Latest / Wanzology / Echoes In The Canyon - Brandi Carlise
Transcript
- Echoes In The Canyon – Brandy Carlise I do not know from whence everything came, but it came for me. Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz, welcome to your Wednesday, y'all. How you doing? You good? I hope that you and yours are enjoying life with ‘every breath you take, every move you make’, 'cause I'm not watching you, all right? Good. Man, I have gotten back from a three-day extravaganza, Friday through Sunday, three nights at an event called Echoes Through The Canyon. It's a music festival put on by the one and only Brandi Carlile First time I went, which was about three years ago, I had never seen something like what I saw. It was excellence in so many ways. So this time I had to go, and I wanted to see it all. Plus, there are a couple of guys that Brandi plays with that long, long, long time ago, we used to rehearse in the same building, and I keep trying to catch up with those guys, but fate just has not allowed that to happen quite yet. Maybe one of these days. Who knows? Maybe they'll hear... Maybe the Hanseroth twins will hear this. Maybe. Maybe. Don't know. I wanna start by talking about why I had to go. I had to go as kind of a, uh, revenge thing. That revenge thing is me going without the person who introduced me to Echoes in the Canyon the first time. This time I wasn't going because they were going, I was going because I wanted to. I wanted to make sure to get the best experience that I possibly could out of this time, since I was not gonna be with that person. Now, I had sweated for a long time. I mean, I, I spent a buttload of money because I knew it was going to be a once in a lifetime type experience, and I wasn't sure two weeks ago who I was gonna go with and was just ready to eat half of it and just go, right? I found a friend of mine who wanted to go and had no real problem sharing a, a hotel room, and, and so cool. It was a road trip. This person was interested in me, and I was curious about her, so on the way over, we talked about our crappy relationships and what we knew about Brandi and what we hoped would happen. Now, if you've ever been to the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington, USA, I don't have to tell you what that's like. If you've never been to the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington, let me tell you, you have to figure out a reason to go. Mount Rushmore might be great. Mount Rainier is great. Mount Hood, Crater Lake, all those things, great destinations, but the Gorge is special. The Gorge has a monstrous stage that faces east. That means the sun sets behind the stage. And during the summer months, there's concerts there every weekend and every weekend, you get to listen to great music while the sun is going down. All you have to do is Google it. Google “concerts at the Gorge” and just look at the images. It's amazing. Now, on top of that, Brandi Carlile is one of the most talented, emotionally mature, sensitive, accurate, and determined writers I've ever heard. Her lyrics, I have to study 'em. I have to study how she put things together and how she tells stories. Every single one of them that I've heard are amazing, just simply amazing. She's got a new project out, and one of the songs on there that I think is my favorite is called "Human," and that stuck with me the whole three days that I was there. Now, here's the other thing that you have to know about Brandi Carlile. Brandi Carlile is a lesbian, which is neither here nor there, but let me tell you something. Your whole opinion about alternative lifestyles changes when you're around eighteen to twenty thousand counterculture people. I can honestly say in my 64 years, I can't find another event where every single person you run into, every single human being you meet eyes with and speak to, is one of the nicest human beings you've ever met. Thousands of them. Thousands of them! It's amazing. The community that Brandi oversees is what the world needs. Caring and compassionate and empathetic, supportive of individuality, takes no ish from anybody. Man, I don't think I can recall any concert that felt like this one. The first night, the Friday night, was ‘the calm after the storm’. I guess the day before in the evening, they had a series of storms run through, and peak gusts out here in the range where this place is were around seventy-five miles an hour. But it wasn't that on Friday when my friend and I were there. I'll tell you one thing, the sun went down and it got cold. Really cold! Really, really cold! There are a couple of openers. I didn't expect much, but boy was I surprised, I'm With Her, an amazing trio of women who harmonize like you wouldn't believe. You gotta check them out!! But I tell you, when Brandi came out on stage, everybody stood up. Everybody knew the words to almost every song she sang, except me. I was just looking around at the crowd. The light in everybody's eyes was amazing! I felt a part of something that was so much bigger than myself!! And the only reason I'm telling you this story and how I perceived it is because if you're listening to me, you're part of the human race. You are part of the one species of homo sapien on the planet. Now, you can go to a sporting event, you can go to a classical concert, you can go to a coffee shop and see somebody doing music. You can be around a lot of people, but it's not like this. Very rarely do humans interact like this. Everybody, every single person, polite, respectful. Nobody got extremely drunk. I didn't see one, not one policeman inside the Gorge complex. At the door to get us in, didn't see anybody walking around, maybe they were undercover, but man, there was no need. It was amazing. Just the vibe that kept coming off of the stage. Saturday night, I'd never seen Bonnie Raitt before. Bonnie Raitt is completely and totally one of the most underrated blues guitar players ever!! Put a pin in that!! Sunday, I had never seen Wynonna Judd. She's amazing. Writes great songs! Totally owns the stage Had to leave before The Highwomen came on, but I've seen them before. If you are really into women singing, not shouting at each other, singing, blending, harmonizing, and interacting, check out The Highwomen, 'cause they're brilliant, just brilliant!! Driving home, I really, really couldn't take it all in. I couldn't describe how just cool the three days had been. Now, you may not like a lot of crowds. You may not even like folky, alternative country music. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. I highly advise you to take half an hour maybe and just listen. Just listen to any of Brandi Carlile's songs, any of them. Just listen. Close your eyes and listen to them so you get the imagery of what's being talked about in the lyric. When you're done listening, ask yourself what you just heard. Ask yourself what happened? Who did it happen to? What was the feeling like? These are questions that have unexpected answers. I'm not sure how it's communicated, but I do know the effects of that communication across 18,000, 20,000 people is powerful! Powerful in the sense that you really get a sense that there is hope for everyone in the human race. Just by this small sampling, 18,000 to 20,000, they could honestly represent billions of people, what they should aspire to be. Everybody got along. Everybody supported everybody. It didn't matter, and it didn't matter being one of maybe eight Black men in the whole place. In Eastern Washington, where the brothers really just don't live, didn't feel like it. Felt like a human! I'd smile. Whoever I smiled at smiled back, spoke nice and polite. I don't understand what people hold against other people just because they're different. We have to realize there's only one species of human being on the planet. There are signs everywhere, especially in the creative arts. There are signs of how, clues leading us towards how to get along. How we can tolerate each other with patience, acceptance. Just because somebody is different from you doesn't mean that they're wrong, and it doesn't make you right. They're just a people trying to people, just like me or you. I'm gonna close with this. I challenge you to search deep within yourself and find some ‘person’, and when I say person, I mean group of people. Not everybody likes everybody. Some people don't like Jews, some people don't like Blacks, some people don't like Asians. Everybody doesn't like everybody. Find one that you're not real crazy about and ask yourself why that is? Ask yourself what you would do if you ran into someone of that particular group who was exactly like you under the skin, in the brain, in the eyes, everywhere, except what's on the outside. What would it be like to run into an alter ego of yourself (two words) and they didn't look anything like you, but you could feel the energy just from saying hello that you feel the same thing when you say hello. Now, this is an imagination, this is what they call a mind experiment. The question I have is why? Why would you not want to meet you in another form? How would you know? Would you let your biases and prejudices get in the way of meeting what you might think would be a really cool person since you probably think you're a cool person? What would you do? How would you do it? How well do you know yourself so that you know what a cool person is supposed to sound like, what they're supposed to say? Because I'll tell you, it's not about the wrapper that the candy bar comes in. All the good stuff is inside. And as I always say, “I'd rather be the candy bar and less the wrapper.” You can't judge a book by its cover. Just because the outside is all shiny and ‘foily’ and great, that doesn't mean that the candy bar inside has the right amount of nougat, the right amount of peanuts, and the right amount of caramel to satisfy. Think about it. That's all I got for you this week. Nothing real heavy, but you really, really, really, really need to check out Brandi Carlile. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you can open your mind and just get into whatever she's saying, 'cause what she's saying is important. Hopefully you'll be able to pick up what she's putting down. I hope, I hope, I hope. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much. This has been another episode of WANZOLOGY, I'm your host, The Wanz, and I will “talk to you later. Don't wanna hear it again tonight. I'll just see you around!!” Peace!!!