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Hi, Brandi.
Hey, buddy.
How are you?
Nervous.
No, are you really?
Yeah.
We're friends, why are you nervous?
I don't know.
This feels like really official.
Well, it is, and.
I don't get out much.
And these people love you, there's
nothing to be nervous about, everybody loves you.
[APPLAUSE]
This feels great.
Well, you know why you're nervous?
I'll tell you why.
Because I know you've spent the last year in the woods.
You haven't really been in civilization.
I don't think I've seen you without a hat on.
I think this is the first time I've seen your hair in a while.
Yeah, I got a haircut.
Yeah.
What do you think?
I love it, I love your haircut.
But usually you're in the woods with a hat on.
Yeah.
How is it so you're out in the world now?
I'm really enjoying it.
It makes me feel really good to see you.
It's hard not to hug you.
And it just feels really great, you
know, just to see some sunshine and to see some friendly faces.
Yep, yep.
Especially yours.
These are friendly faces.
Congratulations on your sixth Grammy win for Highwomen.
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Thank you.
You're not shy.
You're honest about liking attention and liking
awards and all that stuff.
You're not going to be like, oh, it's nothing.
Like, you like winning awards.
I do like it, yeah.
I feel, I don't know, I feel like some of them are hard won,
you know, just coming up against some adversity in my life.
But not in a way like I feel like I deserve them.
I know I don't.
And that's why I'm so grateful and over the top
when they happen.
But I don't think I could fake not caring even if I wanted to.
Yeah.
No, you should, everybody should appreciate it.
It's an honor.
But you talk about 2019 Grammys.
Yeah.
You performed, you won.
That was such an amazing performance,
but you talk about it really helping you heal your trauma
that you had gone through.
Yeah, I mean, I just think, God, I don't need to tell you this,
but as a queer person sort of raised
in religion, organized religion and having
such a close connection to my faith
and having to come through some trauma
around public accountability within my faith
and trying to get baptized and not being able to
and not being allowed to be involved
in the church when I wanted to sing there
and stuff like that--
--There was something really cathartic about standing up
on that stage accepting those awards and singing that song
and feeling like I had come to a place where
I could look at myself in the mirror and go, OK,
you did something.
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And people loved it too.
I mean, like you could see after you finished that performance,
you were just like jumping, it was just great.
I loved seeing how happy you were.
I saw that, I'm like, don't jump, Brandi.
You were jumping up and down because you were like,
you could feel when there's a great performance
and you're celebrating, that you did
that in front of all your peers, it's amazing.
And it's a big deal.
I mean, you have been, it's always
hard for anyone who is different in any kind of way.
But you've been out since you were 15.
Mm-hmm.
And very public about it.
And it's very courageous to take on that in your career.
So that's a big deal.
I don't think I've ever really found it easy to tell you
this, because I feel like so many people do
and on some level you know, but what you did for me
and people like us when you came out was so huge for me
in my life.
You were the first gay person I'd ever met.
To me, you were what it meant.
And I wasn't going to stay in the closet after that.
And it started me out on a whole lifelong process
of living out loud and believing that there wasn't any height
that I couldn't get to because of you.
You were my representation.
You were so important to me in that way.
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I ain't the only one, you know that.
Well, thank you so much.
What's funny in the book, it's like your, my coming out
episode on my sitcom.
So obviously you weren't out enough
that, so you were hiding.
How old were you when that aired, that coming out episode?
Oh, was it 1997?
Yeah.
OK, like 14.
You were 14.
So you hadn't come out yet.
Because you labeled it with your boyfriend's baseball game.
My boyfriend David.
Right.
It said David's baseball game, and it still does
and I still have it.
And I wanted to bring it and have you sign it.
I'll sign it any time you want.
I don't think they make DVD players anymore.
Yeah.
You know--
VCRs, VCRs.
I'm still quite close to David from David's baseball game.
I know.
He's the father of my children.
I mean, her boyfriend in high school
is now the father of her children with her wife,
and they have two beautiful girls.
My wife and I. We squeeze his cheeks every every time
he comes over.
VCR is what I meant.
So you probably have it on a VCR.
Like a VHS tape.
That's what they're called, right?
Yes.
So you have--
David's baseball game is actually
Ellen DeGeneres' coming out episode.
You have to transfer that to the digital,
because that's not going to last.
All right.
All right, cat's out of the bag.
Yeah, all right.
We're going to take a break.
More with Brandi after this.
So the coolest thing, there's so many stories
about all these people that you admired and you now are friends
with, but you hang out at Joni Mitchell's house
and do these jam sessions with really cool people.
Yeah.
Some of the people, like Dolly Parton, right?
Who else has been there?
Well, I mean, you.
I've been there once.
We took you over there one time.
Yes.
And Harry Styles was there.
Yeah.
And it was like a very cool, and Chaka Khan was there.
You were in your pajamas.
Yes.
And you were, you were singing along with Chaka Khan
and it was pretty audacious actually.
I was thinking about it actually,
because you might not have been able to sort of grab a guitar
and jam with Joni, but I just realized that you do something
that you could do with Joni.
And I think there's a pretty good chance that she
could whoop you at ping pong.
Oh really?
She's real good.
Yeah, well, I'm real good.
Oh.
I don't know.
I'll play her in ping pong.
OK.
Yeah, yeah.
I might be able to help set this up.
Are you going to do this again?
Because obviously, you all haven't done it for a while.
But she's vaccinated, now right?
Yeah, yeah.
And things are starting to come back,
and I think it's time to bring the Joni music back.
And she's such an inspiring woman.
I mean are you--
I love her so much.
Yeah, yeah.
Listen, the coolest thing in the world
is to be invited over to Joni Mitchell's house
and have musicians jam and you just
are sitting in a living room listening
to these unbelievable people sing.
And your new music, I cannot wait.
You said you were going to play me some soon.
When is it coming out?
It's done, and we're still talking
about when it's going to be coming out,
but maybe we could have like a campfire one night or something
and play it.
OK.
But when is it coming out?
I don't know.
I think, I'm feeling like fall.
Yeah?
I feel like it's fall record.
All right.
Yeah.
All right, I can't wait.
I love your music, you know that.
Ah.
Every single time when, I send her videos
of every time any music comes on, I send it to her
all the time.
Yeah.
The book is fantastic.
I'm so happy for you.
I just, it's, even though I knew some of these stories in here,
I learned a whole lot more about you,
and it's just a really interesting book.
And your life, how you started, that you almost
died early on, like just, there's
some interesting stories in here.
It's called Broken Horses.
It's available now.
Everyone in the audience is getting a copy.
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And we'll be back.