An Evening with Brandy Clark + Hayes Carll

Brandy Clark

A 17x Grammy-nominee, CMA Award-winner and Tony-nominee, Brandy Clark is one of her generation’s most esteemed songwriters and musicians. In the midst of yet another landmark year, Clark released her widely acclaimed self-titled album this past spring and is nominated for six awards at the upcoming 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards: Best Americana Album (Brandy Clark), Best Americana Performance (“Dear Insecurity” feat. Brandi Carlile), Best American Roots Song (“Dear Insecurity”), Best Country Song (“Buried”), Best Country Solo Performance (“Buried”) and Best Musical Theater Album (Shucked).

Produced by 9x Grammy-winner Brandi Carlile, the album features Clark’s most personal songwriting to date and landed on several “Best of 2023 So Far” lists including the Los Angeles Times, The Tennessean and Variety, who praises, “one of the year’s best…further clarifies that she’s one of America’s treasures,” while Forbes calls the album “an Americana Masterpiece” and Billboard declares, “Clark continues to convey her inexorable talents as both a song-crafter and vocal interpreter.”

In addition to her work as a solo artist, Clark has written songs such as “A Beautiful Noise,” the Grammy-nominated duet performed by Brandi Carlile and Alicia Keys, and Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow.” She also composed the music and lyrics for the hit musical comedy, Shucked, alongside her longtime collaborator, Shane McAnally. With the show, Clark won Outstanding Music at the 67th Drama Desk Awards, while Shucked was also nominated for nine Tony Awards earlier this year.

Hayes Carll

The country simplicity that imbues Hayes Carll’s songs can sometimes hide the social conscience and sharp humor that also runs through them, but if you want to find those things, they are there. In fact, Carll has spent over 20 years having a conversation about what it is we’re all doing here with anyone who will listen. He makes us laugh––but then he makes us cry. We judge a song’s protagonist, only for Carll to spin us around to commiserate with them.

“I like to tug at heartstrings, find commonality with others, reflect on my own life, and sometimes I do it in a lighthearted way,” says Carll. “A lot of musical styles found their way onto this record, but my first and most formative influences came from country music. This is a country singer-songwriter record. It’s just unapologetically me.”

Carll is talking about You Get It All, his eighth album. His voice, rich but worn, has never sounded better. As a songwriter, he is in top form, turning droll confessions, messy relationships, motel room respites, and an exasperated, hitchhiking God into modern nuggets.

The New York Times likened Carll’s ability to undergird humor with a weightier narrative to Bob Dylan. When Carll talks about the sounds that are in his own head, he mentions Randy Travis. That juxtaposition defines the singularity of Carll’s career: He exists in a space of his own, informed by John Prine, Tom Waits, and Dylan but also by Travis, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams, Jr.