I had the great pleasure of attending a Brandi Carlile concert a few weeks ago with my younger daughter, Jenny, in Portland, Oregon. The show at the Moda Center was the second-to-last stop on the first half of The Human Tour, showcasing the band’s most recent album, Returning to Myself, but featuring so many other great songs from Brandi’s catalogue . . . and a few fun covers as well.

Brandi and her long-time bandmates, Tim and Phil Hanseroth, have been putting out music for over 20 years, and my daughters and I have been fans for at least 15. They are usually categorized in the indie, Americana, folk and roots categories, but there’s a good dose of country and rock in there as well. I believe Jenny first shared their music with me, likely because she was a big Grey’s Anatomy fan back in the day, and Brandi’s song “The Story” featured prominently in an episode back around 2007. It was easy for us to follow her career, too, as she hails from (and still lives in) the Seattle area and performed live in a variety of venues around the Pacific Northwest.

Both Jenny and I are drawn to strong singer-songwriters (including favorites of mine such as Joni Mitchell and Carole King), and over time Brandi and the Hanseroth twins have penned some wonderful lyrics that perfectly express many of my own life experiences. Add to that Brandi’s three-octave, powerful, clear voice and the talented musicians who perform with her, and you can’t ask for a better live performance. We’ve seen her perform in music halls, smaller outdoor amphitheaters and, most epically, at the 25,000-plus-capacity Gorge amphitheater in George, Washington, for two nights with special guests including Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox and Sarah McLachlan. The Human Tour is the band’s first arena-style tour, and they have sold out across the country, including two nights at Madison Square Garden.

I was curious how this step up in venue might affect the music and performances, but I needn’t have worried. True, the lighting was glitzier and there was a greater use of fog and videos and projections, but Brandi still maintained a great connection to and intimacy with her loyal fans. Jenny and I settled in to our seats, on the first level up from the arena floor, just before 7, when opening act The Head and the Heart, another Pacific Northwest group, began playing. They played a solid and enjoyable 45 minutes as the arena gradually filled. We had about 20 minutes between sets as anticipation rose for the headlining performance, the arena finally filling up, and then the lights dropped and we were swept up in the opening number, the title song from Returning to Myself.

There followed two and a half hours of great music, interspersed with stories Brandi told of the arc of the band’s history, from the thrill of going “on the road” all the way from Seattle to Portland (three whole hours!) for the first time to playing MSG. I particularly enjoyed a 25-minute stretch where Brandi and the twins performed an acoustic set of some of their older songs (as old photos and videos from those early days were projected behind them), including a few requests from the audience. We rocked out to “Mainstream Kid,” “The Things I Regret” and “Church and State;” and I admit to getting a bit teary when “The Mother” followed another anthem to the heart-wrenching moments of motherhood, “You Without Me.” We also enjoyed a few covers: Linda Ronstadt’s “Long, Long Time;” (Brandi’s voice was perfect on this), Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited;” and the whole arena singing along on Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” (That was special for Jenny and me, as we had stood in this same arena many years ago at a Coldplay concert, singing along to the same song.)

We had an absolutely fantastic time,  pleased that the large arena didn’t prevent us from enjoying the same connection to Brandi and her band that we had experienced in the past. For me, sharing it with Jenny made it all the sweeter, too.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor