Brandi Carlile: ‘Joni Mitchell has this grave in Hollywood – sometimes she’ll go there and have lunch’

Brandi Carlile: ‘I was addicted to witnessing the miracle’ - (Collier Schorr)

More than just her heart, Brandi Carlile wears her entire life on her sleeve. And her shoulder, chest and back. “They’re gas station patches,” she says, showing off the numerous badges sewn all over her otherwise smart blue jacket, each celebrating a town she’s passed through on her 30-year journey from the backwoods of Washington state to the peak of Mount Americana.

Sitting attentively in her record label’s London offices, short blonde hair in a flamboyant flick and her natural, friendly smile lighting the room, this 44-year-old US country-rock star with 11 Grammys to her name – and the crystalline voice to justify every one – looks like the world’s unlikeliest lot rat. To UK audiences only recently discovering her via this year’s No 1 collaboration album with Elton John, Who Believes in Angels?, she might seem more like an instant, overnight Americana star; a bolt of rich emotion from the heartland-sky blue. Being embraced in Britain, the homeland of both her beloved Elton (her primary musical inspiration since the age of 11) and her wife Catherine, feels a little like a homecoming. “It feels very much like it’s been a missing fragment, a missing piece of my life,” she says. “And I love this feeling of being discovered. I don’t think everybody gets that in their forties again.” She beams broadly. “I get it twice, seriously?”