Brandi Carlile by the Way, I Forgive You Written by Brandi Carlile

D D N N A SSAACCKKSS CA COO..

photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen Brandi Carlile By The Way, I Forgive You Written by Brandi Carlile

By The Way, I Forgive You is not an album about is the safest time to be alive in human history. forgiveness in the easy sense—where someone Can we love one another as ourselves? More has hurt you and then suddenly there’s a great importantly, can we love ourselves at all? reconciliation and a remorse-filled scene with The songs alone aren’t universal messages, they two people running across the golden wheat are personal stories of our parents and childhood, field towards an embrace that somehow undoes a our divorces, oppressive religion, the fact that lifetime of pain and damage, as if the past has no marriage is hard and having children is fucking meaning. It’s about radical acceptance (not to be terrifying, even the sting of death. It is the story confused with complacency) and unconditional of forgiveness, that despite all this keeps us love. innocently climbing out of bed every morning Whoever is reading this, your parents will die. open to love—big terrible trembling love. You may have been hurt or loved by them, probably both. But can you forgive them for I don’t love you because you’ve done what I leaving in the end? think you should do with your life. I love you whatever you do, but I’ve got a life to live too. We are a powerful generation witnessing war and division like never before, yet somehow this And, by the way, I forgive you.

119119 west west 57th 57th street, street, penthouse penthouse north, north, new new york, york, ny ny 10019 10019 t 2t 12.212.741.741.10001000 w www.s.asckscacksco.co.comom D D N N A SSAACCKKSS CA COO..

Dave Cobb

Working with Dave Cobb was a masterclass. It was permission to explore unbridled drama. Of all the music I’ve made, no one has inspired me to scream and dance and cry like Dave Cobb. He’s a proper feminist and the father of a tough daughter. I’ll never be the same artist. It’s as if the twins and I were shown ourselves in color for the first time. Dave is a real life fucking unicorn of a producer.

Shooter Jennings

Shooter had me at The Never Ending Story. We are separated at birth. I knew I wanted to work with Shooter the first time wediscussed our hopes that our generation and peers would turn their heels on the dangers of disappearing down a path of “retromania”. Shooter knows that right now matters, that this moment is profound enough. We don’t need to pretend we’re hopping a train, or slinging coal, or fighting our way through the great depression to be seen as artists.What would Woody Guthrie say now? He’d probably look and sound a lot like Shooter Jennings.

Paul Buckmaster

I was 16 years old when I carefully peeled down the picture of Paul Buckmaster from the wall of the singlewide trailer I grew up in. I’d cut it out of The Tumbleweed Connection, which was my favorite Elton John album at the time, I was 12. Paul arranged the strings for almost all of Elton John’s music in the 70’s. On that particular day I had been invited by a producer friend of the family to watch Paul conduct a symphony at a small Seattle studio. He was brilliant, a true eccentric who handed me a guitar and cried while I sang “60 Years On”. He signed my picture and told me we would meet again down the road. He was telling the truth.

The Twins

The Twins and I have been in a band for so long now. And not just a band, we are literally a family. We’ve been through it all together. Standing at the altar next to my sister and Phil while they got married, I looked at Tim and smiled, he was Phil’s best man and I was the maid of honor, and it occurred to us both at the same time how much further we’d taken true intimacy than most bands. They are who I have cast my lot with. When you create art with twins, it becomes unclear when I end and where they begin. I feel the weight of it but the absurdity of a shared existence is lost on someone who shares even his face. This is our jumping- off point for creativity—total trust. We have gone down a different road on this record because even as we were writing our most sacred poetry as individuals, it suddenly hit us that we were writing about the same life, the same family—the same story.

Song By Song

I’m writing this on behalf of myself and Tim and Phil that she leaves without loved ones and without a name. Hanseroth with whom I share this poetry and these “Your mother called you something sweet once, it was more convictions. than Fulton County Jane.”

Every Time I Hear That Song Sugartooth Once upon a time a marriage ended in a hard fall from the “What the hell are you going to do when the world has made its heights of youth. The confusion and pain fading with the years mind up about you?” into the only thing that heals anything. I’ll never forget having to tell my brothers that their childhood “That’s twice you broke my heart now, the first was way back friend had taken his own life. There’s no dignity in death and when. And to know you’re still unhappy, only makes it break there’s no escape in drugs. There’s no reconciliation in the final again.” act, only peace and only forgiveness.

The Joke Most Of All What would Freddie say? “We are the champions of the If your parents are still alive don’t forget to tell them that you world”. Anyone who has ever seen an adolescent boy tugging love them and mean it. If your parents are not still alive, don’t on his shirt, struggling to be accepted but most of all struggling forget to tell them you love them and mean it. They are your to accept himself as he is. Anyone who feels the sting of first love. hopelessness because we have daughters who are seen by much of the world as half human and incapable of leadership. Harder To Forgive Anyone who is told they are illegal, unworthy, unwelcome “There are days when I will let the darkness rise, I don’t always or unloved. We’ve already won. The Joke is on those in choose to stay on the sunny side”. temporary power. Love has already conquered the world. I feel like sometimes choosing to forget gives us the space we need so that we can do the work of forgiveness. I think of it as Hold Out Your Hand the prequel to forgiveness. “The ones who believe choose the Sometimes when the weight of the world feels too much, I night” want to dance with a redneck and shotgun a beer. Party Of One The Mother “When you’re home, you’re already home” “Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind”... To some, this sounds like the realization of their most sacred If I can speak frankly and out of metaphor I only have one dreams – true companionship. For some, this sacrifice is too example of marriage to look to as an example—the one my much to bear and requires its own brand of radical forgiveness. parents have. For most of my life, marriage has not even been For the most part and for me, it’s equal measures of both. I am a legal right for people like me, so there’s so much I hadn’t not just a mother, but it’s all that I am. considered, looking down the road of a lifetime of dating and unsanctioned partnerships. Whatever You Do Whoever you are, if you’re married, you’ve been asked this This is about unconditional love balanced by rage. I hated question – “does it feel different now?” The answer for me has learning this lesson but it’s the only kind of freedom that been yes every time. Life tests me now and I know that I will matters. stay. I don’t ask myself what it means for my devotion. When the roof falls in I know that it needs to be rebuilt with faithful Fulton County Jane Doe hands. We are the generation to challenge domesticity and the We come into life with nothing but a name. A father of a marriage paradigm and it will challenge us right back. brand new little baby girl reads a news story one night while “I am not my own” he’s alone on the road. The body of “Jane Doe” was found abandoned in a field with her head smashed in out in Fulton County, Georgia. We know she gave birth at some point, she For more information, please contact Asha Goodman was 30, and that she had “Jesus” tattooed on her hand. It’s not 615.320.7753 or Carla Sacks 212.741.1000 at Sacks & Co., fair that she left this world in that way, but it’s unspeakable [email protected] or [email protected].

119119 west west 57th 57th street, street, penthouse penthouse north, north, new new york, york, ny ny 10019 10019 t 2t 12.212.741.741.10001000 w www.s.asckscacksco.co.comom