Brandi Carlile talks new record, preps for Spring tour

After helping children reconnect with nature by collaborating in the Ask the Planet project, Brandi Carlile is ready to hit the road and debut new songs from her upcoming third album, the follow-up to 2007's The Story.

Trading e-mails with Paste editor-in-chief Josh Jackson, Carlile reported that the new album has been a little arduous but that it's moving along nicely. "The recording process has been a long one...and by process, I mean, the preliminary process," she writes. "The actual recording goes really quickly for us and is always pretty spontaneous and fun. After making demos on the road for a year, we spent some time at Rick Rubin's house playing our songs acoustically in the living room and coming up with arrangements. Then we went into the studio with this really talented guy, Jason Lader, who is an amazing producer/engineer, and two incredible drummers, Victor Indrizzo and Chad Smith. We even cut a track with Pete Thomas! We were even more extreme this time about playing live to tape and really took playing live and overdubbing seriously so that we weren't having to use Pro Tools at all throughout the recording process. We're also not totally done yet."

Carlile says that despite the fact it's a record of new material, fans of her work will likely recognize some of the tracks. "Like The Story, some of the songs have been around," she says. "I tend to feel really protective of songs, and if they aren't sitting well in a record, I'll pull them tight to my chest until i feel it's a better time. Some of the songs we have been playing on the road for a couple of years as we tend to cultivate our songs on stage."

Fittingly enough, Carlile and her band will be playing all over the U.S. and a little bit abroad. After her performance in Kentucky, Carlile will join Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller aboard the Cayamo, a 7-day music cruise from Feb. 28 through Mar. 7, before completing the rest of her tour.

Carlile warns listeners that they should be prepared for something new and perhaps more than a little epic with the new record. "This record sounds much more reckless than The Story," she says. "Some songs are so stripped down and intimate you should feel uncomfortable listening to them and some are so giant that Freddie Mercury wouldn't have put them on A Night at the Opera."

The still-untitled third album will be released sometime this summer or fall and will include at least one high-profile guest.

"Amy Ray [of the Indigo Girls] sings on 'Looking Out,'" Carlile reveals. "She is a real muse for me and I love her voice. She has a voice that isn't male or female. She can sing with me on a song and it doesn't matter if it's a power ballad or a folk song; its gonna sound heavy. I'm also in the process of begging Elton John to play a song with me."

In the meantime, here are those dates:

February
21 - Louisville, Ky. @ Whitney Hall

March
24 - Philadelphia, Penn. @ World Cafe Live
25 - Annapolis, Md. @ Rams Head On Stage
26 - Alexandria, Va. @ Birchmere Music Hall
28 - Westhampton Beach, N.Y. @ Westhampton Beach PAC
31 - Tarrytown, N.Y. @ Tarrytown Music Hall

April
1 - Portsmouth, N.H. @ Music Hall
2 - Northampton, Mass. @ Iron Horse
3 - South Portland, Maine @ South Portland Auditorium
4 - New York, N.Y. @ Ethical Center for the Arts
6 - Kent, Ohio @ Kent Stage
8 - Chicago, Ill. @ Lakeshore Theater
9 - Milwaukee, Wisc. @ Pabst Theater
10 - Mankato, Minn. @ Alltel Center
11 - Des Moines, Iowa @ Hoyt Sherman Theatre
14 - Aspen, Colo. @ Wheeler Opera House
16 - Denver, Colo. @ Swallow Hill
17 - Ft. Collins, Colo. @ Aggie Theatre
18 - Salt Lake City, Utah @ The State Room
20 - Boise, Idaho @ Knitting Factory
21 - Missoula, Mont. @ The Wilma Theatre
23 - Spokane, Wash. @ Martin Woldson Theatre @ Fox
28 - Bergen, Norway @ Bergen Festival
29 - Oslo, Norway @ John Dee

Related links:
Feature: Brandi Carlile: A Brandi and Two Chasers
Brandi Carlile on MySpace
News: Brandi Carlile speaks out, justifies GM commercial

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