ISSUE #29: BRANDY CLARK

Sometimes the only way to get by is to tell a story...and get high

When I was on book tour for Her Country, I was often asked a (very understandable) question: who are the stars of the story? Sure, on the surface and at its core, that book is a story of three Texas women – Maren, Mickey, Kacey – and how they blew up the ol’ boys club to pave their careers exactly on their own terms. But that’s not the full answer. There are other key players in that story, the story of Nashville and country music. And one of the most important ones I keep coming back to, in the book, in life and through my speakers, is Brandy Clark.

I thought about this as I sat in the pews at the Ryman last week, watching Brandy play her first headlining show at the venue. Pepped with a couple covers and a duet with Karen Fairchild on “Girl Crush” (a singer who we truly take for granted, by the way), Brandy ran through songs from across all her records, sometimes solo, sometimes as a trio, sometimes as a full band with her ace players. She made a quip at one point about just wanting to write a classic, and it occurred to me that over half the songs she played felt like that already - part of the country music cannon, happening here in real time.

But before the music, representative Aftyn Behn (shout out district 51) took the stage alongside Gloria Johnson, who you may know as one of the Tennessee Three and I hope we will all know one day as the woman who kicks Marsha Blackburn to her little bigoted curb, to give Brandy a proclamation. Behn introduced it simply as written “to honor excellence, to honor artistry and to honor the best in the business.” Simple, but couldn’t have felt more apropos: the best in the business. It’s the truth.

If you read this newsletter, there’s a good chance you know not only the songs Brandy’s recorded herself on her albums, but the ones she’s co-written for other people: a collection of downright country classics that are dark and funny, heartbreaking and insightful, full of snapshots of life and characters we feel like we know, because there’s a little bit of all of us in each and every one.  Brandy, who grew up in rural Washington and moved to Nashville in 1998 to attend Belmont, got her first cut in 2005 after hearing a slew of “no’s”: her breakthrough moment was in 2011 with Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart.” Her songs, recorded by and/or co-written with Kacey Musgraves, the Band Perry, Hailey Whitters, Ashley McBryde, Carly Pearce, Jennifer Nettles, LeAnn Rimes and many more have explored people – have explored women – in all their complexities, insecurities, imperfections (even the occasional murder fantasy, as one does). It’s the shit we can’t say out loud. The love that’s hard to articulate. The small town secrets or internal monologues that need air or they fester into rot. Or, sometimes, just the simple act of reaching for someone else’s hand.

Thought it didn’t start with this moment alone, it's vital to chart the sea change that came with Brandy, alongside her close creative collaborator Shane McAnally, winning the CMA for song of the year for Kacey’s “Follow Your Arrow.” Kacey made sure all three writers came on stage to accept the award when they won - the first time that two openly queer people, Shane and Brandy, had appeared on a live broadcast to do so. If you pay attention, you know how much this mattered to Nashville. If you pay attention, you know how much Brandy’s songs matter. But even if you don’t, you certainly know the words to her songs that changed the way people and characters and stories are presented in a town enamored with the 24 hour party.

But why, when we talk about the modern-day pantheon of artists who are writing incredible songs, keeping the country genre growing and expanding while honoring its best traditions, who are the “outlaws” or whatever else we feel compelled to call them, do we not mention Brandy enough? I do not want to wait until she is seventy for us to feel ready to acknowledge the genius, as we inevitably will (this is something on my mind lately, obviously). A queer woman in her 40s is writing some of the very best songs to come out of Nashville, that have also influenced the writing of some of the other very best songs, too. Can we reckon with that now?

Brandy has released four solo albums: 12 Stories, Big Day In a Small Town, Your Life is a Record and the most recent self-titled one, produced by Brandi Carlile. Somehow, she has not yet won a Grammy award (despite being nominated 11 times).

I remember the first time I heard the song “Get High.” I was floored by how visual it was - I could see the kitchen, the smoke rings wafting through the air, the exasperation on her face, the relief in each puff. What struck me, as a new mom myself at the time, was that Brandy wasn’t judging this person, either, and she wasn’t showing a woman drenched in complete misery because of her kids, or her domestic life (just capitalism and the patriarchy). The first line of the song sets that up brilliantly: “she hates her job, loves her kids.” She’s restless and sometimes bored and, on occasion, nostalgic for the person she was before she was mom and wife. But at the center is love. And a little weed. Who else can write like that?

We see a woman like her again on “Homecoming Queen.” Life let her down, too, building up the mythologies that never grow into realized dreams. Off her second album, Big Day in a Small Town, these are the stories other country songwriters can only write around - they’ll give you a tailgate party, Brandy Clark will give you Mindy’s water breaking in geometry class.

Unsurprisingly, with the country radio universe being what it is, Brandy has never had a radio hit as a solo artist (“Girl Next Door” was the only single to chart). Too country, too queer, too female, too good, too honest…all options are on the table. We know this story well. Her newest, Brandy Clark, is free of any thoughts of radio friendliness or trends: it’s an album rooted in the Northwest, where she and producer Brandi Carlile are from, and often sparse enough to let Brandy’s vocals and lyrics carry almost all of the heavy lifting. It’s full of her signature stories - women being strung along by a lover, a grandmother who liked Pepsi and a pack a day, the way the salmon run up the river on “Northwest,” the song that aptly rocks out a little harder than the rest. “Dear Insecurity,” her duet with Brandi that I saw them first play in Mexico at Girls Just Wanna Weekend (humble brag, I know) floors me not just in its candid nature, but in how it doesn’t demand a instant resolution. It’s not a “girl power” anthem or a demand for instant confidence. It’s a quiet plea, a mantra, a folk song for the body and the brain. A lullaby to put our loudest, most intrusive thoughts to sleep, if only just for a night.

Brandy came out with a new Christmas song last week - an original called “My Favorite Christmas.” Anyone who knows me - or Natalie - knows that despite belonging to the Jewish faith, we love a good country Christmas song maybe even a little more than the rest. This one has a familiar holiday melody, and Brandy’s voice brings the warmth you need to pull off that sort of cozy nostalgia. But that doesn’t mean it’s not as cutting as anything else she’s recorded before - “We’ve drifted so far,” she sings, “but isn’t that life? Guess some wishes ain’t meant to come true.”

And that’s what Brandy’s songs do: in the version of our lives where our dreams diverge and drift further and further away from reality, we can live with regret, or we can live in imperfect peace. And isn’t that life?