Brandi Carlile remembers feeling a new kind of anxiety when she became a mother in 2014. I was wondering how it was fair that our children were born into relative safety just because of geography, says the acclaimed singer-songwriter. When she expressed these concerns to her wife, Catherine Shepherd, who coordinated Paul McCartneys charity work for 10 years, Shepherd told her, If you want to feel better, you really need to focus this into something productive.
Not long after that conversation, Carlile launched an ambitious campaign to use her fame for good. In 2017, she oversaw the release of Cover Stories, a star-studded rerecording of her 2007 LP The Story, with artists from Adele to Pearl Jam; all proceeds went to War Child UK, a nonprofit that provides aid to children affected by armed conflict. Since the albums release, Carliles Looking Out Foundation has raised more than $800,000 for the group. They dont parachute a bunch of white people in to solve the worlds problems, Shepherd says of War Child. They work with people on the ground.
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The couple, who married in 2012, met when Shepherd reached out about donating some McCartney memorabilia to a Carlile initiative called Fight the Fear, which provided self-defense and empowerment training for women at risk for violence and abuse. We met through our activism and interest in charity, says Carlile, 37. We communicated for about a year, and the entire time I thought I was talking to somebody who was 65. It was an interesting way to fall in love.
Early on in their correspondence, Carlile shared with Shepherd her misgivings about the ways she felt American charity was a pastime of the rich. I had hesitation about branding my activism with my notoriety in the music business, she says. I dont like the perception of the great American dollar becoming the be-all and end-all of how to help humanity because its not. In fact, it may be what initially hurt it.
Today, Carlile balances her idealism with Shepherds pragmatic approach. She has mixed feelings about auctioning off her own memorabilia and VIP access for charity, but -ultimately, she says, My principles arent as important as educating children who are going to spend their lives in a refugee camp. In the past, Carlile and Shepherd have encouraged the singers fans to volunteer at her shows, so they feel like they could contribute just as much through rolling up their sleeves and doing the work, says Shepherd, as they would if they donated money.
Carlile continues to prioritize War Child, but shes always seeking new organizations to partner with, new injustices to fight. I would be lying if I said that I could focus on one cause for the rest of my life, she says. An artist does their best work in big bursts of light: We make a record, we tour, and then we try to make another record. When Im most honest with myself, activism is the same way.
For all her work in this field, Carlile adds, she still feels like shes in the early stages of becoming an artist-activist. Its not a fine line between entertaining and inciting empathy in people its a leap, she says. And its one that Im right in the middle of.