In this excerpt from Carlile’s excellent new memoir Broken Horses (Random House), the singer-songwriter talks about some of the tragedies (a friend’s suicide), trauma (trying to get baptized) and thrills (falling for her first girlfriend) from that period.
But before then, she spent much of her time narrowly avoiding trouble with siblings Jay and Tiffany, falling in love with her first girlfriend, Jessica, and tending to her horse named Sovereign, which she purchased for $75 at the age of 17. Carlile’s teenage years days were full of uncertainty and exploration: In just a few short years, she would begin gigging relentlessly around Seattle and meet her future musical collaborators, the Hanseroth Twins. Before Brandi Carlile was a folk-rock superstar, she was a high school dropout spending her time in a lakeside shed with her first real band, which comprised Carlile, her brother Jay, and a pair of thirty-something locals from Carlile’s native Washington State.
