Brandi Carlile and Joni Mitchell are planning a sequel. Carlile announced on The Daily Show on Wednesday night (Oct. 19) that she and folk icon Mitchell will reunite for a special concert weekend at Washington state’s picturesque venue the Gorge Amphitheatre in June 2023 for a pair of shows they’re calling “Echoes Through the Canyon.”
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In the wake of this summer’s surprise Mitchell concert at the venerable Newport Folk Festival, Carlile said that Joni told her, “I want to do another show. She said, ‘I want to play again.’” So they settled on the 27,000-capacity Gorge, which Carlile noted is “one of the most beautiful venues in the world.” Brandi will play the first night, June 9, and Joni and the Joni Jam — lineup to be announced — will headline the second night (June 10).
“Joni Mitchell is going to play. No one’s been able to buy a ticket to see Joni Mitchell play in 20 years,” Carlile noted of the artist who hadn’t performed a full live set since 2000 before Newport and hadn’t appeared in public much since suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015. “So this is enormous… and she is going to crush it!” Carlile played a show also called “Echoes Through the Canyon” at the Gorge in August 2021 with Sheryl Crow and Amythyst Kiah.
Carlile also talked about the surprise moment this summer when Mitchell shocked the world by performing a 13-song set at the Newport Folk Festival in which she sang and played guitar from a golden throne with help from Marcus Mumford, Blake Mills, Lucius, Taylor Goldsmith, Wynonna and more. “I still can’t believe that happened,” Carlile told Noah of the live version of the series of “Joni Jams” the 78-year-old singer has been holding with musicians including Carlile for years during her long recovery process. “It was just a few months ago and the fact that it was at Newport Folk Festival, which is such a monumental and historic place. She [Mitchell] always has a plan. She knows what she wants to do even if she doesn’t say it.”
What’s more, Carlile revealed that the team that worked behind the scenes to get Mitchell to Newport had no idea that the 1960s legend was going to play the entire show. “We thought it was a jam. We didn’t know that she was going to sing all the leads on those songs,” Carlile said of Mitchell’s forceful, all-in performance. “She just started singing. We had rehearsed the songs ourselves. And we didn’t know whether we should stop or what we should do, you know, so we just sang with her.”
Then, as Carlile described, Mitchell just “completely took over” the gig and became the “performer that we all know that she is.” The energy was o off-the-charts that Carlile said they stayed up until sunrise the next morning basking in the love and good vibes. “Joni flat-out loves to perform and she’s awesome at it,” said Carlile, who has been unabashed in her Mitchell superfandom in the past, including covering Mitchell’s entire Blue album at an Oct. 2019 show at Walk Disney Concert Hall. “She’s every bit as good at it now as she ever was.”
Watch Carlile on The Daily Show below.
