Released on September 15th 2023, “Michelle” is the first single off her debut EP from new singer and songwriter, Tish Melton. The song and forthcoming EP is produced by Brandi Carlile. The band’s regular mixer, Brandon Bell mixed the album. It also features drums by Brandi Carlile current drummer (2023), Matt Chamberlain.
Tish Melton is the daughter of Brandi and Catherine Carlile’s close friends, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. She is the oldest daughter of Glennon and her ex husband Craig Melton. Brandi and Tish first sang together during the pandemic. They recorded (and Brandi produced) another of Tish’s songs – the title song for Glennon Doyles podcast We Can Do Hard Things.
The association came about during the pandemic, as Brandi tells it in an interview from that time, that Catherine suggested she read Glennon’s books, and quickly reached out following. Glennon and Abby were part of the mini vitural book tour sessions that were sold on Veeps for Brandi Carlile’s Broken Horses release in 2021.
On the carpet of the 2023 Americana Music Awards, Brandi Carlile told Variety:
And then there’s the arguably bigger task of turning Americana into a youth movement instead of the province of dad-rock. Carlile took her 17-yar-old protégé Melton down the red carpet with her at the Americana Awards. (Actually, this being Americana, the carpet wasn’t red, or even a carpet, but a series of floor rugs.) Together they just released the single “Michelle,” one of five songs Carlile produced for an EP by Melton. The producer described herself as “more on fire, more actively involved in every note, every element, every texture of this production than I have with anyone else. And I think whenever you’re in your 40s and you’re going to go and work with somebody who’s 17 years old, you go in with this mentor mentality, like, I’m going to teach this person things, you know? And I just wound up learning the whole time, just like I do with my kids — learning things about myself. I think it was a really profound experience for me. And the music is just plain fucking great.”
Turning to Melton, Carlile asked, “How does that interface with school? How are you going to manage this? How does this feel to you before we decide where, when, and how we’re going to do an album, right? What do you think?
“I don’t know,” said Melton. “Someone asked me on TikTok yesterday, ‘How do you manage school and songwriting and all that?’ I was like, ‘Not well, so far.’ But if you get a call to go on a plane, you just do your homework on the plane. It’s very important to me that school comes first. I would like music to come first, but I’ve just got one more year to go until I graduate. And then we see what happens.”
“Her moms are making a huge mistake, letting her hang out with a high school dropout,” Carlile cracked. “I’m already trying to talk her out of skipping school in a couple days to do Pink with me.” (Carlile was set to skip out on AmericanaFest later in the week to play a local stadium show with Pink. Melton’s moms, by the way, are Glennon Doyle and stepmom Abby Wombach.)
