When Nashville's favorite genre-defying producer, Dave Cobb, got a call from Washington state's favorite genre-busting singer-songwriter, Brandi Carlile, in 2016, he was a little freaked out. "I'd first heard her sing about ten years ago, and just stopped in my tracks," he said in a recent chat at his home base, Music Row's RCA Studio A, where the two recently completed her sixth album By The Way, I Forgive You. "Very few people can sing like that — in that powerful and individualistic way. I'd been a huge fan for a long time."