Brandi Carlile: Live From My Couch!
March 8, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things, and I’m not going to waste your time by talking too much because we have a really exciting thing going on today. Brandi Carlile, I know, is a six-time Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, performer, producer, number one New York Times bestselling author. Remember that day? It was such fun.
Brandi Carlile:
I do remember that. You were the first person I called.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, an activist, who was known as one of music’s most respected voices about her new album would debuted at number one on Billboard’s Americana Folk Albums Chart and is played on loop in our home, seriously. The New York Times said, “Larger Than Life and Achingly Human, she empathizes, apologizes and lays out accusations. She’s righteous, and she’s self-doubting.” It makes me emotional, actually, and NPR Music said, “Absolutely breathtaking. Across the whole album, Brandy Carlile pulls out all the stops. It’s just extraordinary. She’s just claiming rock God status.”
Glennon Doyle:
Brandi lives in Seattle with her wife, Catherine, who is in this room and their children, Evangeline and Elisha, but right now, the rock God herself is sitting across from me in my living room. Hi, friend.
Brandi Carlile:
Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
Why are you all in LA? I didn’t even ask you.
Brandi Carlile:
I mean, we came to do some tan music and a lot of us just to see you. I wanted to be here with you when we do this.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I was just thinking that you should have been yesterday, Brandi, because we had the most lesbian day ever. Abby made me go to a place that is called REI.
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Okay. We were there for two hours and people kept up to me in these green vests and saying, “Can I help you?” and I kept saying, “I like your nature costume, but I don’t think so,” and I kept following Abby around because she was in heaven and there were so many carabiners, so many. In every aisle it just feels like a bear could pop out, if any. Do you like REI?
Brandi Carlile:
I do, yeah, yeah. I mean, the people that work there find me, too. They see the gay in you. They see it. It’s like, “Namasgay. The gay in me sees the gay in you.”
Glennon Doyle:
Maybe that was my problem. Maybe they couldn’t see the gay in me because people do tend to not see the gay in me, and then they thought I was in the wrong place. I think that may have been it.
Brandi Carlile:
No. They just saw. I see it. They come up to me, too. I mean, everybody sees the gay in me.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Me, too. Me, too. Namasgay. Okay. So the name of this podcast is We Can Do Hard Things.
Brandi Carlile:
I know.
Glennon Doyle:
It feels as if your last year, just as your friend and an admirer of your work and an admirer of your entire family, it feels so shiny and wonderful and beautiful, and it all is. What’s hard for you right now?
Brandi Carlile:
Well, I think it’s hard for me to not know how to come back into being who I was before the whole world stopped. I think maybe that I could get more comfortable with that being okay. That’d be good because maybe there was some of that stuff that maybe could be left behind.
Glennon Doyle:
It feels like so much of what you’re doing right now is about what we’re leaving behind and what we’re taking with us. So Broken Horses, when I was thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about today, a lot of it’s about love, family love, art love, divine love, all of it, but what I think is interesting of about the two of us is that two of our first big conversations that really started our friendship were disagreements. Okay? So one was about queerness, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but the first one, well, we were talking a lot during Broken Horses during when you were writing the book, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Glennon Doyle:
My genius idea for you was that you should not name the book Broken Horses, the book that then went absolutely crazy and people say it’s the best title on earth. I told you that was not a good title.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, but disclaimer, you’re the person that wrote Untamed. So I see why, instinctually, that would not be the title.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, yes, and I think it’s because, and I want to get into this because I think it’s because when I read the title Broken Horses, I thought that broken horses meant a tamed horse.
Brandi Carlile:
It does.
Glennon Doyle:
Right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, I’m not a horse person. Clearly, you know the REI story. I don’t know a lot about outside, but a horse that has been broken is a tamed horse, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So I thought that you were saying that you were broken, and that that was beautiful, but that’s not exactly. Explain to me what broken horses means, it meant to you.
Brandi Carlile:
Well, broken horses means I saw it the way my five-year-old at the time saw it, which was, that’s why I named it that is that she pointed out because she’d been asking for a horse or a pony since she could speak, and I kept telling her how expensive they were, and she was overhearing me and Catherine try to assess the title for the book, and I was talking about being poor, about growing up in poverty.
Brandi Carlile:
She was like, “Hey, wait a minute. You had horses, though, and if you were poor, how did you get a horse?”
Brandi Carlile:
I was like, “Well, actually, I always had broken ones, broken knees and broken pasts and things like that, and broken lineage.”
Brandi Carlile:
She said, “Well, you should call your book Broken Horses.”
Brandi Carlile:
So I was just like, “Oh, yeah.” These entities that came into my life were so substantial. It literally would not have taken the path that it took without a minute, and they were just the most unbroken thing in the world, but they were only accessible to me because of their brokenness. I saw the arc of my artistry in that metaphor, too.
Brandi Carlile:
When I explained it to you, you had a response that actually made me rethink, but it isn’t something you should say irresponsibly. It isn’t something you should say without thinking about it because you didn’t want any of my fans or the people that like my music to feel like they were told they were being broken.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, or that there was anything honorable about that, but the amazing thing, the more I think about it over and over again, your title and what you are saying about that, is that, I mean, you said, I mean, broken in some obvious way and a parent flaw that would suggest that the animal can no longer serve his manmade human serving purpose work, and when I think about that, it reminds me of my mental illness, this thing that I knew about myself really young that made me unable to be purposeful to the system.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, to serve the status quo.
Glennon Doyle:
To serve the system. So it was like at some point I was unuseful. The more I understood that I was unuseful, the more I was able to be creative, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, and undoubtedly, you’ve shaped people and changed and altered the course of people’s lives from that perspective.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so interesting because there’s this scene, this part in Jenny Odell’s book, How To Do Nothing, which you have to read it’s so beautiful, but it’s about this tree and there’s this tree. It’s the single standing tree in this park in California somewhere. The reason it’s still standing is because when they came to cut down all the trees to use them for lumber, this tree was so twisty and weird and weak-looking that they didn’t take a down.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. They’re like, “Uh-uh.”
Glennon Doyle:
It was unuseful for capitalism so they left it and its unusefulness is why it was allowed to live. So sometimes it’s our weirdness that makes us ultimately the most beautiful because we were unuseful.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. We should be so lucky.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Everybody just needs to be as unuseful as possible to capitalism.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, and that bit that you just read, I wrote that after you told me not to name the book Broken Horses. I knew I had to go take a stock into why I wanted to call it that and basically realized I needed to explain it not just to everyone else, but to myself. So you were such an important part of me being brave enough to put that book out.
Brandi Carlile:
I remember I called you and I was like, “I think I hate my book title.” It was the second time I’d ever spoken to you, and you’re like, “This is a pre-vulnerability freak out. You’re fine.”
Brandi Carlile:
I was like, “Yeah, but it’s called Heroes and Songs.”
Brandi Carlile:
You’re like, “Yeah, no, that’s not your book title.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s not it. You’re right. Actually, this is not a vulnerability test. That’s just a suck yes title.
Brandi Carlile:
I know. It’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
Remember when there were people who were trying to get you to fancy up your talk in the book?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you remember that?
Brandi Carlile:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
You were like, “Do I need to talk fancier?”
Brandi Carlile:
They were like, “Your book reads like an Instagram caption.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That was so interesting, and you were like, “Do I need to make it fancier? Do I need to make this seem more writerly or something?”
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “All of us are going to cry if you change your voice for this book.”
Glennon Doyle:
Then, okay, this is my favorite, and you’re going to have to help me remember some of this because I’ve been trying so hard to remember this week. One time, we had never spoken before, and I had gotten on Instagram and done a thing about how I did not relate to born this way, the born this way narrative.
Brandi Carlile:
I know. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
How I felt like, with all due respect to everyone who does feel a connection with, “Yes, I was born this way,” that’s not how my experience has been. I have experienced sexuality to be more fluid and more of an energy that can go in many different ways. You called me on the phone and you’re like, “Hi. This is Brandi Carlile. Can we talk?” Do you remember that day? I think Catherine had shown me-
Brandi Carlile:
Very well, yeah. That should have been a podcast in and of itself. That was an incredible conversation.
Glennon Doyle:
Why did you call me?
Brandi Carlile:
Well, okay. My wife had just read Love Warrior and Untamed, and she was talking about you all the time. So we started following you on Instagram and we were discussing you and Abby a lot before we knew you. Some things are just that way, soulmates and stuff, you know?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Brandi Carlile:
I remember her, she put the kids to bed without me and she was coming down the stairs and I had just read the post and I’m like, “There’s something really unsettling for me about this Glennon Doyle gal’s recent Instagram post. It bothers me. I think think it might be irresponsible or something.”
Brandi Carlile:
Catherine’s like, “Well, you have no idea how cool she is. She wants to talk through all this kind of stuff. She’s really brave and she is not afraid to take risks and say things and then learn in retrospect about what it is that she thinks or feels or whatever,” which is a skill I really wish I had more of a handle on.
Brandi Carlile:
She said, “You should call her. She’ll totally want to talk to you about it.”
Brandi Carlile:
Then I was like, “I needed to get open to your perspective, too.”
Brandi Carlile:
So I just spent a couple days thinking about it, and then we got in touch, and had a really, really, transformative for me-
Glennon Doyle:
Me, too.
Brandi Carlile:
… conversation, and then I knew we were going to be doing that probably for the rest of our lives.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Same. It was so beautiful because, basically, I remember you saying to me, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let’s talk about just not claiming the born this way idea,” right? The idea being that it is dangerous to part from that, for real, it’s dangerous because there are people all over the country and world who are only avoiding conversion therapy because their very religious parents can hang onto this born this way narrative.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. It’s one of the reasons. Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
One of the reasons.
Brandi Carlile:
Some people still really need born this way, and to some people, it’s just applicable.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Brandi Carlile:
So it’s like we can’t take it away. We don’t have to submit to it if it’s not our narrative, but I know that some people still really need it. If they were to see something on a person that’s been so righteously and so well-platformed, I think if I had seen that as a little girl, I would be like, “Oh, God! I hope my mom doesn’t see this.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so interesting. The same part of you, “Oh, I hope my mom doesn’t see this,” oh, God, that’s so good. Yeah. That exact thing is why it pisses me off so much.
Brandi Carlile:
I know.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s because I have spent so much of my life bowing down to ridiculous religious bigotry that it pisses me off to have to censor myself or succumb to any narrative that is only in place or largely in place because it capitulates to that religious bigotry, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
For me, for somebody who relates to it completely, it’s perfect. For someone who doesn’t that has to say they do, I guess it just feels like I am having to change who I am to make the religious people accept me, but I don’t give a shit whether they do or not.
Brandi Carlile:
I love that about you.
Glennon Doyle:
Right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know, but the point is it was a beautiful conversation and you helped me. I remember you saying something like, “I know that you see the pride flags and Old Navy has pride flags and everyone celebrating all the queer people, and you think that everyone’s accepted the queer people, but they’ve only accepted 10 of us, and two of them are on this call.”
Brandi Carlile:
Exactly. Isn’t that important to remember? Isn’t that so important keeping that to our minds? I like to stand on that stage every night and I look out at all of the people that are accepted and rejected for whatever reasons. It’s just palpable and it’s just not complete. Not only is it not complete, it’s not even entirely safe yet.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Brandi Carlile:
So there’s just so much more work to do simultaneous to celebration, which is what I love about the queers. We’ve always celebrated through oppression, always. I mean, I think about labels, getting more and more rejected in the LGBTQQIA+ community. That both scares me and encourages me. I think I gave you this analogy when we were talking on the phone, but I remember when I was young and I lived out in the foothills in Maple Valley and Black Diamond, the cow towns of Washington State, to go into Seattle I would go to the same in place every time, Broadway up on Capitol Hill.
Brandi Carlile:
You could go into the stores and all the little knickknacks and the things they were selling had pink triangles and rainbows, and I wanted all the rainbows and all the pink triangles. It was the place that I could go to be gay, and it wasn’t like I was in the closet anywhere. It’s just always weird everywhere, but there I was not weird at all. We would do gay pride there every year, and everything from finding a parking spot to the end of the day was fun, even before I could get into bars and drink.
Brandi Carlile:
There was this point where the city council they met and they wanted to move the parade from Broadway into the city where all of the big parades, all the straight people parades are. I was so mad. I didn’t like that forced assimilation thing, and I skipped a year, and then I went the year after and I saw all these straight people there with their kids.
Brandi Carlile:
I was like, “Okay. This is good.” What parts of us assimilate and what parts of us hold onto, our labels because abandoning all identity in terms of terms like born this way or the words that we use or the cultural icons that we put up on pedestals and they become our defining things. It’s like they keep us from becoming disenfranchised from each other when we still need to be gluey.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because there’s so many people who are like, Abby and I were just talking to friends the other day who were like, “Assimilation is not what we want. We don’t want to be like …” I think it’s people who are that tree who resisted for so long to stay so beautiful and then suddenly get thrown into the useful category, but that’s not what we were doing the whole time.
Brandi Carlile:
Exactly. It’s like we want people to cross the line and to see who we are and do our world, but we don’t want to be asked to cross the line into your world no matter how beautiful the invitation is.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, and in terms of the labels and all of that, I guess I just feel like a kid who doesn’t want their mom to see a woman saying … Actually, born this way isn’t exactly what I identify with. I feel like there was a time in my life where I feel open to that, but there was a choice to pursue it. I want and demand equality and justice for myself and all queer not just because they were born this way, but if they woke up last Tuesday this way, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not because it’s inherent. It’s like I know we need that for court cases, right? That’s an argument that people use to get us rights. So it’s helpful, but when you think about it, why can’t we all use a religious space, ironically, right? They get religious exemptions. They weren’t born Christian or born Buddhists.
Brandi Carlile:
Good point. You always have the best-
Glennon Doyle:
Why can’t we just use a different freaking, and especially, let’s use religion because that’s a karate chop Jedi move, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I just think there’s different ways to approach it. I guess I don’t want any apology in my-
Brandi Carlile:
No, and I like the way that you look at it. So in irreverent, well, what if it’s even better? What if it’s a better choice?
Glennon Doyle:
What is better for God’s sake?
Brandi Carlile:
Tan France was saying that the other night at a dinner we were at. Somebody was lamenting their relationship and he’s like, “Darling, men and women just don’t go together.”
Glennon Doyle:
We don’t. It’s so unnatural. I have tried both. I’m just saying I feel so terribly bad for my straight friends and they feel bad for themselves. I mean, but when you think about it-
Brandi Carlile:
They feel bad for themselves.
Glennon Doyle:
They do, but why do we call that unnatural? It is so hard to bridge the gap of gender conditioning in this country, especially.
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, my God! It’s amazing.
Glennon Doyle:
Trying to talk to a man is very difficult. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it.
Brandi Carlile:
I find it really easy, but-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, God. Tell me more about that.
Brandi Carlile:
I don’t know. Well, it depends on about what. I think in a relationship with one, I don’t know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I find that quite easy.
Glennon Doyle:
To relate deeply to a man. Do you think it’s because?
Brandi Carlile:
I don’t think you’d be able to relate to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I have a theory that it’s not the men that I don’t like talking to. It’s the man character.
Brandi Carlile:
Okay. Yeah. All right.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? Maybe it’s because you’re not doing the female character that they feel like they don’t have to do their job.
Brandi Carlile:
It disarms really fundamentally. You explained it. I was like, “Why is it easy for me?” You just explained it. Yeah, that’s why.
Glennon Doyle:
Because Abby, I mean, the difference between … If there’s one man, the difference in the conversation between the way Abby speaks with the man and me, it’s night and day.
Brandi Carlile:
Is it?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s night and day.
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, my God. I wonder if Catherine feels the same way, but, I mean, there’s so many assumptions to be made that no one would understand about, initially. I guess there’s some common language. One of them is music. Music is, I think in terms of it being successful, is traditionally such a man thing. Men are really fascinated with all people that play music. So that’s always a calming ground.
Glennon Doyle:
She has sports, and she’s kicked their ass in something that they feel respect. It’s probably the same for both of you. They feel respect that you both have entered a world in which they have historically been dominant and are crushing.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I want to ask you about the new album that Abby and I over and over again listen to in our home. Okay. This album, and I’d heard you say this, you tell me if it’s true. You wrote Broken Horses, and then you just felt like you had an album pouring out that needed to pour out of you. Is that the case?
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you tell me about that because that actually pissed me off, okay? Because I’ve never done a huge creative project, finished it, and then been like, “What I really need to do is do another huge creative project.”
Brandi Carlile:
Well, what have you done next? What do you do next? So you closed the thing, you send this off to your editor and you’re like, “Okay. I did it.” What do you do next?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, actually, I started a podcast. So I guess, yeah, all right. I see it. I see what you’re saying, Brandi Carlile.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. It’s like the wheels are still turning. You don’t want to stay on the same track, but you can’t just put the brakes on. When it’s flowing, it’s flowing. When I closed that book, after writing the thing about the horses, prompted by you, that’s what I love about this podcast, we don’t have to sit around and pretend I didn’t send you demos and stuff like that. Do we?
Glennon Doyle:
No. It’s so wonderful.
Brandi Carlile:
I closed the computer and I got straight up and I walked right out to my keyboard, which is 10 steps away, blew the dust off it, fired it up, and wrote Throwing Good After Bad.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, all at once in one setting. I played it for Catherine I’m like, “Is this song really weird?”
Brandi Carlile:
She’s like, “I don’t know. Sit with it for a few days.”
Brandi Carlile:
I sent it to Emily Sawyers from the Indigo Girls.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I love her.
Brandi Carlile:
She liked it and I was like, “No. Actually, I think it’s really good. I think it might be the direction that I’m headed in,” and that just really inspired me.
Glennon Doyle:
So one of the first songs you sent us was Werewolf, the Werewolf song. I just don’t know why everyone’s not talking. I feel like on this album, everyone’s talking about all the other songs and no one’s talking about the Werewolf song enough, but Abby and I sat and listened to that song. Okay. You can tell me if it’s not about this, that I’m totally wrong, okay? Because you know how when you’re going through something in your own life, you think everyone’s talking about that thing and they might not be, but okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, first of all, I need to read the … You probably know your own lyrics. It’s called Mama Werewolf. There’s this part that says, “If my good intentions go running wild, if I cause you pain my own sweet child, won’t you promise me you’ll be the one, my silver bullet in the gun.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So are you saying there that if you do any of the hurtful shit that your family of origin passed down, that you want your kid to be the one to snuff it out of you whatever it takes. Is that what that’s saying?
Brandi Carlile:
Not to-
Glennon Doyle:
Damn it.
Brandi Carlile:
Yes. No. Actually, exactly that. I just want to be shown.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, you want to be shown.
Brandi Carlile:
A silver bullet doesn’t … It stops the world from being the werewolf, but it doesn’t kill the carrier of the passenger. Do you know what I mean? I don’t expect it to be their responsibility, although I’m so innately codependent and I just keep doubling down on that, but that’s why I sing the song because of that measure of lines and because of that definition that you just gave is, absolutely. If you catch me doing what I endured, just show me.
Glennon Doyle:
So when you sent us that song, it was a week after. You know Tish. You know our Tish.
Brandi Carlile:
Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I haven’t told this story and I won’t. I’m not going to tell it completely. I’ll just tell a little bit, but we had been together with my whole family of origin, and Tish, in a very dramatic moment, had pulled me out the room and said, “What is happening in our family is not okay, and you’re not doing anything about it,” and she was totally right. We did what families do, which is we don’t talk about it. We just become different people, but she pointed it out and it was so uncomfortable and it led to this huge family rift, and we’re healing, but it’s that, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. I guess she did it. She was the silver bullet in that situation. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So much of your work in life, I think, is a third way. It’s how you are with religion. It’s how you are with music. It’s how you are with your family. It’s not the first thing. I’m not going to be obedient to what the pattern is, the norm, but I’m not going to throw it away either like faith. I’m not going to do it the religious tow the line way, but I want it in my life. So I’m going to create this third way. What are you working on leaving behind from old patterns in your family, your old family or your old way of life or your whatever, and bringing to your children now?
Brandi Carlile:
I think that the thing that is most interesting about the way that I parent and probably sets Cath on edge the most is that there are things about being parented by essentially eternal nonconformist teenagers that I really like, and that I think are okay, and it’s kept in fantastically and fringe and I’m having to have to confront a culture of how much of that is okay all the time, and I always will be. There’s always going to be a part of me that’s really erratic, doesn’t want to follow the rules, wants us to be different, wants us to be unnaturally close.
Brandi Carlile:
There are parts of me that are just intense, and those parts feel okay to pass on for right now, and I probably won’t find out until my kids are older which parts of that aren’t okay and which parts are.
Glennon Doyle:
… or they’ll just totally screw you by going the other way. They’ll become like Alex P. Keatons. Do you remember the show where they were hippies and then-
Brandi Carlile:
Yes, and he he had the blazer and he was the Republican?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Brandi Carlile:
There could be a chance that Evangeline becomes Republican. I don’t know if this is unrelated, but this is something I’m totally freaked out about is the girls, their dad, David, who was my first and only ever boyfriend from a time we were 11 to where it just I don’t even know if it ever did end. It just stopped being that way, but he’s always been my person who’s a guy. When Catherine and I met I was like, “You have to meet this David character and see what you think,” and she was instantly same as me, but he’s probably going to hear this so I’m not going to say empty, but he’s a lone wolf. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t talk about his feelings. He doesn’t express himself. He doesn’t come around. He stood me up for his own 30th birthday. That was throwing. He forgot our wedding. You know what I mean? He’s never going to be dad or best friend or any of those things. He’s just David.
Brandi Carlile:
From the time we were kids, I knew he loved me and I love and still love him, and I could always express myself to him, but all he could ever say to me was, “You’re the best. You’re the best.” We used to sleep in the same bed. Totally innocuous. We’d hold hands and just go to sleep in the same bed like 13-year-olds, and then his mom would turn out the light and he’d go, “You’re the best,” and we’d go to sleep.
Brandi Carlile:
It’s just something he used to say to me and I was like, “Can you ever say more than that? Is that all you got, ‘You’re the best’?” Evangeline has started saying, “You’re the best,” to me.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Brandi Carlile:
It freaks me out because she doesn’t know him.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Brandi Carlile:
She looks like him. She’s got his identical face. As soon as she says it, talk about werewolf, I’m like, “You need to say more than that. I don’t even know what that means. You need to explain yourself. Don’t you know people that don’t know how to explain themselves in life don’t get what they want,” and she’s like, “You’re the worst.”
Brandi Carlile:
Catherine says to me, “She’s so competitive,” as you’ve experienced. I don’t get timed, she tells you. She’s so competitive that being the best is the greatest compliment she can give someone. You’re not the second best. You’re not the one that loses. You’re the best.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Well, I’m just going to say real quick, I’m not bitter about this and I want you to know I’m not, but the last time you guys were over here when I played with Evangeline for four hours.
Brandi Carlile:
I got heated.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, and then Abby showed them her gold medal for 30 seconds, and then Evangeline wrote a report on her the next day.
Brandi Carlile:
I know.
Glennon Doyle:
Was I anywhere in the report?
Brandi Carlile:
I know.
Glennon Doyle:
No. I wasn’t even in the freaking report because I wasn’t the best at anything.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Abby is the best. To Eva, she’s the best.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re competitive.
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, as soon as I went home, I got down all my Grammy medals and I was like, “Look what mama has.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. How does that work? I need to know how a person is a bleeding artist, a vulnerable, weird, queer artist and then is also super competitive in the world, in institutions, in lists, in whatever. I know in your book a lot you say you’re two people, but how does that work? Do you drive yourself crazy?
Brandi Carlile:
I mean, you’re probably the most intuitive, perceptive person I know. I think you probably have a more accurate take on it. I always say I’m not competitive. I’m driven because I want to win. I just don’t want anyone else to lose. I really don’t. I would love everybody to just win, and I know that’s not real life. Also, I don’t mind being sidelined or not get … I mean, I pay attention to those critic lists at the end of the year, the New York Times and Rolling Stone and American Songwriter and Variety. I pay attention to their top 50 albums or whatever. My heart, it’s like I’ll stop at 50, and it’ll be like, “Oh, 50 through 46, and then 46 through,” and you click on one and it shows those, and I’m like, “Okay. I’m not at the bottom.” I click on the next one, it shows the next and I’m like, “Okay. Well, I’m somewhere near the middle then.” When it gets to that top five, my heart is pounding in my throat because I’m so afraid I won’t be in it and then I just miss the list altogether.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so vulnerable and nice for you to say.
Brandi Carlile:
This year, I looked at all the lists and there’s a woman who sent me her album before anyone else heard it and I lost my mind over this album. It’s so good. She’s called Allison Russell. I did that with these lists, but I didn’t have the heart in my throat thing because I was so invested in her making the top 10 of all these lists that I was searching for her album cover that I’ve come to understand exactly how it looks and I can spot it out of a lineup now. I was like, “I am a different kind of competitive person.” I really like to see other people win and do well. I don’t want to be rejected, but I don’t want anybody else to be either.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s really cool.
Brandi Carlile:
Catherine, she does want other people to lose. Oh, my God. She’ll be like, “Oh, did you see the bloody list? You’re number 47,” or whatever and she’s like, “and so and so is number five, and that album’s not anything they do.”
Glennon Doyle:
God, I love that woman.
Brandi Carlile:
She gets so jealous. I recognize it enough to know I don’t feel that way, genuinely don’t like. I’d be happy to own it if I did.
Glennon Doyle:
Don’t you think it allows you to be like you because she’s like that? Probably.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
If there was nobody cursing other people for winning, you couldn’t be this evolved, zen-like human who didn’t care. It’s because you have a fighter right next to you who will take them all down for you.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That girl ain’t having it.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. What people who are listening, too, don’t know is that they’re going to get a treat because we’re going to actually do a double date for our next episode with Catherine. So I don’t want to give away too much of that, but before she comes and we hear directly from her, tell us what do you love about Catherine the most.
Brandi Carlile:
The thing I love about Catherine the most is I’m so predisposed to making snap and lasting judgments about people. I just see everyone as fully accountable for themselves and capable of making better choices, and I’ve always been that way. It’s not my favorite thing about myself, and I think as I’ve gotten older because of Catherine, it’s gotten better than me. Catherine sees every person as an eight-year-old and not in a condescending way. Somebody that I would think is a bad person she’d be like, “Oh, he’s just a bit naughty. He’s cheeky is all. He’s sparkly, darling.” She sees everyone’s kid. She sees everyone’s kid, and it’s made me realize we’re all just kids running around grown up.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. I wonder if it was Catherine who inspired this? I’m going through this thing where I’m trying to make this show because I’m dealing with a lot of Hollywood people, which is a whole new world and awesome in many ways, but now it’s awesome because we have the right team. Anyway, I put a little sign next to my computer that said everyone is a little tiny baby just for that-
Brandi Carlile:
For that reason?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because I realized everyone you’re talking to, it’s like we all have these grown up suits on, but Catherine’s exactly right. We are all just these little terrified babies inside, and our feelings get hurt when other people say stuff and then we say horrible things but really it’s because we’re hurt. So you just have to remember everyone you’re talking to is a little tiny baby.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, with all this potential and all this ability to be different next to you or life is long, I think, instead of short. All these things just have been really good for me, but also just I think it’s magical, and her friendships are eternal. She’s sparkly. She’s a very sparkly person.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, she is.
Brandi Carlile:
You guys are really similar. March 20th is your birthday. You’re fours on the Enneagram.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. Do you know that Catherine and I are both fours and we both were born on March 20th, and do you know that you and Abby were only born one day apart? She’s June 2nd.
Brandi Carlile:
What?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Isn’t that weird?
Brandi Carlile:
I didn’t know that. What year?
Abby:
’80.
Glennon Doyle:
’80.
Brandi Carlile:
’81.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s weird, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Wow. That is weird.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Brandi Carlile:
There is something about birthdays. I mean, I love the Enneagram and it is uncanny how-
Glennon Doyle:
It is weird. I’m going to do a show on that soon. I just also love when people tell me who I am. Just tell me, and then I can just have all these reasons. I keep taking COVID tests and every time it’s negative, I guess I’m happy, but then I’m like, “Oh, so I just feel this way. I’m just this tired and cranky.”
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, I find you totally intoxicating.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Thank you.
Brandi Carlile:
You’re you’re never cranky to me, but if you ever want to be, I accept it.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Brandi Carlile:
It’s fine.
Glennon Doyle:
I appreciate that.
Brandi Carlile:
Because I’ve got Catherine to see you as an eight-year-old.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right, and I love that because if we ever get in a fight I’m going to be like, “Can you talk to Kathryn about it first before you decide?”
Brandi Carlile:
I won’t condemn you to a life of crankiness for my self-righteous cranky pedestal.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So speaking of love, I recently heard you say, which made my heart just … Okay. You were doing an interview. You’ve done seven trillion interviews, especially right after Saturday Night Live, which by the way, was Saturday Night Live, I think you posted a picture of yourself sitting on Saturday Night Live stage years before saying it was a dream for you. Was that a dream for you?
Brandi Carlile:
Just to see it, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Just to see it. Okay. Then you go on Saturday Night Live with Ted Lasso. Abby and I were talking about how possibly did they put them together. If I were them, I would have broken up the goodness. To have of you be together on Saturday Night Live, it was-
Brandi Carlile:
You’re bias about, I think, both me and Jason.
Glennon Doyle:
No. It was the best episode of Saturday Night Live ever.
Brandi Carlile:
It was so funny, too. I mean, it was really good.
Glennon Doyle:
Funny and gorgeous, and your performance was so ridiculous. My kids were like, “Holy shit!” It was just transcendent what you did. It goes back to what we were talking about before with queerness being totally everywhere now and accepted, but you have walked a very long road to get to this moment where pride flags are everywhere and Old Navy is celebrating, right? I mean, talk to us. Just catch up the youngins about what it was actually like for a queer rockstar in a industry that was not where we are right now for a long while because it’s looking easy right now. Do you know what I mean?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Everyone’s like, “Of course, she’s a rockstar,” but you’ve been working your ass off for so long with this crew of what you call the island of misfits, who’s been following you everywhere, who you’ve been dependent on and they’ve been dependent on you, and then it’s just yesterday that the world was like, “Okay. Come on,” right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So tell us about that and tell us about your crew that follows you and what that’s like.
Brandi Carlile:
Well, I mean, my gender identity has always been in flux and fluid. It changes and it might change again. I make a lot of allowances for myself around that. I like it. I think it’s one of the funnest parts of being queer. So there have been times in my career where I haven’t been identifiably queer but have been out for most of my life since I was a teenager. There have been all kinds of little micro rejections and surprises and things along the way, but one thing I’ve I’ve noticed recently is that the zeitgeist has finally started to, and I don’t mean this as a concession. I don’t want anybody to think that we’re we’re done here, but that they finally started to embrace androgyny and the awkwardness of the queer experience as maybe cool, and having that part of it be okay, that’s a big change for me because there is a time when that was just a total non-starter.
Brandi Carlile:
I mean, I just spent total exclusion from pop culture and worse than exclusion. You’re fair game to be parodied. It’s the funniest thing in the world to make fun of the indigo girls or k.d. lang. They couldn’t be cool, and that’s not that way now. Maybe it’s very, very cool to be, you know?
Glennon Doyle:
What do you think about … My brain explodes every time I try to think about gender. I’m losing my mind about gender, actually, which is cool for me because when I start to try to figure out things is when it all falls apart and I feel like I know nothing. I’m usually on the cusp of something, but I don’t understand gender. I can’t find gender inside of me anywhere. I can find gender outside of me. Gender is something that’s on me. It’s not in me.
Glennon Doyle:
If I said I am a girl and somebody said to me, “How do you know?” I would have no fucking idea. I would be like, “Well, I have on rings and I have highlights.”
Brandi Carlile:
You’re blowing my mind right now.
Glennon Doyle:
“I have a strapless bra on, and I’m in these clothes,” but there’s nothing inside of me that says … So when you say you leave allowances for gender in the future, do you feel in your insides I’m a woman or do you feel in your insides I’m a man? Because I actually feel on my insides that I don’t have a gender.
Brandi Carlile:
Huh?
Glennon Doyle:
I am acting out something that I was told when I was little that this is what you are and I can crush it. I can do all the things that make me look like that thing.
Brandi Carlile:
To me, it feels like calibration. It’s like when you’re insides match your outsides, when you make something happen and it lines up and you’re like, “That’s it. That’s me right now. That’s who I am at this phase of my life. That’s how I feel,” and it could be flipping your hair from one side to the other. It could be just, “Something’s missing about me and I don’t feel great,” and it’s the mascara, “Oh, there it is. There I am,” or you take the mascara off and you’re like, “There I am.”
Brandi Carlile:
It’s just about, for me, it’s always been about allowing myself to just calibrate to where I’m like, “Oh, there it is. I’m comfortable.” The last time I felt … Oh, my God, Catherine. I punished Catherine for this for days. The last time I felt uncomfortable in my skin as an adult would’ve been shooting my video for Right On Time.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, with all the glitter and stuff?
Brandi Carlile:
I think it was the way the clothes fit me. It just felt like I was out of sync with myself, and it was a terrible feeling. It was like two strings on a guitar being out of tune and vibrating incessantly instead of calibrating. So the whole day I was just moody, and I was snapping at Cath and just not eating any food when everybody else was eating food and soaking off to these trees. I felt like a seven-year-old little girl again rubbing dirt onto my dress so that I wouldn’t have to wear it to the family reunion.
Glennon Doyle:
Ugh. That’s Abby. That’s how Abby always felt, but that’s so interesting.
Brandi Carlile:
I felt that way going the other direction, too.
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’ve had times when you dressed completely masculine and then you felt like that was not you either. You felt uncomfortable?
Brandi Carlile:
No, and Cath can attest to that particularly around heteronormative couples that need us to fit, Catherine and I to fit that paradigm, that makes sense to them, I’m like, “Don’t you dad me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Which one is the man?
Brandi Carlile:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like, “That’s the whole fucking point of this whole fucking thing.”
Glennon Doyle:
So give me an example of when you calibrated the other way.
Brandi Carlile:
Oh, well, like I just said. When a really well-meaning and lovely straight couple feels the need to dad me.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, dad you, right. Oh, God. Oh.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah, or that ease in conversation, the one that we talked about earlier that Abby and I can both enjoy is just a little too presumptive.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Abby will note that sometimes it’s like the man that she’s talking to forgets she’s actually a woman and takes off his mask and says some shit about women, and she’s like, “Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
Brandi Carlile:
Well, you guys spent a lot of time in Florida.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s true. We did. It’s true. We did. Bless Florida. So I do wonder, though, when you say that day that you were shooting that video how uncomfortable you were And you felt like out of your skin and you had to soak away and you didn’t eat the food. That’s actually how I felt for 25 years.
Brandi Carlile:
Really?
Glennon Doyle:
I think that there’s something about being a really fem woman or presenting that way that makes you feel like you’re always in a costume. I mean, think about I had six-inch heels on all the time and tight clothes. It just always felt like that.
Brandi Carlile:
See, there have been times I’ve really liked that, and it calibrates. If my insides that day match my outsides, I’m okay. I can be okay. Sometimes it’s just that I hate how unpredictable it is. It’s just a day in and day out thing. Actually, really, it’s more like a year in and year out thing. I just have allowed myself to go through a lot of queer phases just because I really feel for people that come out later in life. I think there are some things that maybe you might have had easier.
Glennon Doyle:
For sure.
Brandi Carlile:
It’s like chicken pox. Maybe it’s better to get it over with when you’re younger.
Glennon Doyle:
Instead of born this way, we’re going with queerness. It’s like chicken pox. That’s our new argument.
Brandi Carlile:
We’ll have a chicken box party. We’ll have a queer person party and just hope that the contagion spreads so that everybody gets it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, herd immunity for queerness. Okay. Do you think, though, that what you’re talking about with this calibration leads to the spectrum idea. So if you’re matching your outsides wherever you feel like you are on the spectrum then you’re good.
Brandi Carlile:
For me personally, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
For you personally. So that’s how I feel about sexuality. So it’s like gender doesn’t work for born this way for you, right? You would never have I’m born this way woman or man. You feel like it’s an ever-changing energy that you just have to match your outsides to your insides at the moment.
Brandi Carlile:
For me personally.
Glennon Doyle:
For you.
Brandi Carlile:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
So that’s how for me personally I feel about sexuality.
Brandi Carlile:
Cool.
Glennon Doyle:
Does that make sense?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I was not born gay or straight, I don’t think, but it’s something that I have to keep matching my insights to my outsides.
Brandi Carlile:
Right, but you’re interesting because there is something about you that the compass pointed a different direction the whole time. There’s a compass in there, right?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. I think my compass was that I don’t think I was doing what you were doing so early. Well, okay. There’s bell hooks quote that says, “Queer,” Jason and I both sent this to each other at the same time the day bell hooks died.
Brandi Carlile:
Mystical,
Glennon Doyle:
“Queer, not as being about who you’re having sex with that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” Your faith is queer. Your family is queer. Your gender is queer.
Brandi Carlile:
My proxy, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Your art is queer because you’ve been trying to find a calibration from your outsides to your insides that is different from what the world has told you.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. It makes things really precious because so much about the way that we live culturally is heteronormative, that you’re are rejected by so many basic tenants of so many institutions, that you can’t repel yourself to the outside of all of them or you’re just in outer space. You’re just in nowhere. So you have to find places through these institutions. You can’t reject them like they can reject you.
Glennon Doyle:
That makes people special.
Brandi Carlile:
It makes people special.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s why when, I know I’m not supposed to say this, but when I say I like queer people better than straight people, I mean, I don’t totally mean that, but I kind of mean that because I just mean right off the bat I have a builtin respect for you because I know what it took for you to be yourself in this world. That was a battle and a struggle that you fought and are still standing. So it’s like two points already for you, right?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. Exactly, and you’re going to be fun, and you’re going to create stuff that’s really great. I walked out of Bohemian Rhapsody with my chest puffed out. I was like, “Queer people brought everything great that there is about American music. Without queer people and Black people we are fucked, completely. There’s nothing fun about us.” I don’t know. I still find you a bit of an anomaly, really interesting because even if you weren’t married and with Abby, I would be like, “I wonder when Glennon’s going to come out of the closet.”
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That is such an honor. I need to know more.
Brandi Carlile:
I’m so sorry. You cut that out if you need to, but that’s-
Glennon Doyle:
No. I want to know more. Do you know I read an Amazon review of Love Warrior that said, “When the fuck is this woman just going to come out?” I was like, “Oh, my God! I have to read reviews so that I can know who I am,” because these people knew before I did. Why?
Brandi Carlile:
Let me think about it. I just sense it. You know what I mean? It’s not just an openness. It’s just something about your energy. To me, you feel queer. You might see yourself in one place on the spectrum now or another place in the spectrum a year from now or a year ago, but to me, if I had met you and you’d still been married or you were single, I would think, yeah, “I wonder if Glennon is in the closet or if she’s ever thought about going on a date with a woman.”
Glennon Doyle:
Huh. Absolutely amazing.
Brandi Carlile:
Yeah. I wish I could explain why. It’s just I’m a kind of animal that sees a kind of animal and goes, “Yeah, I get that.”
Glennon Doyle:
It’s the namasgay.
Brandi Carlile:
Namasgay. It’s why REI employee approaches you for the carabiner. They know you want the carabiner. You just don’t know you want the carabiner all the time.
Glennon Doyle:
Fuck same.
Brandi Carlile:
You want to camp. You actually don’t know this, but you want to camp with me and Catherine, and I know Abby does.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. Well, I trust you, I guess. I turned out to be queer. So I guess I could turn out to be a camper. With that, I love you. I love your family.
Brandi Carlile:
I adore you.
Glennon Doyle:
I love everything that you’re doing in the world. I’m just so grateful that you guys, well, Catherine’s in here, too, that you all are our friends. All right, y’all. Come back on Thursday because we’re going to have a double with Catherine and Brandi. All right. Don’t forget this week We Can Do Hard Things. Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I loved it.
Abby:
It was wonderful. Nice.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, could it be a better interview when you circled back around to REI and namasgay?
Brandi Carlile:
It was expert on your part.
Glennon Doyle:
I give you Tish Milton and Brandy Carlile.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple podcasts, Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially, be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.