With 'Give Up the Ghost,' Brandi Carlile just may gain the cross-over fans she covets

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Brandi Carlile speaks with a little bit of a twang. "It's just a way folks talk to each other when they're close together," said the 28-year-old songwriter and musician, who plays the Wiltern tonight in support of her third album "Give Up the Ghost." "It's my default. Like, when I first meet somebody, or feel uncomfortable, I get really down home."

The molasses in Carlile's diction signifies Southern. But anyone who gets past first impressions knows that Carlile grew up in the geographical opposite of the South. She still maintains a home in Ravensdale, Wash., a small town on the outskirts of Seattle more evocative of "Twilight" than of "Coal Miner's Daughter."

Then again, Ravensdale was a coal mining town before transforming into an exurb; it's on the great map of Everywhere, USA, where old shacks stand next to upscale new construction, and Starbucks is moving in on the Dairy Queen. Carlile is a child of that changing landscape; she honors tradition but keeps confronting the new.

Carlile grew up singing country music, sometimes in costume, performing "dressed like a rodeo clown" at places like the Puyallup Fair. But she chafed at those confines, removing her mom's Tammy Wynette records from the family turntable and replacing them with Patsy Cline albums.

"As soon as my parents would leave the house I would go in my room and put on her records and just sing loud, just trying to hit all the notes that she could sing," said Carlile, sitting for an interview inside her tour bus before performing a show in Birmingham earlier this week.

She discovered rock music, through Elton John, an artist whom she calls "my greatest hero of all time." Much to her amazement, John became her duet partner on her new album, collaborating with Carlile on the "Honky Chateau"-style rambler "Caroline." He's one of several prominent guests who appear on "Give Up the Ghost," including Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and her "childhood hero and dearest friend" Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls. Carlile has something more personal in common with John: She is gay. But unlike her idol, who suffered many travails in his long trip out of the closet, she feels that her sexuality has neither helped nor hindered her. "I don't think it factors in to the way people relate to the lyrics," she said.

She notes that, just as pop's categories are relaxing, so are those having to do with an artist's private life.