On Monday, nominations for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards were announced on CBS This Morning, and you may have noticed a familiar name on the list. Brandi Carlile, GO Magazine’s latest covergirl, received a nomination for Best Americana Album for The Firewatcher’s Daughter. This would be Carlile's first Grammy, and The Firewatcher's Daughter is her fifth full-length album. It hit number one on the US folk charts when it was released this past March, and it is the first album Carlile has released on her new label, ATO Records.
Carlile is an accomplished alternative country and folk rock singer-songwriter with a voice and lyrics that make you feel all the feelings, and she’s garnered a steadily growing fanbase since her breakthrough album The Story was released in 2007. She has always had a solid queer following, as she herself has been out for a long time. In a 2012 interview with The Dallas Voice, Carlile said about being an out performer, “I wouldn’t say I made a big momentous occasion of coming out. I just was out, and there was really no hiding it.” While quiet about her private life, she married her wife Catherine in 2012 and they are raising a daughter, Evangeline.
When GO asked Carlile in our September interview whether married life and a child (then on the way) influenced how she made The Firewatcher’s Daughter, she replied, “Family life has made me a happier person on a deep fundamental level. It’s not that it’s for everyone, but I feel that I’m on the path to fulfilling something that I’m meant to do here. I used to worry a lot about how happiness would affect me, as a songwriter who is influenced by angst, grief, change and sometimes anger. Tim [Carlile’s collaborator] once told me that you can write even better sad songs when you’re fundamentally happy; this has been completely true for me. All the darkness is still there, like a passenger; I’ve just become a better translator for it in my music. The songs on The Firewatcher’s Daughter are the most filled with turmoil, but written by me at my most content.”
Here’s hoping that a Grammy win in 2016 will help add to that contentment!
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