Producer and acclaimed singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile is the featured guest on the latest episode of the highly popular TEC Award-winning Produce Like A Pro educational channel on YouTube (with an audience of over 740,000 subscribers), hosted by noted audio educator/producer/engineer Warren Huart. This new episode is an up-close-and-personal look into Carlile producing albums by other artists. The segment covers a number of pertinent topics, including her approach to demos and how to find the “magic” in the recording process; mentors that have influenced her in her role as producer such as Rick Rubin and T Bone Burnett; the importance of collaboration with the recording engineer; her latest projects as producer with Tanya Tucker, Brandy Clark and Tish Melton; her labor of love working and producing Joni Mitchell including Joni’s return to the stage at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival; and much much more.
When asked by Huart what inspired Brandi to start producing for others, she comments, “I find an artist and I become fascinated with them and their music and what I think they could do to enhance it, or take a step in their life that maybe they haven’t thought of taking. I get really personally invested in the music that I listen to,” She continues, “This is a great job. I want to do this job too, and I got involved in it and there was no turning back. I love being a producer.”
Huart goes on to talk about Brandi winning her first GRAMMY as producer (for her work as co-producer on Tanya Tucker’s While I’m Livin’), and asks her to share her thoughts on what she brings to an artist and their project. She remarks, “My strength as a producer is that I have an unwavering gauge for authenticity, that I am macro, that I see the project beyond the studio and before it. Psychologically, I’m willing to get on whatever wavelength and into whatever dimension that the artist is in and work with those tools to build the spaceship instead of bringing my own formula into the room and insisting that we snap everyone to that grid. So those three things together, I think, make me sound maybe a bit abstract, but the process gets less abstract.”
The episode touches on many key points and provides valuable insights and takeaways for viewers into Carlile’s work as a producer, with an extended and emotional segment on her unique relationship and work with legendary artist Joni Mitchell.
