Brandi Carlile kicks off her new tour in Philadelphia, ‘the perfect place to start something this terrifying’

An arena-sized pop show isn’t the place to go if you’re hoping to be surprised.

Big productions tend to be risk averse. The music needs to work in unison with what’s on the giant video screens, so night-to-night variation is discouraged. If a tour’s been on the road, googling the set list eliminates mystery and lets you know what’s coming next.

But part of what made Brandi Carlile’s show on Tuesday at the Xfinity Mobile Arena such a kick is that almost none of that was in play.

Not only was it opening night on Carlile’s “Human Tour” — named after a song on her new album, Returning To Myself — it was also the start of her first-ever arena tour.

That kept Carlile’s intensely loyal audience in suspense on what was a career milestone night for the Seattle songwriter who had chalked up another milestone, just two days ago.

On Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif., the Seahawks fan had sung a lovely, understated “America the Beautiful” at Super Bowl LX, opening for her hometown team and Bad Bunny. She was accompanied by SistaStrings, the cello-violin duo of Monique and Chauntee Ross who were also with her in South Philly Tuesday night.

So you couldn’t blame Carlile for being giddy as she reveled in her dream-come-true after 20 years on the road with twin brothers Phil and Tim Hanseroth, who were on either side of her as always on Tuesday. They play guitar and bass at the core of a band that’s now swelled to eight members.

Carlile took the stage after the crowd got into the groove as Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” played on the sound system, following a solid well-sung set by indie-folk band and fellow Seattle music scene standouts, the Head and the Heart.

She opened her two-hour-plus, 22-song show on acoustic guitar, silhouetted in an orange-and-yellow spotlight as she stood behind a curtain singing Returning to Myself’s title cut.

The volume turned up gradually on the carpe diem “Human,” and full-on rocker “Mainstream Kid,” from her 2015 The Firewatcher’s Daughter, which wrestled with the implications of an outsider aiming for mass market success.

She answered those soul-searching questions with “Swing for the Fences,” a vow to grab the brass ring from Who Believes in Angels?, her 2025 album with Elton John.

Then she took a minute to take it all in — and to also shout-out the tiny Old City venue where she played her first Philly gig in 2005.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” Carlile told the crowd, which skewed about a decade older than her, in the packed 21,000-seat arena.

“It reminds me of what it was like to see Celine Dion when I was a kid. You can’t really fathom it when you’ve been in a van all these years, and you first came to Philadelphia and played the Tin Angel, no one could have made me believe that we’re standing where we’re standing right now. It’s just wild.”

Carlile is an expert community builder. Every January she hosts a “Girls Just Wanna” weekend, a woman-centric festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico. This May, she’s presenting "Echoes Through the Canyon at the Gorge" in Gorge, Wash., which will reunite The Highwomen, her country supergroup with Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires.

Tuesday’s show was a master class on breaking down the wall between performer and audience.

“How did you guys like starting by listening to ‘Like a Prayer,’” she asked, taking the crowd with her behind the curtain. “We’re trying to figure out what songs do we play while people walk in? What are we gonna do with the set list?

“Everything tonight is an experiment for us. And I don’t think there’s a crowd that’s better to do this for because everybody knows Philadelphia is gonna be honest. You’re not going to suffer in silence. And I’ve just been coming here for so long that it really does feel like the perfect place to start something this terrifying.”

That may make the “Human Tour” opening concert sound like a dress rehearsal, but the band, which also included pianist Dave McKay, drummer Terence Clark, and multi-instrumentalist Solomon Dorsey, were in mid-tour form.

At one point, she dismissed the band other than the Hanseroths and took requests. That resulted in charmingly casual versions of “What Can I Say” from 2005’s Brandi Carlile and “Josephine” from 2007’s The Story.

Connecting with heroes and influences is part of Carlile’s brand. She produced a comeback record for country vet Tanya Tucker and organized the “Joni Jams” private sessions in L.A. that led Joni Mitchell to return to perform again in public in 2022 after suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015.

“Joni” was left off the set list Tuesday; just as well as it’s one of the spottier tunes on Returning to Myself. Instead, she paid tribute to Linda Ronstadt’s 1970 Gary White-penned “Long Long Time,” which was heartfelt and delivered with plenty of power, if it lacked Ronstadt’s nuance.

The show was quiet and rowdy. In the latter category was “Sinners, Saints and Fools,” from 2021’s In These Silent Days, about a Christian man who turns away immigrants, then is surprised to find heaven closed off to him.

Carlile dedicated it to “the immigrants who built this country” and acknowledged talking politics in a room full of like-minded people felt “a little like an echo chamber.” But “isn’t it nice just to get together and realize we all feel the same way?” Then she sang, “as a catharsis to myself.”

For all her affection for roots music, Carlile is a Pacific Northwest child of ’90s grunge and alt-rock who stood in for the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2025.

Her Alanis Morissette fandom showed up twice during the three-song encore during which she sported a Sixers scarf. First, she offered a high-volume cover of Morissette’s “Uninvited,” with the band unleashing a blaring wall of sound.

Then, show ended with “A Long Goodbye,” which references Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Carlile described the autobiographical song as “me, in 4 minutes and 48 seconds” and her hushed performance achieved what she said she saw as her job for the evening: “To be in this big room and make it seem small.”