About the Artist
The Carlile Family Band is a Nashville-based sibling act led by Caroline and JayJ Carlile, who have been playing together essentially their whole lives. JayJ, 15, moves between bass, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, and piano and is teaching himself steel; Caroline plays banjo and handles most of the singing and the stage. Their self-titled debut EP collects songs they wrote at 12 and 13, produced by their father and their aunt, Brandi Carlile. They are homeschooled, road-tested in a Sprinter van, and chasing a full-length album. What holds it together is simpler: they would be making this music with or without an audience.
Caroline and JayJ Carlile
About the Episode (Episode 126)
The Carlile Family Band: They'd Be Doing This Anyway
Caroline and JayJ Carlile sat down with Jason English in Nashville during AmericanaFest, their first time at the festival as a band. They argued in the car on the way over and said so, which is part of what makes them easy to root for. Most of the conversation circles a balance they have already worked out younger than most: how to be siblings, business partners, and bandmates at the same time without letting any one of those break the others.
Key Conversation Points
The music is the root. Family bands have a reputation for going sideways, and the Carliles know it. Their answer is to keep the songs at the center. "We would be doing this even if we weren't making money and we all had regular jobs," Caroline says, calling the professional part "an extra thing." They credit business-minded parents and a considerate streak for keeping siblings, bandmates, and co-managers from colliding. They are, in Caroline's words, "certainly not normal, but probably pretty functional."
Two writers, two ways in. Caroline wrote "Dream Again" about her mom, and the gratitude of knowing she would be supported whether she played music forever or quit in five minutes. JayJ wrote "Leftover Sentences" entirely on his own. It opens with a hesitancy about the light shining down, born from a stretch when he did not want to be in crowds or on a stage, and ends in acceptance. Caroline is his shield on stage; he steps into the light for a moment, then steps back behind her.
Red Rocks, and what they don't lead with. A few years ago JayJ learned two Gregory Alan Isakov songs in a couple of days and played them onstage with him at Red Rocks, after his aunt Brandi Carlile called and asked. He knew Isakov only from "The Stable Song" in The Peanut Butter Falcon, and was nervous enough that he greeted him as "Mr. Isakov." The family connection is real, but they don't open with it. As Caroline puts it, the opportunities come because she loves them and believes in them, and because they practice a lot and work hard.
Asked what they are most curious about, neither reached for a career milestone. JayJ is hyperfixated on teaching himself steel guitar, listening to almost nothing but steel players. Caroline wants to sew her own stage caftans and understand the human psychology behind business and strategy. Where they want to end up has less to do with fame than with inheritance: to get good enough to become the role models for whoever comes after them, the way the people around them have been for them. For a band this young, that is a steady thing to be sure of.