Brandi Carlile at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts | August 16, 2026
There is a particular logic to Brandi Carlile playing the grounds where the 1969 Woodstock festival unfolded. She is, at this point in her career, one of the clearest inheritors of that tradition — not the mythology of peace and mud, but the actual musical lineage: deeply personal songwriting, big voices in open air, the sense that what happens on that stage might matter beyond the afternoon. Her Sunday, August 16 date at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts arrives on the back of Returning to Myself, her eighth studio album and, by most critical consensus, her strongest work since the Grammy-sweeping By the Way, I Forgive You.
The new record — co-produced with Aaron Dessner of The National and Andrew Watt — is the album where Carlile stops collaborating her way out of the spotlight and does the work of reclaiming who she is. Rolling Stone called it “frequently moving, occasionally spellbinding,” which, without hedging, is high praise. The standout cuts reward the live setting: “Church & State,” with its Eighties arena-rock thrust, should carry exactly as well in open air as it did when she debuted it on SNL in November 2025 alongside “Human.” Both read as songs written to be heard by large crowds. The album’s memoiristic centerpiece, “No One Knows Us,” gives her something weightier to anchor the set — personal, queer, and unapologetic.
The year leading into this show has been eventful even by Carlile’s standards. She sang “America the Beautiful” at Super Bowl LX in February 2026 and performed at the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. The Highwomen — her country supergroup with Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby — has a forthcoming album in the works. If anyone in American roots music is carrying the torch that Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt passed, the argument points directly to her.
About Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Bethel Woods sits on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival in Bethel, NY — Sullivan County, in the Hudson Valley. The award-winning open-air Pavilion hosts the summer concert season alongside an Event Gallery and creative learning studios. The on-site Museum chronicles the Woodstock era and is open daily from April through December. For summer shows, the campground (open May through October) makes this one of the few venues in the region where the concert can become the entire weekend rather than just the evening — glamping, RV, and tent options available. Dining, disc golf, and golf cart tours round out the grounds. Venue address: 200 Hurd Road, Bethel, NY 12720.
Jensen McRae opens the evening — an emerging singer-songwriter who earns the slot on her own terms.
Tickets
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