Brandi Carlile ​“Welcomes” In The Season

Brandi Carlile kicked off an evening of her original country-folk-rock songs by playing a tune by … Joni Mitchell.

She came onstage at the College Street Music Hall Sunday night wearing a red Santa cap, and launched into ​“River,” Mitchell’s Christmas tale of loss and longing.

Here’s what the song sounded like when Mitchell recorded it, on piano: 

Carlile plays piano. But Sunday night she performed the ​“River” solo on acoustic guitar instead. She made it her own. It sounded like this:

Clearly, Carlile was up to something. A couple of somethings.

The somethings added up to an evening of Americana authenticity — that quality that has left critics raving about Carlile’s hard-charging, sensitive music for a decade and has earned her a loyal following. Which showed up in force for Sunday night’s New Haven concert.

After performing ​“River,” Carlile welcomed her prime bandmates, twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth. They played an hour-and-a-half set full of their own popular songs. But the Mitchell cover set a tone: This wasn’t going to be a formulaic rehash of a recorded repertoire. This would be a concert, with music tailored to the mood, and standards revisited with a fresh approach. By a performer connecting to her audience …

… and to her roots. Carlile came to New Haven as part of a winter ​“acoustic” tour. The twins ditched their electric instruments for acoustic guitar and bass. The drummer stayed home.

Acoustic instruments and sensibility undergird Carlile’s work, pulling from roots as diverse as Patsy Cline, early Elton John and Dylan.

Carlile’s a belter, and often the drums and electric guitars build on that acoustic base to drive her songs into arena-rock territory. So while a gem like ​“Wherever Is Your Heart” sounds like this on her latest album (The Firewatcher’s Daughter) …

… Sunday night at the Music Hall, by contrast, the song sounded like this:

That live performance (and subsequent video) prompted one fan (handle: bogeyfree) to comment on Youtube: ​“What an incredible show last night, restored my faith that music isn’t dead, still on a cloud from the memory.”

Carlile managed to fill the spacious Music Hall with stripped-down instrumentation and keep the song chugging. The twins helped with rock-style amplified percussive boot-stomping (which explained why the roadie had been banging his foot before the show to test the sound system). In the process, she exposed the tender heart that powers her muscular Americana.

“If you’re playing a song and it’s a really good song, and the power goes out,” it should still sound good, Carlile said between songs. She went on to prove it when she took a turn at the piano for one of her signature songs, ​“That Wasn’t Me.”

“This is an amazing room with great acoustics,” Carlile remarked about the renovated Music Hall, a former Vaudeville house. She said the room prompted her to deviate from the set list, step in front of the PA with the twins and, without amplification, fill the hall with her moving ballad ​“Cannonball” from her 2007 album The Story.

Carlile did eventually take a turn at the piano, where she revisited both the season — ​“It’s the first night of Hannukah” (a menorah had been lit on the Green hours before show time) — and Joni Mitchell. She said she had chosen to open with Mitchell’s ​“River” because it ​“embraces the real dark shit” of Christmas, the ​“torturous misery that can only by brought to us by the holidays. Christmas brings a longing for people who have gone,” as well as a ​“unrealistic standards of consumerism.” That’s why she wore the Santa cap, too, she said.

She revealed what she was up to: Offering a different way of looking at the season, at music, including her own music, in the quest of ​“making something last.”

I think they call that folk music. Don’t they?