WILMINGTON — Winter has yet to officially start, but it’s being beaten to the punch by the announcement kicking off the spring/summer concert series at Greenfield Lake.
Beau Gunn, market manager for Local Voice Media (parent company of Port City Daily), which includes 98.3 FM The Penguin, announced today that Brandi Carlile will play for the first time ever at Greenfield Lake.
Carlile is touring to promote her new album, “By the Way, I Forgive You.” Carlile wrote in the artist’s notes that the album is not about “forgiveness in the easy sense—where someone has hurt you and then suddenly there’s a great reconciliation …” Rather, it’s about what Carlile called “radical acceptance (not to be confused with complacency) and unconditional love.”
The album features 10 songs, including “The Joke,” “Every Time I hear That Song,” “Party of One,” and “Harder to Forgive.”
“The songs alone aren’t universal messages, they are personal stories of our parents and childhood, our divorces, oppressive religion, the fact that marriage is hard and having children is (expletive) terrifying, even the sting of death,” Carlile wrote. “It is the story of forgiveness, that despite all this keeps us innocently climbing out of bed every morning open to love — big terrible trembling love.”
The album also represents one of the final projects worked on by the legendary arranger Paul Buckmaster. Buckmaster, who passed away in November at age 71, had worked with the Rolling Stones, Harry Nilsson, Guns and Roses and on several Elton John albums. Carlile said she met him when she was 16, after she had been invited to watch him conduct symphony at a small Seattle studio.
“He was brilliant, a true eccentric who handed me a guitar and cried while I sang ‘60 Years On,’” Carlile wrote. “He signed my picture (an Elton John album cover) and told me we would meet again down the road. He was telling the truth.”
Carlile will be performing at Greenfield Lake on Friday, May 11. Tickets go on sale through Ticketfly on Friday, Dec. 8, at 10 a.m.
