Brandi Carlile and her longtime bandmates, twin brothers Phil and Tim Hanseroth, are playing roughly two hours and 40 minutes of spontaneous live audience requests each night on their 19-date US theater run, Variety’s concert review reported Sunday. Evaluating the November 7 performance at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California, Variety’s Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic
Chris Willman described the unplanned format as a nightly emotional chemistry experiment between the trio and the crowd rather than a mere test of musical memory.
Billed as Burn the Setlist (The All Request Tour)
, the fall outing abandons pre-written song orders entirely. Carlile and the Hanseroth brothers draw from a recorded catalog of nearly 100 original tracks alongside live covers they have played over the past quarter-century. Willman noted that while established headliners occasionally take a single shouted pick, a major touring artist building an entire 19-date run around spontaneous crowd requests appears to be the first tour of its kind in recent memory.
To prepare for the unpredictable shows, Tim Hanseroth shared an Instagram video of himself practicing through the group’s studio albums, and Carlile told fans during a pre-tour livestream that she would keep a lyric monitor onstage as a backup. During the Oakland stop, the second night of the tour, Willman observed that Carlile barely glanced at the screen.
How the Oakland request night worked
At the start of the November 7 concert in Oakland, Carlile laid out guidelines for fans waving handmade signs across the theater. I can see your signs all the way back, and I will call on people all the way in the back,
Carlile told the crowd, before eventually choosing more requests from the rear balcony than from any other section of the venue.
Carlile explained that Everything is pretty much fair game,
defining the pool of eligible picks as any song that we’ve ever done.
She ruled out songs the trio had never played together before, telling the audience, so we’re not gonna be able to ‘Free Bird’ or ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ this shit. But we might be able to get away with the handful of covers we’ve done in the past. And listen,
Carlile added, you don’t have to worry about me — I’m 45, so if there’s a song I don’t want to do, I will just say no.
She also urged ticket holders to pick favorites they genuinely wanted to hear rather than trying to trip up the musicians. Don’t feel like this should be a ‘stump the band’-type deal,
Carlile said onstage, noting her own affection for album deep cuts and closing tracks that rarely make big arena setlists while reassuring fans that her well-known songs were welcome too. If you want to hear the fucking ‘Story,’
Carlile told the Fox Theater crowd, they should simply ask for it.
Even with that encouragement, none of the fans called on in Oakland requested her signature hits The Story or The Joke. According to Nugs.net setlist archives, the 21-entry Oakland performance opened with Raise Hell and The Mother and mixed older catalog cuts such as Dying Day, Turpentine, That Year and Beginning To Feel The Years with covers of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues, Alanis Morissette’s Uninvited, Dolly Parton’s Jolene, Joni Mitchell’s River, and The Beatles’ I Will and I’ve Just Seen a Face.
Phone-free shows and live bootleg recordings
For fans holding tickets to the remaining dates, the shows operate under strict phone-free rules. Attendees must lock their mobile devices inside Yondr pouches upon entry, though guests keep the sealed pouches with them inside the theater. In the tour’s official announcement statement, organizers said Carlile and the Hanseroth twins wanted the freedom to take musical risks, try difficult arrangements and make mistakes without cameras recording every attempt.
To make up for the ban on personal video and photos, every attendee receives a ticket QR code providing access to official live bootleg audio from their concert, with Consequence reporting at the tour’s announcement that the code grants three complimentary live tracks alongside full-show audio purchases through Nugs.net, while Just Jared reported after the November 5 opener that ticket holders could download their full concert recording within 24 hours.
Remaining 2026 tour dates
Carlile announced the theater trek on September 28, 2026, alongside the release of the deluxe album Returning to Myself (Sad Gay Version), expanding an audience-request segment she tested earlier in 2026 on The Human Tour. The all-request run opened November 5 at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, with a 20-song set that included covers of Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, followed by stops in Oakland on November 7, Tucson on November 9 and 10, and Des Moines on November 12.
Following her weekend residency at The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on November 14 and 15, Carlile and the Hanseroth brothers are scheduled to play the State Theatre in Minneapolis on November 17 and 18, The Louisville Palace Theater in Louisville on November 20 and 21, and the Uptown Theater in Kansas City on November 22. The tour concludes with a three-night stand at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, on December 15, 16 and 17, ahead of Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival in Mexico from January 14 to 18, 2027, and a European arena tour in March and April 2027.