Mary Chapin Carpenter
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Mary Chapin Carpenteris an American singer, songwriter and musician. Carpenter spent several years singing in Washington, D.C. clubs before signing in the late 1980s with Columbia Records, who marketed her as a country singer. Carpenter's first album, 1987's Hometown Girl, did not produce any singles, although 1989's State of the Heart and 1990's Shooting Straight in the Dark each produced four Top 20 hits on the Billboard country singles charts...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth21 February 1958
CountryUnited States of America
It's like the code of living by yourself. People who are single know what I'm talking about. You eat standing up, reading the paper. Or you say to yourself, this isn't even cutting it, I'm taking a TV dinner and I'm getting in bed here.
When I started out, it was this sense of, "Let's put out a record and see what happens and see where you go and see how you feel and where we can take it." That was a very different world back then.
In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn't, "We're going to give you one shot, and if you don't measure up, you're gone".
I feel that it's nothing if not an incredible privilege to be able to get up on stage and play for people, and I don't ever take it for granted.
I feel like politics have always informed what I do. If you know anything about my music, you know I've never been shy about stating how I vote.
The joy of being in the studio is having people being utterly free to throw out their ideas.
I like to feel that every day or most days, I do a little bit of writing. I am a creature of habit in terms of the way I live.
20-some years ago, I'd have a big old radio with a tape deck, and I'd hit record and try to get something down on the tape, but nowadays, I can use my handy little smart-phone; I sing into the app for voice memo.
You've gotta know happy. You've gotta know sad. 'Cause you're gonna know lonely and you're gonna know sad
It seemed inevitable to try to address my feelings about everything that had happened. To a certain degree, it felt cathartic, but it's less cathartic to me than it is illuminating and helping me navigate my own feelings.
I've never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world.
When I think of the artists I admire and seek out musically. It's because I'm curious about where they're going to go the next time they have a chance to put a record out. It's not about where I find them on the radio dial, or how many records they're selling.
There's two lanes running down this road which ever side your on, accounts for where you want to go or what you're running from.
It's a pretty frantic world that we live in