“The Story” keeps getting better and better for Brandi Carlile.
“I’ve been so lucky,” the singer-songwriter said by phone from a tour stop in Boulder, Colo. “I guess I’m in shock.”
In April, Carlile’s album, “The Story,” made its debut at No. 76 on The Billboard 200 album chart and jumped to No. 41 the next week. The CD includes “Cannonball,” a tender ballad she recorded with Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.
Helping to boost sales was a video montage that aired on the April 12 “Grey’s Anatomy,” featuring the video of the album’s title song mixed with footage of scenes from the first three seasons of “Grey’s.”
Produced by Grammy-winning producer T-Bone Burnett, the collection of aching anthems and introspective ballads is a career milestone for an artist who paid her dues playing clubs in Seattle.
“All these shows I’m doing this spring are sold out, every single one of them. I’ve met my heroes. I’m going out on the road with the Indigo Girls and singing a bunch of songs with them. Kelly Clarkson told Rolling Stone I was her favorite new artist,” she said.
“And Elton John sent me flowers.”
Elton John?
“He just knew that I loved him, and I was in Atlanta one day at the start of the tour and this little guy brought me this giant bouquet of flowers. It weighed like 15 pounds,” she said. “And a bottle of wine from the year I was born. It was from Sir Elton John. And then he called me the next day. It’s just been surreal.”
“The Story,” her sophomore album for Columbia Records, has taken her to a new level. A key to its success was a serendipitous meeting with Burnett, who has worked with k.d. lang, Tony Bennett, Counting Crows, Los Lobos, Elvis Costello and the Wallflowers.
His magic touch was evident in his work with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon for their roles as Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line.”
“It was just one of those right-place-at-the-right-time things,” Carlile said about meeting Burnett. “We just really connected. We talked about classic country and about the lost art of live recording. And we started talking about digital versus analog recording. It was apparent we saw things the same way. I realized there was nobody else that we would be able to do the record with.”
No song on the album stands out more than “The Story.” Placement of the song on “Grey’s” was a coup for Carlile, whose music caught the interest of L.A.-based Chop Shop, which creates soundtracks for the hit drama.
“That show has been extremely supportive of us, even when we had nothing going on,” she said. “Somebody’s gotta take a chance on new artists. If radio’s not going to, then how great of TV to step up and do it.”