She began writing her first songs at the age of 17, around 1998. Just five years later Mitchell won the New Folk award in 2003, when she was 22, at the
Kerrville Folk Festival. Her album
Hymns for the Exiled was released on Chicago's
Waterbug Records label in 2004. This recording attracted the attention of singer-songwriter
Ani DiFranco, who signed her to the
Righteous Babe Records label. A revised version of
Hadestown was staged in 2007. Her third album,
The Brightness, was released that same year on
Righteous Babe Records. Her album
Hadestown, produced by Todd Sickafoose, was released in spring 2010 to favorable reviews. Described as "the story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in post-apocalyptic Depression-era America, the album includes guest appearances by
Ani DiFranco,
Greg Brown,
Justin Vernon of
Bon Iver, Ben Knox Miller of
The Low Anthem, and The Haden Triplets (
Petra,
Rachel, and
Tanya Haden). Mitchell continued quietly working on a stage version of
Hadestown while also writing and recording new material. In early 2012, she released
Young Man in America on Wilderland Records. Mitchell opened the
North American leg of
Bon Iver's autumn 2012 tour, which included two sold-out shows at
Radio City Music Hall. The album was largely praised by critics as "genre-defying" and her "second consecutive masterpiece." In late 2012, Mitchell completed recording seven songs from the collection of
Child Ballads, compiled by
Francis James Child, with fellow musician Jefferson Hamer. The
album, produced by
Gary Paczosa, was released in February 2013, winning a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Traditional Song. This was followed in 2014 by
xoa, for which Mitchell re-recorded a number of her older songs using only guitar and vocals. This stripped back album included some songs from
Hadestown which were recorded for the first time in Mitchell's own voice, as well as three brand new songs. In summer 2016, the newly expanded theatrical version of
Hadestown opened at
New York Theatre Workshop with Vogue magazine predicting that "
Hadestown will be your next musical theatre obsession". The following year, it received its Canadian premiere at The Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, and in April 2018, London's
National Theatre announced that it would present a three-month run during the winter ahead of the show's Broadway transfer.
Hadestown opened on Broadway at the
Walter Kerr Theatre on April 17, 2019. In 2019, Mitchell was appearing as part of a three-piece "supergroup" called
Bonny Light Horseman, consisting of herself,
Eric D. Johnson of
Fruit Bats and guitarist
Josh Kaufman. The group's self-titled debut album was released on January 24, 2020. In June 2021, American supergroup
Big Red Machine announced their second studio album, ''
How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?'', which features Mitchell's guest vocals in three of its tracks: "Latter Days", "Phoenix", and "New Auburn". ==Personal life==