The Firewatcher’s Daughter

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The Firewatcher’s Daughter is the 5th studio album by the band. Released on March 3 2015 it was produced and engineered by Trina Shoemaker again. (As she had done Bear Creek, Secret Sisters, and worked on the Tanya Tucker Album).

In an interview with Vice during the BTWIFY promot tour, Brandi Carlile talked about how the twin’s were really at the healm of this album:

But the twins, they had the notebook. They led this thing and led the mixes. Sometimes I’d show up and there’d be a microphone and the candles would be lit and they’d be like, “OK, you’re doing this song in this key.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gynq8q/rank-your-records-brandi-carlile

The album was nominated at the 58th Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album. It was released on CD and LP including a special Barnes and Noble only Autographed edition.

In a great promo video they show the making of the vinyl:

In 2020 it was released as a white vinyl re-issue. On 30 Dec 2022, Tim Hanseroth posted it on his Instagram a “trail treasure” find in their local woods and said on the video it was “kind of like our little white album, a cool little album with tons of beautiful songs on it”

On 14th June, 2020 the band performed the entire album end to end, as part of their steamed shows on VEEPS during the pandemic quarantine. They would end up performing every full length album via stream during this time.

Song notes:
In the 2020 VEEPS stream, Brandi Carlile said there are a lot of three part harmonies on the album. During that stream, they performed Mainstream Kid acoustically, and said it was the first time they’d performed it acoustically.

Beginning to Feel the Years. Brandi Carlile says in the VEEPS special “This is a song that felt like the culmination of a lot of love and bonding between the three of us and how we all got married and started to have kids at the same time. And all of our creepy culty stuff that we do together, moving on to the same property. When we wrote this song, it felt to me like it was a turning point in our relationship and it hasn’t turned back.

Chapter 14 in Brandi Carlile’s memoir Broken Horses is named after this track. She also says in the memoir, ..”I asked the twins to let me go on my first “solo tour” -that was the scariest thing…..”and says they were so upset. She went on her solo tour, and she writes “my bus pulled out of Kentucky, and a text came through from Phil. He’d written a song. It was the song of us. All of us that would soon be. He sang it himself. I sat in the jump seat next to the driver and cried my twenties out as I listened to “Beginning to Feel the Years” for the first time.”

Wilder (We’re Chained) – Written by Tim and named for his son, Wilder. In the VEEPS special, Brandi tells how they recorded around the microphone in the studio, and they wanted to sound like Crosby Stills and Nash, but it wasn’t working. She say’s something was sounding to “crusty” about it. She says “So we decided to take a break, and go outside and have a drink and sit around on a blanket and listen to it…” and Trina was playing the song through the speakers out into the Bear Creek studios yard. They started singing to it and Trina brought a microphone out and recorded it and you can hear the frogs and the creek in the background. Brandi says “…she (trina) smushed them together and it’s one of the weirdest sounding recordings we’ve made but one of my favourites.”

Blood Muscle Skin & Bone – Brandi says they almost named The Firewatcher’s Daughter after this song. She says the album was the first that really bonded them together as a family, and this song, represents that. But says the song’s title is ‘a little gross’ to name an album after.

I Belong To You – Brandi say’s she wrote this song for her wife Catherine. She says in the VEEPS special, “I wrote this song the first time she ever came out to the compound… I was in love but I struggled with love songs that were just sweet… but it was the best I could do”. The song has been sung together live on a number of rare occassions by the two of them.

The Stranger at My Door – It’s the song that gives the album it’s name. The album was finished just day’s before Brandi and Catherine’s first child Evangeline was born. But not before the band (and Trina Shoemaker) all pitched in and helped finish construction on the house to perpare for Evangeline. She says in her memoir “Day after day, I would burn constructions scraps and think about my faith, and my child on the way. I could feel the tide starting to turn politically in the United States, and the debates on the TV were ominous, to say the least. I wrote “The Stranger at My Door” staring down a bonfire and trying to make sense of it all. I was building my house on a rock.” Eagle eyes will also be familiar with that last sentence sentiment. The memoir and that sentance itself was written in 2020, and not long after the band released it’s album In These Silent Days, featuring “You and Me on the Rock”. Everything is connected.

Heroes and Songs – The album ends with this track. Brandi Carlile wrote “It was a metamorphosis of that great big in-loveness from my Saturn Return that never was, and the way it left my dreams and became foundational.” She reiterate’s this in the VEEPS special “This song is about looking back on a really powerful and difficult, and beautiful time in your life and having not having any regrets. But knowing when you’ve changed.” Brandi also said Trina Shoemaker gave her the idea for the song.

Fun fact: The memoir Broken Horses was close to being named after this song. So close in fact, that the Broken Horses website briefly went live for a day with “Heroes and Songs” in the copy.

Murder In The City – One of the few cover songs featured on the band’s full studio albums. Written by The Avett Brothers, Brandi said in the VEEPS special, that “so much happened when this album was being written and when it was being made. We were all having kids…and I was feeling all kinds of conflicted… our marriage was illegal during the time we conceived Evangline and in fact I am still listed as the father on Evangeline’s birth certificate. Those are the strange times we are living in and that’s why Pride month is so important. … I’ll never forget the day that the supreme court made my marriage legal. I was just outside of Washington DC, the barns at Wolf Trap, and we were walking around all day and I had been listening to this song on repeat. It was striking me as so important, and so poignent and so celebratory.”

Track list

Full list of versions :