The Hanseroth Twins Talk About Their New Solo Album, Vera, And Their Grammy-Winning Success With Brandi Carlile

Phil Hanseroth & Tim Hanseroth are identical twin brothers who have established themselves as excellent songwriters & musicians, who are best known for their collaborations with acclaimed singer/songwriter, Brandi Carlile. They are longtime members of Carlile’s touring band, and they have co-written with Carlile most of her songs over the past decade. Impressively, Phil & Tim Hanseroth have won three Grammy Awards for their work with Carlile.

Now in 2024, the Hanseroth Twins have written & recorded songs for their own solo project. They recently released their first album, called Vera, on Elektra Records. This album (which was executive-produced by Carlile) shows that the Twins can create their own, distinctive music as artists.

Vera (which is defined in Latin as true, real, genuine) is the result of a lifetime creative partnership of the two brothers. The twins wrote and produced the entire album, which was recorded at their home studio in Maple Valley, Washington. The songs on Vera display a unique mix of Americana, folk, indie and rock music.

Vera is a fine album that flows well from beginning to end. It contains songs that reflect on the Twins’ experiences growing up, and their own, unique perspectives. The lead vocals by the Twins are strong and expressive, and the musicianship is first-rate. Highlights include the heartfelt ballad “Remember Me,” the acoustic “Broken Homes (which traces their childhood life), the aggressive rocker “The Poor Side of the People,” and “Counting The Days” (which is about struggling with mental health).

The Hanseroth Twins grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and in the ’90s they were a part of the Seattle music scene. They fronted their heavy rock band, The Fighting Machinists, and they signed a label deal with Interscope Records. They recorded 40 songs, but they were ultimately dropped by the label.

While the Twins were recording in Seattle, they met hit producer, Rick Parashar, who is known for his work with Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Blind Melon. Parashar introduced the Twins to Brandi Carlile, whom he was working with. The Twins hit it off with Carlile, and the trio began a longtime creative relationship. Notably, Phil Hanseroth wrote Carlile’s 2007 hit, “The Story.”

The Twins & Carlile have collaborated on most of their songs and projects since then. Impressively, the trio wrote all the songs for Carlile’s Grammy-winning, breakthrough album, By the Way, I Forgive You, which subsequently won Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song (“The Joke”), and Best American Roots Performance.

After the success of By the Way, I Forgive You, Carlile & the Twins embarked on a new project, writing the songs for country legend Tanya Tucker’s 2019 album, While I’m Livin’. Impressively, this album won Best Country Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards, and won Best Country Song for “Bring My Flowers Now.” Then in 2023, the Twins & Carlile worked on Tucker’s follow-up album, Sweet Western Sound.

In addition, the Twins collaborated with Carlile on her latest album, In These Silent Days (released in 2021). Notably, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, their song “Broken Horses” won the Grammy for Best Rock Song, and the single “Right On Time” received Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

We are pleased to do this new Q&A interview with Phil & Tim Hanseroth. They tell how they met and began collaborating with Carlile, and later worked on her album By the Way, I Forgive You, and Tucker’s album While I’m Livin’. They also discuss their new solo album, Vera.

DK: You grew up in the Pacific Northwest. How did you get started with music?

Phil Hanseroth: We used to sing along with the oldies, like the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Then when we got a little older, Seattle exploded with the whole grunge scene, and the first concert we went to was Nirvana. I think after that, we both realized…Man, these guys can do it. This is something we can do. We’re from the suburbs, small town USA, and these guys are making it happen.

DK: When did you meet Brandi Carlile and start working with her?

Tim Hanseroth: We didn’t meet her until about 10 years into our career. My brother and I, after getting into the grunge thing, we started our own heavy rock band around 1990 and played around Seattle. We got a record deal on Interscope Records and recorded about 40 songs for them. Eventually we got dropped off the label, and we did the whole cycle of devastation that any young band would go through with a major label. So we were kind of almost washed up (laughs) at the point when we met Brandi.

Our old band had been recording at this place called London Bridge Studio in Seattle, which is a legendary studio where they did Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and all these amazing records. Then a week after our band broke up, I got a call from (producer) Rick Parashar, who was the owner of the studio. He said, “Hey, I’m working with this girl, Brandi. Do you want to come meet her and maybe play on her record?” And so I was like, “Sure, why not?” I went and met her, and within 30 minutes we hit it off as fast friends.

DK: I did an interview with Brandi Carlile four years ago, and she said you were like brothers and family. You do everything together. What is it that makes the two of you and Brandi such a great team?

Phil Hanseroth: You know in life, if you’re lucky enough, you find your people sometimes. And I think we just found each other. We get along so well as friends, and that magic sort of translates musically.

DK: I really like Brandi’s album, By The Way, I Forgive You, which was a big breakthrough for her and you. When you were creating that album, did you feel that it was going to be special and would take your career and Brandi’s career to a much higher level?

Tim Hanseroth: I don’t know if we expected that to happen, but I can speak for all of us when I say that we knew we had something special. Especially as the sessions went on, we realized…Man, we’ve got a great collection of songs this time around and we’re capturing them beautifully. We could tell it was probably going to be our best record.

Phil Hanseroth: Yeah, that record changed all of our lives, for sure.

DK: Your song “The Joke” is a powerful song. What inspired you and Brandi to write that song?

Tim Hanseroth: Oh man, it was actually (producer) Dave Cobb. We were getting close to the end of the session and he said, “You know, if you’re completely honest with yourselves, have you really had a big moment since (Brandi’s hit) ‘The Story’?” And I think that pissed us all off at first. But then we were like…”Man, if we’re honest, have we had that moment?” And Brandi was gung ho and said, “Let’s see if we can come up with something really great.” And we wrote “The Joke” during the session, right there on the spot.

Brandi got our cellist, Josh Newman, in the studio and showed him what notes to play. And I’ve still got the yellow legal pad where she was sketching out little lines and crossing them out of her lyrics. I think the whole thing took a couple hours to write, and Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings both produced that record. Dave’s strength really is…he knows how to encourage you. He set the stage and encouraged us and Brandi to go for it.

DK: You and Brandi did two albums with Tanya Tucker, and While I’m Livin’ won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. What was it like to collaborate with Tanya Tucker, and then receive the Grammy Award?

Tim Hanseroth: It was amazing, Brandi called one day and she goes, “Do you know who Tanya Tucker is? And I was like, “I’ve heard the name” (laughs). And then she said, “We’re making a record with her, so you need to write some songs.” So I got in my car and I drove around for a week listening to Tanya Tucker all day, and Phil did that too. And I thought to myself…Where would I go from here if I was Tanya Tucker? Then I grabbed a guitar, and I think it just poured out of me automatically, from absorbing so much of her music. Within a week or two, my brother and I had probably seven or eight songs. You know, when we were in the studio recording these songs, we all thought it was something special.

DK: You’ve just released your own album, Vera. When did you decide the time was right to record your own album?

Phil Hanseroth: I think it was born out of the lockdown…we had all this time off with touring not happening and it’s something that Brandi encouraged us to do. We got a good start on it, but eventually we got busy during that time doing livestreaming and other things and making a record. So we sidelined it until this year, when we had time off from touring, and we decided it would be a good time to finish it up.

We finished one song and we sent it to Gregg Nadel (President of Elektra Records), and my phone rang 15 minutes later. He said, “We want to do it. Let’s make a record and put it out.” So once he gave us the green light, it was like…How fast can we get this thing done before we get busy in Brandiland again?

DK: The album is called Vera. How did you decide that Vera should be the title?

Tim Hanseroth: Vera is an old Latin word that I’d come across years before. It was stored away in my brain, and popped into my head when we were trying to come up with the titles. It’s a word that means genuine—real, true, authentic—and I thought this is exactly what a record should be called. This was because it may not be perfect singing, perfect writing or performance, but whatever you hear is actually what happened. So we thought it was a very fitting name for the collection.

DK: I like your new song, “Remember Me,” which you performed live with the Colorado Symphony. What inspired you to write this song?

Phil Hanseroth: For the part that I wrote, I sat down and wrote the first verse in the chorus and I wanted to make like a love letter for our children. It would be great, and we could each write a verse. So it was inspired by our kids, for there to be something left behind when we’re no longer here.

DK: There are two songs on your new album that have more unique and pointed lyrics: ‘Broken Bones” and “The Poor Side of People.” Can you talk about writing those songs?

Tim Hanseroth: “Broken Homes” is like an autobiographical story of our childhood. It starts off…We’re from a broken home with an old chain link fence, and the green shag on the floor. And one of the lyrics talks about the window—whenever the door would slam in the front of the house, the big picture window would rumble. So I always remembered that sound, and we got inside of our memory and started singing about our childhood. It might seem at first glance that the song could be perceived as a negative thing, but it’s really about the how adversity can become a strength in the long run. You go through these hard things in your life and you’re tempered because of it; your harder and stronger. So the song is about resilience through adversity.

“The Poor Side of People” started off as a little ballad and it ended up as a rocker. We were trying to force it to be a ballad. We wanted it to be this song about when people say…the poor side of town and poor people. Well, I had the thought one day that there really is no such thing as a poor side of town. There is, but it’s created by greed. It’s created by the rich people on the other side of town. And I thought, how cool would that be to make a song with punk-rock lyrics and make it a ballad, fighting for the poor people that are only in place there because of the rich and the greedy.

So we tried and tried to fit it into a little ballad shape, and then one day in the studio when we were recording, I grabbed an electric guitar and started playing it and singing it on the couch, in a rockabilly style that you hear now on the record. And Brandon Bell, who was recording our album with us, he walked over and put a microphone in front of my face, and put a microphone in front of the guitar amp. And before we knew it we were recording the song.

DK: Besides these songs that we’ve talked about, what are your favorite songs on your new album?

Phil Hanseroth: I love “Somewhere Between.” I love it because it means a lot to me personally. It’s about a friend of ours who passed away many years ago, and I think it’s a nice way to honor him and keep his memory alive.

DK: Now that your album is out, will you be going on tour as the Hanseroth Twins?

Phil Hanseroth: We’ve talked about doing some dates. As soon as we know what our schedule with Brandi looks like, then we’re going to fill in the holes with some dates for ourselves. We absolutely want to get in there and play some shows.

DK: Thank you Phil and Tim for doing this interview. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about yet, that you’d like to mention for this article?

Tim Hanseroth: There’s one thing that I wanted to tell yoy. When you asked us how we got our start with our music career, I wanted to mention something that was a really important, pivotal decision for us. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, and my mom came to us one day. I was about 15 years old, and we had just gotten our first guitar that we bought at a silent auction for $30 or $40. We wanted to start a band really badly.

My mom came home and she said, “Hey, let me ask you something. Do you want to go to college?” It was going to take some financial planning on our family’s part. And I said, “Not particularly.” And she said, “Well, what do you want to do with your life?  What’s your ideal career?” And I said, “I want to be in a band.” So she said, “All right, let’s go clear out the rec room right now.” We cleared out the rec room and we moved everything out of there. We put the guitar in there, and we rented a drum set for six bucks a month. So I want to give credit to her. Even though we didn’t have a lot of things and money, we had that support from her. She supported us in whatever we wanted to do. That moment was probably the most important thing that’s ever happened for our career.