Joni Mitchell Makes Surprise Appearance at Brandi Carlile Show

Four months after Joni Mitchell performed her first headlining gig since suffering a devastating brain aneurysm in 2015, the music legend was back on the stage again on Saturday, October 14.

Mitchell, 79, joined Brandi Carlile to perform three songs with the 42-year-old country/Americana star. Mitchell sat between Carlile and Annie Lennox, who was also Brandi’s guest for this concert at Los Angeles’s famed Hollywood Bowl. Mitchell accompanied in the performance of “Shine” (Carlile’s favorite Joni song, according to Rolling Stone), “Ladies of the Canyon” and “Circle Game.”

“Joni, it’s such a joy to be sitting here with you. Thank you for doing this with me,” Carlile told her guest. “You make me feel so cool. I really owe you one, and I promise not to get too used to asking for favors.”

Earlier in the concert, Carlile channeled her inner Joni when she performed her cover of Mitchell’s “Woodstock” to close out the main set of the show. The stage was arranged more comfortably for the encore, echoing the jam sessions that Mitchell hosts at her home. As the stage was set up, Mitchell and Carlile spoke about a recent trip they took together to Joni’s native Canada, marking the first time she’d been in her homeland since her medical crisis.

The appearance came four months after the icon played “Joni Mitchell’s Joni Gam” at the Gorge Amphitheater in Quincy, Washington. It was Mitchell’s first headlining gig since her aneurysm and featured appearances by Carlile, Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, Wendy and Lisa of Prince’s Revolution and Marcus Mumford.

Mitchell was found unconscious in her home in March 2015. The late David Crosby broke the news about her condition. “I have not spoken with her. To my knowledge, she is not speaking yet. She is home, she is in care, [and] she is recovering. She took a terrible hit,” said Crosby about his close friend and former lover. “She had an aneurysm, and nobody found her for a while. And she’s going to have to struggle back from it the way you struggle back from a traumatic brain injury.”

“I always think that polio was a rehearsal for the rest of my life,” Mitchell would tell The Guardian in 2021, having suffered the disease when she was nine. “The aneurysm took away a lot more [than polio], really. Took away my speech and my ability to walk. And, you know, I got my speech back quickly, but the walking I’m still struggling with. But I mean, I’m a fighter. I’ve got Irish blood!”

In 2022, Mitchell performed for the first time since the aneurysm when she took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival (the festival that helped launch Mitchell’s career in 1967). Initially billed as Brandi Carlile and Friends, it became a Joni Mitchell concert, one that she’d release as the At Newport live album one year later.