Flipswitch is The Balanced Mind Foundation's podcast for teens and young adults on living well with mood disorders. Each week, the Flipswitch crew takes on a 'piece' of the mood disorder 'puzzle'. Researchers, celebrities, artists, moms, and teens share their perspectives in the interview portion of the show. 

Biography
In 2005, Rolling Stone Magazine included Brandi Carlile as one of their top 10 artists to watch that year.  The Ravensdale Washington native's first album was also selected as one of the E! Online’s top 20 albums of that same year.  In April of 2008, she released her second album, The Story, to much acclaim.  Three songs off the album have recently been featured on the prime time ABC drama Grey's Anatomy. Her music has been described as indie-folk blended with alternative country, and she has been compared to such greats as Jeff Buckley and K.D. Lang.  She has also been a vocal activist for the environment as well as the victims of Hurricane Katrina. 

Tip: click the green arrow to listen to interview,
or read the transcript below.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Brandi Carlile, welcome to Flipswitch.

Brandi Carlile:  Thanks for having me.  My pleasure to be here.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  So, what are you working on recently?  You are on tour? 

Brandi Carlile:  We are nearing the end of a big tour, getting ready to play our big hometown show in Seattle, and I am writing songs for the next record.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  I know many artists pull from within themselves to write their music.  Do you find that’s true of you as well?

Brandi Carlile:  Yeah, certainly.  Artists tend to write from personal experience, whether I admit it all the time or not. 

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Specifically, are there any songs that you have written on any albums of yours where you really connect with a deeper kind of inner emotion?

Brandi Carlile:  Yeah, certainly.  I mean I have written songs on and off the records about questioning and the extreme highs and extreme lows of life and being an artist and a song writer, I am always confronting those issues and trying to deal with them as they show up.

I always write about things that puzzle me and trouble me, keep me up at night.  I write about things that I have all the time processing in my day-to-day life.  So, I process them through music and performing those songs in front of other people, and gaining support on that level. 

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Music is an outlet for you, then?

Brandi Carlile:  Certainly, yes.  It is a process.

The Balanced Mind Foundation: The Balanced Mind Foundation’s executive director saw you play a few nights ago at the House of Blues here in Chicago and she noted one of your songs was really moving to her and it was a song that you said was written about a friend who had committed suicide years ago.  Can you talk a little bit about that?

Brandi Carlile:  Yeah.  I had a friend when I was in high school who killed himself and it was… it was an interesting process for me.  I mean, I am not sure that how I dealt with it is the most important thing about that incident.  I think that the most important thing about that incident is that, it’s not that it could have been prevented or even that it should have been prevented; I just think that confronting issues like mental illness and depression can be really difficult in a small town, and I think it is important for people to acknowledge it in the way that you guys do and your organization does; to gain support on a community level through the schools, through churches, through community centers and friends and family.  It if it were easier to talk about it and confront it, I think that a lot of pain and heartache can be avoided.  Small towns don’t always have to be sort of secretive and reserved.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  It's interesting that you say that. Do you believe that a small town atmosphere played into it then?

Brandi Carlile:  No. I don’t have any blame for anybody about him.  I just think that everybody getting involved and acknowledging what was going on would have been better than not acknowledging what was going on.  You know what I mean?

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Yes.  One of the things when we talk about suicide is that it's rarely an act that effects only the person who is committing suicide.  It usually has a rippling effect throughout other people's lives. What’s the name of the song that you wrote about that incident?

Brandi Carlile:  The song is called That Year. The incident had a profound effect on my life for sure, because I sort of learned how to make peace with it, and I learned that through writing songs about it.  I wrote an angry song about it 10 years ago, but now I have sort of processed it, made peace with it, written a song about it, and I understand more of what he must have been going through and I think that if he could do it again, he wouldn’t have checked out.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  You said you wrote about it ten years ago, and now you have got another song.  Do you often revisit topics in different perspectives? Do you find that time has to elapse for you to process things in that way?

Brandi Carlile:  Sometimes it does, and sometimes it is a combination of time and circumstance.  Enough things happened and I learn enough things along the way that maybe it doesn’t take time, it just takes some experience. But at the time it would have taken maturity; I didn’t have that.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  At what time do you think you gained maturity? 

Brandi Carlile:  I don’t think I’ve gained it yet. [laughter]

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Fair enough.

Brandi Carlile:  I absolutely don’t.

I think that I am still trying to balance having wisdom and staying innocent at the same time, and sort of just learning things over the course of my life and gathering experiences and then applying them to events appropriately.  I don’t know if that is maturity or what that is, but over time, I have just sort of developed an outlet to deal with him committing suicide.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  If you come from an environment where other people are not thriving as well as you, how do you keep your head above the fray in that instance?

Brandi Carlile:  For me, having an outlet is important, whatever your outlet is.  My outlet is music and performing and other people's outlets are their family, partners, church, sports.  It's just having an outlet in a way to deal with these things as they come.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  I would definitely say that your music invokes a certain type of mood and a certain kind of raw emotionality that maybe dance pop for instance…

Brandi Carlile:  Doesn’t quite cover that, yeah. 

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Yeah.  You don’t listen to top 40 club hits and think, “Yeah, I can feel what that person is thinking.”  So…being in that role, do you find that a lot of people tell you about their stories because they listened to your songs and connected in some way?

Brandi Carlile:  Actually yeah.  Nobody has ever asked me that before and it is so true, you know what I mean?  I think because people can relate to our music on that level, where it’s obvious to other people that we’re processing things in our lives and trying to come through the other side with hope and things like that, I have people constantly coming up to me at shows all the time, sending me letters, telling me things in their lives, and they say they can relate to what is going on.  I end up hearing a lot of things that are difficult for me, because I’m trying to put this supportive energy out into the world, while not taking other people's energy onto myself because I have so much already.

The Balanced Mind Foundation:  Brandi Carlile, thank you so much for helping us out today.

Brandi Carlile:  It was great talking to you. Thank you.

This is the first interview transcript in a series.

Resources:
About Flipswitch
Listen