Brandy Clark Wants Her Music to Tell the Truth 

At every show that Brandy Clark plays, she places a notebook on her merchandise table. It's there for the singer-songwriter's fans to leave her notes, but she finds that people often just write about their anxieties or insecurities. She can't be too surprised by that; after all, the Washington native won the 2024 Best Americana Performance Grammy for the hit "Dear Insecurity," a starkly confessional tune that features a cameo from folk rocker Brandi Carlile.

"Songwriting can be a lonely profession," Clark said in an interview with Seven Days. "Whether a song is a hit or not, I think my songs oftentimes tend to find the ears that need to hear them."

At 48 years old, Clark said she is now entering what she feels is a new, more true-to-herself phase of her career. As her current tour swings toward Vermont for a show at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe on Thursday, August 29, Clark is reveling in her new Americana world and excited to see what the future holds.

Clark has always charted her own course. A late bloomer as a solo artist, Clark spent years writing songs for other musicians, including Sheryl Crow, Reba McEntire and LeAnn Rimes, often with her frequent collaborator Shane McAnally. She made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry alongside country legend Marty Stuart in 2012. She finally released her first solo album at the age of 37 with 2013's 12 Stories. The same year, CMT included her as part of its "Women of Country" campaign.

Despite all that buzz, the record deal she expected to come from within Nashville never seemed to materialize, and she started to think she would always be a songwriter, never in the spotlight herself.

"I had a lot of people telling me not to worry that I was an openly gay woman in Nashville," Clark said. "But I never did get a record deal in that town like I thought I might."

Instead, Warner Records signed the talented musician, a move Clark admits ended up working out much better for the kind of music she wanted to create. "I never feel pressure there to be something I'm not," she said. "I can evolve as an artist, which is what I've been doing."

She released two more solo albums and became a critical darling of the country music world, especially after winning Song of the Year at the Country Music Awards in 2014 for cowriting the Kacey Musgraves hit "Follow Your Arrow." She would eventually rack up a whopping 11 Grammy nominations but wasn't quite able to bring home the coveted trophy.
That is, until Carlile came calling. The singer-songwriter and producer, fresh off working with legends Joni Mitchell and Tanya Tucker, told Clark that she wanted to produce her next record — and that this time, they'd win the Grammy.

And they did. The Best Americana Performance award was one of Clark's six Grammy nominations this year. She also picked up a Tony nomination for cowriting the score to the Broadway smash hit Shucked.

She credits her recent success to an increased willingness to mine autobiographical details in her songwriting. "This album is the first time the songs are solely focused on myself," Clark said, adding that Carlile pushed her in that direction as the two began work on the record.

"Brandi made me ask tougher questions of my songwriting," Clark said. "I might be writing something and a really hooky line will show up. What I do now is ask myself: Is it true, though? So I try to keep to the truth, even if it's harder to rhyme."

Carlile was also adamant that Clark, who has straddled country and Americana on her previous solo albums, make the leap to full Americana. The shift is clear on songs such as "Come Back to Me" and "Tell Her You Don't Love Her," the latter of which features a cameo from indie vocal duo Lucius.
"Brandy and I are peers and contemporaries," Carlile said in a recent interview with the online audio and production magazine Mix. "We have the same name, we’re both lesbians, we’re both from the Pacific Northwest, but we do music differently."

The idea of making a record with Clark based on their differences as songwriters fascinated Carlile, though Clark admits she needed to be coaxed out of her shell a little bit. In Carlile's mind, Clark was still working as if she were writing for other artists.

"I wanted to deconstruct that tendency in Brandy," Carlile said. "And put her back in the center of her songs as an artist, so that she could claim her rightful place as the singer of them."

For Clark, it was a wild success. Beyond the Grammy win, the album has forged an even deeper connection with her audience, who fell in love with the material on an almost therapeutic level. Clark said she receives correspondence from fans who say her music helped them to deal with their own anxiety.

"The song 'Dear Insecurity' is literally about my own insecurities," Clark said. "For that song to have the effect on my audience it does, it just reminds me to share those things because other people feel those things, too. And there's no award that can rival seeing someone hear my music and tell me, That's my song."