Artist name:Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters (answered by Amanda) Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina Latest singles: “Desert Flowers” and “There May Come a Day” Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): I was in a band with my brother and my cousin when I was 8 that was called Crusty Chinchilla Rejects Recently Escaped from a Mental Institution…
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
I feel really lucky as I sit here and try to work out what my favorite memory of being on stage is… it’s nice that there have been so many. I think one of my favorites from recent memory was the last show of our 2019 tour opening for Amy Ray. It was at Club Café in Pittsburgh and I got to get up on stage for her last song, “I Didn’t Know a Damn Thing,” which is one of my favorites from her album Holler, and then the encore which was Tom Petty’s “Refugee.” I was enormously pregnant and the stage was already crowded so it was a tight squeeze! But I felt so cool just getting to sing along and dance. The energy in the room was fantastic.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?
Probably literature and film, the most. When someone can tell a story in a highly relatable, moving way, I am very inspired by that. When I finish a good book or leave the theater after a really well-made film I almost always want to sit down and write a song.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
I really enjoy making my band “quack” like the Mighty Ducks, but I would be lying if I said they were as into it as I am. And you can’t do it alone. So, mostly I just cry in the bathroom. Actually I am usually just scrambling to write a set list and eat something moments before we go on stage.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I grew up in the land of all-night diners, and I’ve really been missing that especially now during the pandemic. So I would love to have a post-show burger at a proper diner somewhere… I feel like John Prine would have been a great guy to share a booth at a diner with. I have some questions for him about his songs that I kind of always hoped I’d have a chance to ask him in person.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
I might actually do the reverse more… I tend to always use “I” even though I don’t write autobiographically very often. So in that way I guess I turn every character into “me” and I hide myself in that way…?
Artist:Jeff Cramer and The Wooden Sound (Emma Rose, Dylan McCarthy, Dave Pailet) Hometown: Denver, Colorado Song: “Aimless Love” (John Prine cover) Album:The Shed Sessions Release Date: November 20, 2020
In Their Words: “I dreamt up ‘the shed’ late last year — a backyard DIY project fueled by a desire to provide space and community within Colorado’s incredible songwriter scene — which, as luck would have it, I finished building at the end of February this year. During the pandemic, it has become my office and writing space, and it ultimately brought me to a vision for a video series of live-recorded new, old, and cover songs with my new band, The Wooden Sound. I’m excited to be releasing seven videos and tracks from the The Shed Sessions over the next two weeks, starting with a cover of John Prine’s ‘Aimless Love’ here.
“Aimless Love was my first John Prine record, and while it might not be amongst his most prominent, the title track especially has become one of my favorites. Maybe it was discovering it as a teenager — as a small fry kid in a Midwestern town — that caused me to feel a special closeness to it. John Prine was able to add a sense of warmth and humor to the messiest of human conditions and somehow make it personal to everyone (including me) in the process. I also vividly remember playing Aimless Love under the full moon in my backyard in Denver the moment we learned that he had passed. It felt appropriate to release this video as my little tribute to him.” — Jeff Cramer
Over the last 10 years, in a series of albums recorded with producers Oliver Wood and Will Kimbrough, Shemekia Copeland has progressed from a first-class blues belter into a wider-ranging, more nuanced artist whose music touches on Americana, rock, and country — and she’s still a first-class blues belter.
In addition to working with Kimbrough on her new album Uncivil War and 2018’s America’s Child, Copeland has recorded with artists like John Prine, Emmylou Harris, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. In part two of our interview with Copeland, whose father is the late Texas blues great, Johnny Clyde Copeland, we discuss her musical development and the lessons she learned while teaming with these and other unlikely collaborators.
BGS: Over your last four albums, you’ve worked with producers Oliver Wood and Will Kimbrough, mostly in Nashville, and really started to open up the instrumentation and type of songs you’ve recorded. So I have a chicken and the egg question: did you start working differently because you wanted to change, or did you change because you worked with different people in different places?
SC: It happened organically. The first record with Oliver was in Atlanta and then he moved to Nashville, because everybody moves to Nashville, because that’s where musicians and studios are, and it’s inexpensive to work there. Oliver had Will Kimbrough come in and play and I was a big fan of his. When he played on my record, it was love at first note, because he’s just a musical genius.
We did our last record America’s Child with him and he just knows everyone. Nashville is such a small town in that way. All the musicians know, respect, and love each other. Will would say, “So-and-so would sound good on this. Let’s call him,” and within a day they’d have these guys in the studio that you couldn’t imagine working with as a blues artist, because you don’t know them. The gates of Heaven opened up being in Nashville because that’s where everybody is.
How about Oliver Wood?
I love him. He’s a very talented player and writer, and the best thing about him was that he really encouraged me to think about how I sing. I came from the blues shouter way of singing, and from him I learned that you don’t have to do that to move people. That was huge for me, to learn that you can capture people with subtlety just as much as you can capture them with the hugeness of your voice. We had that conversation and I took that away from working with him and have carried it on.
“Uncivil War” is a perfect example. I did not want to sing that song. I thought it was is a pretty song for somebody with a pretty voice to sing. I wanted the world to hear it and figured they would not if it was coming from me, because I don’t have a pretty voice. That’s when they all yelled at me and said I was being completely ridiculous and to just sing the damn song. But I still struggle with thinking that the subtleties of my voice work. I was just using the power of my voice more like a Koko Taylor, or Etta James.
Let’s talk about some of these people you’ve worked with. You did a duet with John Prine on his lesser-known blues song “Great Rain.” Tell me about that.
That happened completely organically, but here in Chicago, though he lived in Nashville. He’s originally from Illinois and we were both on a concert called Voices of Chicago. I was there to represent blues and John was there to represent the fact that he’s just frickin’ amazing. We were backstage and I’m standing there looking at John Prine thinking, “Oh my God, I’m standing here looking at John Prine.” And he looked down at my feet and said, “I love your shoes!” We started talking and I fell in love with his wife, Fiona. Amazing people. We got to talkin’, started working on projects together, and the rest is history. People like him know how to break the ice with people when they’re nervous around them.
How about Emmylou Harris?
That was just a Will Kimbrough connection. I met her a couple times, like in passing at festivals, but her being on “America’s Child” was Will. He plays with her. She heard the song, loved it, and wanted to sing on it, which was beautiful.
Steve Cropper, who produced The Soul Truth (2005), also plays on the new one.
Who doesn’t love Steve Cropper? He wrote all the hit songs that you can think of. I love working with him, loved his energy. We wanted to do something different after the Dr. John record [2002’s Talking to Strangers], so we thought, why not try to get a soulful record? And who better to make a soulful record than Steve Cropper? He also played on all the songs and Steve Cropper plays like Steve Cropper. He has a sound all his own. You know when you’re listening to him.
What about Billy Gibbons?
Billy was a big fan of Johnny Copeland; he went and saw my dad perform all the time when he was a kid. I was hanging out with him in India [at the 2017 Mahindra Blues Festival in Mumbai] and we were talking about all that. I wanted to do “Jesus Just Left Chicago” and John [Hahn, Copeland’s manager] had the bright idea to ask him. I never would have been ballsy enough to do that. Thank God for managers and producers.
I love Rhiannon Giddens on “Smoked Ham and Peaches.”
Yeah, and she sounded amazing on it. Oh, my gosh. I was a big fan of her and Dom Flemons and the Carolina Chocolate Drops! Just a group of interesting, amazing, talented people. But then I saw her perform as a headliner of the Chicago Blues Festival and she was just incredible. I really wanted to work on it and was so happy when she said she was aware of me, and would love to do it.
It’s probably the most acoustic, downhome song you’ve done and a good example of why some people started talking about you and Americana and not just blues.
I’ve always listened to country and bluegrass, even if I didn’t know who I was listening to. I just liked the instrumentation of it and the singers and lyrics. Americana was not on my radar, but I grew up listening to country music because my dad grew up in Texas and loved it. I’d walk around the house singing Patsy Cline and Hank Williams songs that my dad loved, but I hadn’t really even heard anything about the blend of country and roots music until a few years ago, so I think it’s kind of hilarious that people are saying I’m crossing over to Americana. But I welcome all listeners!
Has your audience changed over the course of these last few albums?
Yes, especially since America’s Child, but even going back to [2009’s] Never Going Back, I started getting people at my shows saying stuff like, “You know, I’m not really into blues, but I love what you do.” And I’m like, “Well, if you’re listening to me, then you could probably say you’re into blues. I think you’re more into the blues than you think you are!” I always hoped that I was getting fans that weren’t just blues fans, and I think the audience is growing a little bit for me — at least I hope so!
Although she’s been an entertainer for decades, Wynonna says she hasn’t ever been much for making music around the house – at least not until this year.
“I think it’s because I was so famous at 18 that the time home was spent just being quiet, because my world was so noisy,” she tells BGS. “Somebody who came to stay with us for a couple of days made a comment, ‘How come I never hear you hum or sing around the house?’ And I looked at her and I was like, ‘I don’t know!’ I had never thought of it.”
If nothing else, life in quarantine has given this country legend time to think. After all, she’s been touring since the ‘80s, first with the Judds, then as a solo artist, and eventually some of both. 2020 is the first extended break she’s taken since late ’94 and early ’95, for the birth of her son, Elijah, who is now a first responder. (She’s making a lunch for him as we’re speaking.) Off the road now for six months, she says her routine has gone from staring off into space every night, to doing Facebook Live sessions with her husband Cactus Moser, to calling up old friends and dusting off her vinyl records.
And to show for her efforts, she’s releasing an EP of covers titled Recollections. The five-song set offers her intimate, off-the-cuff renditions of classics like Grateful Dead’s “Ramblin’ Rose,” Nina Simone’s “Feelin’ Good” and John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” with some of the project’s audio tracks taken directly from her Facebook live sets. She called BGS from her farm in Franklin, Tennessee, to talk about all of it, and offered a film recommendation, too.
BGS: While listening to this EP, I was pleased to hear that you and I have the same favorite verse of “Angel From Montgomery.” What was on your mind when you recorded that one?
Wynonna: Well, it’s tough and it’s a part of life… I was in the living room and I was just practicing. I haven’t done this much practicing in a long time, but I’m home and what else is there to do?! [Laughs] And I got a text from my agent who was a personal friend of John Prine and his family, and he said that John had passed. I sat there, and it’s one of those weird moments in your life when you get that call. I was overwhelmed, sitting there, and all of a sudden — I’m not kidding — I just started to play it on my guitar. I thought, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” I’ve known this song since I was 15 years old, and I started playing it like I played it all those years ago.
I kid you not, Cactus comes in and I looked at him, he looked at me, and I started singing it – he got tears in his eyes, because it was a moment. It’s like that moment when you stand there doing your vows, it’s just a heavy moment. And I said, “I think we need to do this tonight.” So we did it on Facebook Live, which is what you’re hearing. We’re sitting there together and it’s me paying tribute to my hero. One of my heroes is John Prine and we must not forget what this man gave to us. It was one of those sweet, beautiful moments of reflection on my part of how far I’ve come as an artist.
I know you play acoustic guitar on that, too. Which guitar did you play?
I played the biggest Gibson you can get. I’ve always played a big guitar, for obvious reasons. I’ve always felt like the one I have is my weapon. It’s like the biggest guitar you can buy. I was 18 years old and I needed — like when soldiers go into battle and like in Game of Thrones they’d always hold up the shield — it’s my shield. It’s my weapon. So, yeah, I just played it that night and he recorded it and kept it. I said, “Honey, I think this is important.” Because it’s a snapshot of my experience that day.
I love to hear you sing “Feelin’ Good.” I’d read you sang this at a women’s prison, too. Tell me about that experience.
Pretty deep. It was pretty deep. I had played down the hair. I thought, “Now is not the time. I’m not on stage.” I found myself being in that moment with the women. I was standing there, telling my story, talking to the women. It was one of those moments where I don’t know what to say. … So, I just started to sing. I think it made a difference in the room, because these women could sit there for a moment and feel better. That’s what I do as my go-to — I start singing.
I don’t know what you do, but we all have a coping skill, and I think for me that day it was music. I think it’s an important as an artist to not forget your gift. Sometimes we can, if we get distracted. So, this time at home has been devastating at times, yet so life-giving, that the music reflects just that. You’ll hear tough and tender in my voice because there are days when I can’t even get out of bed without crying. And then there are some days I hop out of bed and I am freakin’ Wonder Woman.
Now that you’ve been home probably longer than you ever have in your life, have you developed any morning routines to propel you through your day?
So, on March 14, I cleared the bus. I’ve had a bus since 1984, so that was bizarre. It was like moving to another country. I came into the house and I went, “What the hell do I do now?” So I spent five weeks – you can tell I counted – of doing absolutely nothing. I got really frustrated, because I was lost! It was 8 o’clock at night and I would stare off into the night and go, “I should be doing a show. I should be with my fans. I should be with people. I should be on the road.”
Wynonna and Cactus Moser
I found myself doing nothing. And I think that’s what I needed. I’m going to do a testimonial. I’m writing a book in my head right now, and I’m going to put it to paper, like you as a writer: “What do I do today? What did I do today? What did I want to do today? What do I have to do today?” And how do you find life in that? So I went through the same stuff you have, like most of my fan family: “What do I do?” …
And I started to practice. My husband goes, “Yeah, honey, um… I don’t know if you’ve done this in a while.” It took a minute though. I had to self-start, which was hard for me, because I’ve always been given my schedule, and I go to the airport, and I hustle through, and I make it. You know what I’m saying? We’re used to doing and going and being really successful! What do you do when you’re home for six months?! What do you do, man!!
So when you say “practice,” were you practicing songwriting? Guitar?
Yes, all of it! I came home and, like the rest of America, I gained weight and let my roots grow out. I’m not wearing any undergarments. … And when you come home, and you’re on the farm – I haven’t left but maybe half a dozen times in six months — it’s very strange. What do you do? You have to find a new purpose. And my new purpose was writing, and I started calling people on the phone. Ooh!
You know how it is, you start reconnecting with people you want to reconnect with. There was a lot of forgiveness. There were a lot of relationships where I needed to go back and say, “Hey, man, I missed your wedding and I’m really, really sad about that.” Then you start a conversation. This is really important stuff, right? You don’t have time for that – you don’t make time for that – because you’re too busy being fabulous.
Have you been pulling out your vinyl records, too? And listening to music you’ve loved in the past?
Yep! I’m doing it in a way I needed to, and I don’t know that I would have if it hadn’t been for me being at home like I am. I’ll be honest. I was taught to be a doer, a mover and a shaker. I got caught up in that, and when I came home, I felt like, “If I put everything away, that means I’m stuck at home.” It took months and months and months, and finally I was like, “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m tired of looking at all my stage clothes and my undergarments! Put ‘em away!” And I was like, “No, I don’t want to because that means you’re dead!”
Anyway, I did it, and I thought, “You have to find life at home, woman!” You know, you’ve got life on the road. What is it like at home? So I started to do that, and I started to… listen to music! I started to watch documentaries. You have to watch the two-part documentary on Laurel Canyon. You have to watch it, dude, you have to. You know why? Because it’s important! You see the Eagles, when they’re teenagers, and they’re in L.A. trying to write songs. You see Jackson Browne, who’s 19, standing in line at the Whisky a Go Go. It’s awesome!
BGS did a story on that movie and interviewed Chris Hillman about it, too. It’s a fascinating history.
Oh, that’s another thing! I wanted to throw this in here: So I started to have a beautiful relationship with people I never see, and Chris is one of them. Because I got the number from my husband, I’m texting Robert Weir — and he’s texting me back! And I’m going, “OK… what are the chances?!” [Laughs]
Bob Weir’s on this new record, too.
He is, and it started out being a little bit of a dare. Cactus said, “I want you to learn a Grateful Dead song,” and I said, “Why?” Seriously, I said “Why?” Now, how arrogant is that?! I didn’t understand, not really. All of a sudden I’m learning the song and I’m going, “What the heck is this line about writing Frankenstein?” Then I started learning the song’s history and the meaning of it, so now I’ve become a student of rock ‘n’ roll. I started to study and learn the song and understand. “Ramble on Rose” – oh, there’s a story here. It’s not just a song that’s in the background as you’re smoking a joint!
I believe that when something is a God thing, and meant to be, it’s easy. There’s an ease to it. It doesn’t require an agenda or manipulation. And the next thing I know — and this is no exaggeration — the guy, the legend, the man is coming to Nashville to do something with Dwight Yoakam. And he’s at our gate! We’re buzzing him in to come down to the home studio, which is basically a shed with a lot of nice flooring. And we do a song together! And I go, well, nobody would believe me: “Hey, Robert Weir’s over here and we’re singing ‘Ramble on Rose.’ Yeah, cool!” [Laughs] It’s just fun and I want to get away with as much of this as I possibly can.
Artist:Elizabeth Cook Hometown: Wildwood, Florida Latest album:Aftermath Personal nicknames: Shug
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
Forgetting that I’m on stage and then coming to and being like, “Oh my god, I’m on stage!” That, and one night in Phoenix, this group of young girls stood at the front of the stage and sang along to every one of my songs.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I didn’t really know that I wanted to be. I was a kid singer — so, I came to it from a funny angle. I fought it for years and tried to do other things, but never found a really gratifying way to fit into the world. I got asked to open for Todd Snider once in Wilmington, North Carolina, at this outdoor amphitheater. He threw a one-man acoustic folk show party riot throwdown. I’d never seen anything like it and really haven’t since. But I thought if this is on the table — I will try it.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?
All of it. I’m always collecting details that ping me in some way… and it can be something that I see, read, taste, touch or hear.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
I wrote a song about my mama’s funeral. And of course it’s not something you want to write about, because it’s not something you want to even happen in the first place. But it did. And I was really dreading this event, and the responsibility I felt in the throes of my grieving. I was resenting the whole process. But then, it turned out to be a really beautiful day and it was helpful and healing. And I owed it to the world, almost a right to the wrong for my attitude towards it in the beginning. The song is called “Mama’s Funeral” and it’s on Welder.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
I have a “hard hat” bag! I can get really fussy and anxious right before I go on and dig neurotically for things I think I need. So I made this little bag… it has all the comforts from Advil to throat sprays and drops, a neck and hand massager, extra guitar picks, my lucky rock and some dice.
In the winter of 2019, bona fide soul man Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams made his return to Nashville after nearly 50 years away from Music City. His aim was to cut a new record, and a slew of artists joined him in collaboration, chief among them guitarist Jim Oblon, singer/songwriter Justin Vernon, and the late great John Prine. The music that came from those winter sessions feels like a time machine right back to the late 1960s.
The album, titled Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, is a shade more country than Swamp Dogg’s other material, but his warm, rough voice wears his many years on its sleeve, allowing him to sit comfortably in the common core of soul, country, and blues. Portions of the album have moxie for miles while others hold abundant sincerity and sadness. NPR’s Fresh Air reviewed one song, “Sleeping Without You is a Dragg,” which was joined by two other selections from other artists classified as beautiful, comforting songs. A reminiscent sound ties the whole record together beautifully.
A Noisey mini-documentary about the star-studded recording sessions for Sorry You Couldn’t Make It shows humorous, casual, behind-the-scenes moments from the album’s creation. While Dogg had the bad luck of the COVID-19 lockdown slow its rollout, don’t let this music slip through the cracks of your social media timelines!
Artist:Grant-Lee Phillips Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Latest album:Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Pistol, Ranchero
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
Neil Young I suppose. His music hit me at just the right time. I had been playing guitar for two years when I first heard “Down by the River” and “Cortez the Killer.” I was 16. My ears were wide open. Young’s songs spoke to me like no other. He was also the first singer I saw in concert. All alone, with a rack of acoustic guitars, an upright piano on one side of the stage, a grand on the other, a pump organ. I was mesmerized.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
My family loved music. Hee Haw was a big one. We never missed a show. My grandma loved Elvis and Johnny Cash. The excitement I felt when Roy Clark played “Orange Blossom Special” or “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” on the electric guitar, I wanted to feel that all the time. The TV show Austin City Limits introduced me to Lightning Hopkins, John Prine and Tom Waits. I recall those moments like yesterday.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
The hardest prolonged period of song wrestling was back in the ‘90s after Grant Lee Buffalo had put out a few albums. The pressure was on to deliver. The question was, deliver what to whom? I did my best to put all that noise out of my head. You can go from dancing on a ledge like Buster Keaton one minute to vertigo the next. Thankfully I had come across the film director Andrei Tarkovsky’s defiant book Sculpting in Light and that became a temporary manifesto.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I paint a great deal these days. Landscapes and still life. It slows me down and demands another degree of focus. Composition involves strategic thinking but there’s a wild side to painting. I like that balance. It gives me insight to making music.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
Tennessee is one of the greenest states in the country. I’m never so in tune with my own spirit as when I surrounded by elms and oaks. During this pandemic our family has made a point to take a drive every day. We drive through the country, roll down the windows and breathe some fresh air. One of my other rituals involves drawing. Every day I set aside 20-30 minutes to sketch. I have notebooks full of trees, landscapes in the works. Trees, clouds — that’s my sanctuary. Some of these images find their way into my lyrics, which is just another way of painting a picture.
Mary Chapin Carpenter’s fans have got to know her kitchen well since the start of lockdown. It is a beautiful space, often ornamented with bright, round peonies from her garden. It makes you long to be as tidy, and as tasteful, as Mary Chapin Carpenter.
It’s in this kitchen that she records her Songs from Home series. She greets us with the tender familiarity of a family member on a weekly Zoom call. Guitar slung around her neck, she’ll share some snippet of news or wisdom before singing to us from a back catalogue so deep that there’s always something appropriate to the mood of the day. Often there’s an unscripted appearance, even an added harmony, from Angus, her golden retriever, or her cat, White Kitty. It’s less a house concert than a singalong with an old friend.
She’s in her kitchen again as we talk, this time making chicken stock. “I’ve got two enormous pots of chicken bones and carrots and celery boiling on the stove,” she says, and for a moment, it’s like an audience with Julia Child. “I get it started just before noon and then it simmers for about five hours. Just before dinner time I take it off and put it in jars. Then it’s there for whenever I need it.”
I tell her that I’d been wondering, from seeing the immaculate state of her kitchen on her lockdown videos, if she ever cooked at all. “Well, I make sure I clean the dishes out of the sink!” she laughs. “I love to cook. This kitchen is a place where I’m so happy. I wish everybody could come over and hang out!”
She pauses, as the thought strikes her. “These are things that you didn’t even think about, when this all started, about half the things you’d miss. It’s one of the pleasures of my life, feeding people around a table. I miss it so much.”
Carpenter was supposed to have continued her nationwide tour alongside Shawn Colvin this spring, playing songs from her new album, The Dirt and the Stars. With all gigs cancelled, and the travel that usually “balances” her introvert tendencies curtailed, lockdown has been challenging for Carpenter, who lives alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“I’ve been very, very isolated for many months now,” she admits. “It’s a remote rural area, and I don’t need to leave the farm very often except to pick up groceries curbside and use the drive-through drug store. And just like everyone it can be tremendously lonesome and at times very hard, but my reality check at that moment is to remember that so many people are struggling so much more than I am. The minute I start feeling sorry for myself, that’s all I have to think about and I stand up a little straighter.”
After all, Carpenter quickly reminds herself, she is not completely alone — there’s Angus and White Kitty. “And here I am in this beautiful part of the world and I walk every morning for miles, I’m out in nature as much as possible and I really do try to use those elements of my life as meditation and medicine and inspiration.”
Her songwriting walks are a long-established part of her process, although she’s trying not to put pressure on herself to be creative during these extraordinary times. A friend recently phoned her and told her how the various things she’d hoped to accomplish while stuck at home were coming to nought, and how bad it made her feel.
“I said to her, and I think I was saying it to myself at the same time, who among us is going to be accomplished during this time? It’s asking too much. The best you can do in that moment of frustration is to be still and inhale and be kind to yourself.” She catches herself. “I know, it sounds very woo-woo and Oprah-like.”
Carpenter’s new album, recorded in January and February of this year, is arguably the most intimate and autobiographical of her career. But what’s particularly noticeable is the powerful thread of empathy that runs through it, along with a repeated message of tolerance for our fellow humans, all of us carrying our private burdens and flaws.
It’s there in the titles: “It’s OK to Be Sad,” “Secret Keepers,” “Everybody’s Got Something.” In “Where the Beauty Is,” she takes the image of kintsugi pottery — “the shattered pieces of a bowl/ Filled and fused with dust and gold” — to illustrate that our brokenness is what makes us beautiful.
The final song of the album, “Farther Along and Further In,” suggests that these discoveries are ones that Carpenter has been making herself: “There’s a crack in the armor, an opening/ My heart seeing out and my eyes see in/ Where they’ve never seen before.” She agrees with the analysis. “It’s like I’m writing about my own experience, but talking to myself at the same moment. And that new reckoning with self has everything to do with growing older, it’s directly connected to that. The wisdom that comes to you with growing older is the sense that you don’t care as much anymore about little things that used to nag at you. You’re able to let them go. You’re able to realise you can find sustenance and comfort and meaning in things you never did before.”
So much of life, she says, is struggling with oneself — wanting to be better, smarter, more accomplished. “It’s as if as you grow older you’re able to shed that somehow and not care as much. That’s the gift of growing older.” Even still, there are things that are hard to share, even in song. In her excellent three-part podcast, recorded with poet Sarah Kay, Carpenter shared the inspiration behind the song, “Secret Keepers” — born of a #MeToo experience in her past — and admitted to Kay that she found it difficult to reveal too much of herself in her work.
There are other difficult, poignant subjects, not least the death of her friend John Jennings, to whom she pays moving tribute in “Old D 35.” Her fellow songwriter and longtime producer passed away five years ago from cancer, aged 61. “We weren’t just musical partners — he was my best friend,” says Carpenter. “He had been my boyfriend years ago and we’d evolved into being oldest friends. I miss him every day — there’s a hole in my life that’s always going to be there.”
The talk of loss brings us to John Prine, who died of Covid-19 in April. “People are experiencing these losses and have been unable in many instances to even be there with their loved one when they pass away. There’s probably nothing crueller. I may be wrong, I’m just guessing, but I think this terrible disease and catastrophe became a lot more real when someone like John died of it. Sometimes things don’t seem quite real until they touch you directly.”
The scale of the pandemic was only just becoming apparent as Carpenter finished mixing the album. She had chosen to return to England, in order to work once again with Ethan Johns, who produced her last album, Sometimes Just the Sky. The West Country, where Johns’ studio is based, is one of the parts of the world Carpenter loves most, and she finds a beautiful symmetry with her own Virginia countryside. “I live in the northern part of the Blue Ridge, where the mountains aren’t so dramatic as North Carolina. It’s gentler hills and pastures and valleys and whenever I’ve spent time in that area in England near Bath, it’s real similar.”
She performed in a show in London before heading home to the growing crisis. “Someone said to me since, ‘You’ll be one of the few people who can say you had a gig in London in 2020!’” Even now, she can’t bear to ponder when her next live gig might be. “If I think about it too much I get really sad.”
It is no surprise to hear her vent her fury with the Trump White House. “This country is burning up because of the absolute abdication of responsibility of the current administration,” she says. “It’s a debacle, and I feel equal parts rage and sadness.” Her political outspokenness has often caused a backlash among parts of her audience — what she calls the “shut up and sing brigade” — and she says she’s still “incredulous” to hear it. “They’re saying that by deciding to be a songwriter or a singer you’re not permitted to have a conscience. I would direct them to Nina Simone, who said it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live.”
Her passion for justice, both in her songs and through her support of organizations like the Women’s Refugee Commission, stems partly from the unusually global worldview she received during her childhood. Her father, an executive for the Asian edition of Life magazine, took his family to live in Japan for a couple of years when Carpenter was 11 years old. Her parents, prescient enough to know that they might never have the chance again, brought the children back to the US the long way, travelling through India, Hong Kong, Greece, Italy, and France.
It was, she says, a magical and eye-opening experience, and gave her “an understanding of what is necessary to be a contributing citizen of the world.” She notes, “My parents raised us to always speak out on behalf of people who have less than we do. That’s why it’s such an insult when people condemn artists for speaking out. I always think it’s a great loss when people feel they’re not able to speak their conscience.”
Still, a seam of hope for the future runs through this record, whatever present trials we face. “It’s disappointing to me when people think it’s a sad record – it’s almost as if they hear it and say, ‘There’s a lot of slow songs on here.’ Inherently it’s a record of looking toward the unknown future and believing that’s the best part.”
It’s certainly something she believes, as she return to the “solace and serenity” of the quiet farmland — to Angus, to White Kitty, and to her bubbling chicken stock.
Artist:Arlo McKinley Hometown: Norwood, Ohio Latest Album:Die Midwestern (Oh Boy Records) Rejected Band Names: Hatchet Wounds, Black Locust Inn, Thousand Dollar Car
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
With so many influences I could name, I always go back to Blaze Foley. His ability to put so much feeling and emotion into a simple song without ever taking himself so seriously. He always influenced me in my writing, and has been a reminder to always be myself.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
I would have to say that performing and knowing that one of my heroes, John Prine, had taken the time out of his day in the middle of the week to come see me play would probably top the list. He came to watch the band play at the High Watt in Nashville. That was a night I’ll never forget.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I read a lot when not listening to or writing music. Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Greil Marcus, Ted Chiang and many others. Ted Chiang writes very smart, socially-conscious science fiction that really stands out to me. I highly recommend checking him out if you haven’t already.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
That would have to be growing up in the Baptist church. Seeing that music could be so much more to people than just a sound and evoke real emotions in people appealed to me in a way that is hard to put into words. Along with that I grew up constantly surrounded by so many kinds of music that my family would be listening to. Country, punk, bluegrass, folk, metal, hip-hop, etc. It’s the only thing that I ever thought that I should be doing so I’d say the simple answer is, from the moment I discovered music I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
It would be to keep pushing myself to grow as a musician, always pushing myself to never create the same album twice. It would be to also keep creating music that people can correlate to their own lives in one way or another.
Photo credit: David McClister
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