Brandi Carlile closes her first Bridgestone Arena headline show with Dolly Parton songs

Brandi Carlile headlined Bridgestone Arena in Nashville for the first time in her career on Saturday night, and handed the end of the show to somebody else. The encore of her Human Tour date became an extended tribute to Dolly Parton, who had died in the same city four days earlier at 80.

The main set drew across her catalogue, taking in "Human", "The Story", "The Joke" and "You And Me On The Rock". The first sign of what was coming arrived during "Sinners, Saints And Fools", when SistaStrings played a snippet of "Jolene" inside the arrangement.

The encore made it explicit. Carlile opened it with "Coat Of Many Colors", one of Parton's signature songs and one she has been playing recently anyway, with opener Gregory Alan Isakov on guitar and vocals and Sarah Jarosz on banjo and vocals. She followed with a full "Jolene", joined by Isakov's fiddler Jeb Bows.

Then the screens came on. Images of Parton played behind Carlile while she sang "I Will Always Love You", which has been the most-reached-for song of the past fortnight and the hardest one to get through. The encore continued afterwards with a cover of Alanis Morissette's "Uninvited" and closed on "A Long Goodbye".

Carlile wrote about the night on Instagram, and made the Nashville connection the point of it. "I wouldn't be where I am without Nashville but most importantly I wouldn't be who I am without Nashville," she wrote, describing headlining Bridgestone as a dream and adding that it happened even if it only happens once.

She went on to say it is impossible for her to cross the state line without thinking of Parton, that everyone is on their knees at the moment, and that the night was one of the best of her life. She closed by hoping the celebration reached heaven and that Parton's family in the audience felt proud.

Parton was born in Pittman Center, Tennessee and lived in Nashville for most of her life, which is why the city has absorbed the largest share of the tributes since her death at 80. The Grand Ole Opry gave a whole Saturday show over to her songs the same night Carlile was playing Bridgestone.

Carlile's remaining country and rock dates are on the tour guide. Her version of the tribute was unusual only in scale: an arena, three guests and a screen, for an artist she had never headlined that building without.