic and then pulling those to the Forefront for the album so that people could hear what was really happening and what those reactions were musically.

Like I loved that about the post-production of Newport got some do-overs actually when we brought it to Joni and played it for her. Then she got involved in the post-production and that was freaking inspiring because I never seen that side of JoniMitchell. I have this one photo of the kind of post-production three or four post-production meetings that we had with Joni after the fact that like I will always cherish where she’s like I’m sitting at the table with a notepad and I’m I’m obviously very anxious and excited for her to hear something and she is reacting with her finger up and like she’s pointing at the speaker you know and she’s telling me like in that spot right there this this can go in there and can you do this and do that and it was like it’s so cool. Because she’s got this Furrow brow and her hand is up and she’s reacting passionately to her own music and I was there and I got to be given orders by a master and it’s a photograph of the fact that that really happened. That I got sent back to the drawing board by Joni Mitchell.

12. On the Joni Jammers musicians- a fascinating insight into how they all fit in…

Part of the intention around bringing the Jam together the people that make up the Jam are incredibly important because what each of these artists is like they are all sort of a piece or an era of Joni Mitchell. So you’ve got Blake Mills who’s like nailed down this tone in the Parker fly and he understands the equipment and he is like a complete Joni geek on that era andthose guitar tones that we’re talking about right now. Whereas at the time Joni wasn’t playing guitar so here comes Blake and he’s doing Joni like meticulously. Youve got Jess and Holly who have studied Joni’s propensity for recording her own background vocals and when those are inunison when they aren’t in unison what they do how she integrates this these strange phrasings and rhythms and call and answers type stuff – you know they’ve studied it, they love it, they’re major Laurel Canyon Buffs, so they showup and there’s a piece of Joni getting added back into the Joni. You know then you got Taylor Goldsmith who is another Laurel Canyon boy – he’s so studied he knows he knows all the guitar parts he knows exactly what James and Stephen played on Blue and so everybody showsup with a piece of Joni in their backpack you know and it’s like in those moments in that jam there are all these little reflections of light that suddenly are being reflected back at her and onto her and she’s reacting to it like she is playing because we’re doing her.

So the Jam which Joni wouldn’t really even like me to analyze as much as I do is a communal party it’s just a love bomb you know but it’s a Joni Mitchell love bomb and it’s multi-generational and it’s wild and I think it’s revolutionary I don’t think anybody’s done anything like it before. And it’s a congregation and it’s an effort on many people’s part. Celisse is is the the kind of electric Leade guitar player Jam member who does Sex Kills and Help Me and she’s really aware of Joni’s love of you know Jimi Hendrix and Sister Rosetta Thorpe.

And a bonus number 13. – A note about the comments to this video. Go watch it the video, thumbs up and subscribe. AND THEN, read the comments. You will find little treasures in there like these
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@J-DUB-F1

That was such a nice interview………..if ever there was a force in the music business, it’s Carlile. I still remember mixing her at my old job, Hotelcafe. This was around the mid aughts. I’d never heard of her then. I walked up to the stage to introduce myself and ask what everyone needed. First thing she said was, “hey how’s it going man….just so you know I sing really loud, like I’m really loud!”. I thought ok cool, let’s do this. Then soundcheck starts and…… holy SH*T!!!!.. ok!!! She was the real deal!. Thinking back to that moment almost 20yrs ago, then to her bringing Joni back to the world…..and now a producer, It’s quite an accomplishment and arc of a career.

AND

@johnfields4332
I was lucky to have produced a few tracks on Brandi’s 1st album. it’s been amazing to see her rocket into the stratosphear!!