It turns out Joni Mitchell’s influence literally runs in the Carlile family.

Some of you, I’m sure, are already familiar with Brandi Carlile, the very talented singer-songwriter who befriended Joni in recent years and is one of the living, breathing reasons Joni has returned to performing. Brandi has spoken at length over the years about how much Joni’s life and career has impacted her own — Carlile’s family is from Washington state, not all that far from the Canadian border, and like Joni, Brandi grew up in a rural setting that was never going to be big enough for her dreams.

Now, years after being introduced to Joni’s music herself, Brandi is evidently instilling some of that influence into the next generation of her own family. In this episode of Big Yellow Pod, I speak with Caroline and JayJ Carlile, Brandi’s niece and nephew. The two teenagers, along with their dad, record and perform their own original music under the name – you guessed it — the Carlile Family Band.

Not to get too sentimental here, but this episode is one of my favorites so far — it’s comforting to see a couple of bright and inquisitive young artists pursue their dreams in spite of it all, as Joni once did and Brandi too. Every so often it lifts the spirits to see that the kids are alright.

If you’d like to learn more about the Carlile Family Band, check out their website. They’ve got an EP release show coming up on Jan. 11 for those of you in the Nashville area, and as you’ll hear in this episode: there’s something in it for you if you go.

Happy New Year and thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

Here you’ll find a brief history and exploration of Joni Mitchell’s 1972 release For the Roses, an album that speaks to both the fragility of humans and their resilience.

I’d like to dedicate this episode, the last one I’ll publish in 2024, to David Yaffe, whom we recently lost. He was the author of the 2015 biography of Joni, Reckless Daughter, but he was also a friend and one of the first people in this industry to look at my writing and encourage me to keep digging, to tell me that what I was aiming for was true and mattered. I can’t ever thank him enough for supporting this show and my career as a whole, as well as for aiding all us Joni fans in understanding the role her music plays in our lives.

Thanks for listening, see you in 2025 x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

This is a historic moment for Big Yellow Podcast. This week’s episode marks the very first to have been recorded between myself and the subject in person, and it’s with none other than legendary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.

I first learned of Bill through my high school boyfriend (shoutout to Will who ended up an incredibly talented jazz guitarist of his own), and have interviewed him a handful of times over the years. (If you’d like to read those, here they are: Gentle Guitar Giant: Bill Frisell Is Still Learning and Bob Dylan's Town Hall History Honored With NYC Tribute ...)

I’ve also seen Bill perform live a few times — always a treat — and have never really stopped keeping tabs on him. Aside from being arguably one of the most accomplished jazz guitarists alive today, he’s also undeniably one of the kindest, most humble people I’ve spoken with in this industry. (A few weeks ago, while on tour in Europe, he wrote me an email in which he misspelled my name by one letter, then followed it up with another email three hours later apologizing profusely and correcting himself.) So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he offered to meet with me in person to talk about Joni. Yes, you’ll hearing a lot of ancillary noise in this recording, but just picture two people sitting at a sandwich shop talking about Joni, since that’s what’s happening here.

As you’ll also hear in this episode, Bill insists he’s no Joni scholar. But really, who among us is? He’s a longtime fan, a fellow guitarist and — to make this episode even more historical — the first person on Big Yellow Podcast to have played with Joni herself.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

In which I briefly walk through Joni’s experience becoming a mother at a young age, giving her daughter up for adoption and eventually reuniting with her decades later.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

Becca Stevens has been a musician pretty much her entire life. She grew up in a musical family — her mom was a singer and her dad a composer — and not only did she play in bands growing up, but she went on to study music at the professional level.

Joni has been, in Becca’s words, a songwriting mom, someone she’s looked up to from various angles and at various points in her life. Things really came full circle when she started working with one of Joni’s longest and biggest champions, David Crosby.

Becca’s most recent album, Maple to Paper, came out a few months ago. It brought me to tears last night. Vulnerable, determined, charismatic, tender…this is an album made by someone who is feeling in every sense of the word.

In this episode, Becca and I chat about, well, all of the above.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

If you know me, you know that a significant chunk of my musical DNA involves the Tragically Hip, one of the single most successful acts to come out of Canada.

Being from Buffalo, their music was on constant rotation — not just in my dad’s car and our stereo but at bars and sporting games around town. I have one of their album covers tattooed on my left thigh. I’ve stopped by some of the venues they played in their early days in Toronto. And I was fortunate enough to see them on their very last tour in 2016, about a year before lead singer and lyricist Gord Downie died of brain cancer. Our family dog, Gordon, is named for him.

The Hip never really broke all that big in the U.S., which was both happenstance and purposeful. They were, in essence, Canada’s band, though anyone who lives or grew up close to the border is more likely to know their songs. Long story short: you simply can’t have a conversation about Canadian musicians without talking about the Tragically Hip.

After Downie died, whoever was running his social media account started a casual mini series in which they’d pull an album out of Downie’s personal record collection. Albums by Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Joy Division, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash popped up from time to time. And recently I saw one that didn’t surprise me in the slightest: Joni Mitchell’s ‘For the Roses.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The exceptionally humble Gord Sinclair, bassist for the Tragically Hip since day one, was kind enough to speak with me about Joni and her influence on the band over the years. This is an interview I’ve been dreaming about for years, a real full circle moment for a music fan from Buffalo like me.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

Well, if you know you know. In which I discuss the 1971 album that changed a lot of women’s lives, a lot of songwriter’s lives and probably drove a bunch of people to the bottle.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

For those of you who haven’t spent hours upon hours of your life on the official Joni Mitchell website like I have, you may not know that there is an entire section dedicated to various Joni song tabs transcribed for guitar, piano, bass and more — even dulcimer.

Those transcriptions are there thanks to the (volunteer!) work of people like Sue Tierney, who have been figuring out Joni’s songs for years and helping them to end up on the internet for all to learn from.

I recently caught up with Sue, a lifelong Joni fan naturally, to talk about how and why she got involved in this work.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

In which I trace Joni’s style evolution from Mod It Girl to Hippie Queen to Sophisticated Lounge Singer.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe

The first time I met writer and author Seth Rogovoy was in the spring of 2022 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we were both attending the grand opening weekend of the Bob Dylan Center. As luck would have it, we both separately had decided it was perfectly okay to walk to Leon Russell’s Church Studios on the outskirts of town for an event. No big deal for North-easterners like ourselves, but as it turns out, Tulsa is not the kind place in which you can walk to everything…long story short: we made the trek back together and saw some parts of Tulsa I’m not sure many others have.

Flash forward to 2024 and Seth has released a brand new book about a different musical icon, Within You, Without You: Listening to George Harrison. And guess what? There’s a Joni connection in the form of Tom Scott’s LA Express, the story of which Seth explains both in his book and in this episode of Big Yellow Podcast.

So here’s Seth and I, not wandering the streets of Tulsa but instead perusing the paths of George and Joni, who have more in common than you may think.

Thanks for listening x

* Allison

Get full access to Big Yellow Podcast at allisonrapp.substack.com/subscribe