Tag: mary-chapin carpenter

Canon Fodder: Lucinda Williams, ‘Lucinda Williams’

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Because she spent so much time between albums — eight years between her second and third, six between her fourth and fifth — Lucinda Williams has been assigned a reputation as a perfectionist, as though country music must be approached with the sonic exactitude of prog-rock. But the near-decade interim separating 1980’s Happy Woman Blues and 1988’s Lucinda Williams doesn’t indicate a maniacal pursuit of a specific vision, although these songs are as close to perfect as just about any country album of that decade. Instead, the Louisiana-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter spent those years redefining her sound away from acoustic blues to something closer to country-rock, moving out of Texas for Southern California, and trying like mad to sell herself to a record label. Recording Lucinda Williams took less than a month. Getting somebody to give a shit took significantly longer.

As Williams has said, in the 1980s, she was perceived as too country for rock radio and too rock for country radio. Lucinda Williams continually writes and rewrites its own rules, with each song presenting a slightly different definition of what “country” and “rock” might be. “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” opens the album with a bouncy drum beat and a bright guitar lick, with Williams rushing through that title phrase, jumbling the words together as though mid-sprint. It’s full of hope and intense desire, both echoed on the story-song “The Night’s Too Long” and the list of demands “Passionate Kisses.” The blues still informs her songwriting, albeit in different forms: “Am I Too Blue” adheres to the country blues setting, but “Changed the Locks” is something new for Williams, a low-down urban blues tune surprisingly lascivious in its harmonica riff and humorous in its lust and self-delusion. “I changed the lock on my front door so you can’t see me anymore,” she testifies. “And you can’t come inside my house, and you can’t lie down on my couch.” Few singers — including Tom Petty, who covered the song in 1996 — could draw so much sexual promise out of the word “couch.”

Like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Lucinda Williams has become symbolic of the old art-versus-commerce debate, a manifestation of the grievous oversight of major labels and radio programmers, held up as evidence that the business of music, by default, ignores good music in favor of marketable product (as though there’s no overlap). Released in fall 1988, the album became a cause célèbre in Nashville, particularly among female musicians: Patty Loveless covered “The Night’s Too Long” in 1990, Mary Chapin Carpenter enjoyed her biggest hit with “Passionate Kisses” in 1991, and Emmylou Harris sang “Crescent City” on Cowgirl’s Prayer in 1993. You could almost reconstruct the tracklist with excellent covers.

Generally perceived as much more conservative than the audience or the artists it ostensibly serves, in the late 1980s, country radio was only just shifting away from the gauzy nostalgia of neo-traditionalists and the last sputterings of legacy artists and moving toward the hat acts who would define the genre into the next decade. In the fall of 1988, when Lucinda Williams finally made it to record store shelves, Dwight Yoakam, Rosanne Cash, Tanya Tucker, and the Oak Ridge Boys all enjoyed number one country hits. Noted country eccentric Lyle Lovett enjoyed two gold records in 1988 and 1989. Mainstream country music has become a thread-bare strawman for alt-country and roots audiences, but it wasn’t just the industry’s prudishness that kept Lucinda Williams off the charts and the playlists, despite that story’s persistence over the years.

It wasn’t something in the lyrics, either. There were rumors that radio executives objected to the prurience of the line, “His back’s all soaked with sweat,” sure to send housewives into a tizzy, but “The Night’s Too Long” was soon a single for Loveless. Williams’ voice was cited as a potentially alienating factor, one that blurred its syllables around the edges, slurring its speech after too many cold Coronas in some lost honkytonk. Williams replaces the recognizable twang with something more idiosyncratic, something more rooted in geography, something that was, at the time (and definitely still is), as foreign to country radio as ouds and zithers. Lovett’s deadpan drawl and Yoakam’s Bakersfield barb were similarly iconoclastic, but they were guys in an industry that preferred women more easily manageable and malleable (which is not to dismiss the self-possession of Williams’ female contemporaries, but more to speak to the considerable feat of their success).

Ultimately, Lucinda Williams just wasn’t designed for radio. It wasn’t meant for the mainstream. It has become exactly what it was supposed to be: a cult record, a foundational document, the wellspring of a new strain of music that would eventually be labeled alt-country. The Jayhawks might have debuted two years earlier, and Uncle Tupelo might have named the magazine, but this album — more than any other — revealed the limitations of Nashville and its neglect of very large swathes of country music listeners. Williams staked out all new territory. She had had a fairly itinerant life, born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but raised elsewhere. She’d lived in Arkansas with her father, the poet Miller Williams, then Texas, where she made two albums of tentative country blues that even her most avid fans don’t spin much anymore. Most of her 1980s were spent in Los Angeles, which is perhaps the most significant aspect of Lucinda Williams.

That city was a mecca for country music as early as the Great Depression, when itinerant Southerners and Midwesterners moved west looking for work. Singing cowboys proliferated throughout the 1930s and 1940s before they were eventually replaced by crooners and rock stars. The term “country-rock” was coined in Southern California, thanks to Gram Parsons and the Beau Brummels (who recorded the overlooked Bradley’s Barn with Owen Bradley in 1968). Around the same time, Bakersfield became a powerful force in country music; roughly two hours north of Los Angeles, the town supported more than its fair share of roadhouses and honkytonks, where country music was played on electric guitars with strong backbeats and where Buck Owens and Merle Haggard cut their teeth.

Williams might have appreciated those artists, but at least on her self-titled album, her sound never borrowed much from those scenes. Instead, Lucinda Williams sounds bound to a city that, in 1988, would have still been viewed by those back east as a den of crime and ersatz glamour — cocaine and liberalism, yuppies and punks. The city’s punk scene had somehow made room for twang, with X spiking their punk with rockabilly (and sharing stages with Dwight Yoakam) and Lone Justice sneaking out of the underground with “Ways to Be Wicked.” As Williams told Spin in 2016, “There was an actual really cool thing going on out in L.A. in the mid-‘80s, [acts] like the Long Ryders, the Lonesome Strangers, the Blasters, Rosie Flores, and X. I was just opening for bands, and a lot of labels were noticing me and would come to my gigs, but nobody would sign me; they all passed on me, even the smaller labels like Rhino and Rounder.” It took an English label to finally sign her.

To call Rough Trade a punk label would be to minimize the breadth of its catalog, which included a remarkable mix of industrial (Cabaret Voltaire), punk (Stiff Little Fingers), post-punk (the Pop Group), pop (the Smiths), and things in between (Panther Burns). The label opened an American office in 1987, with a mission to sign more U.S. acts. Still, Williams was a departure for the label — a risky bet that paid off. Lucinda Williams peaked at 39 on the Billboard album charts and spawned two EPs in 1989. Her next album would be released by an imprint of Elektra Records, the one after that by Mercury.

The portrayal of Williams as somehow outside the industry — as an alternative to the mainstream — persists today, perpetuated by the woman herself. Williams has continually distanced herself from what she described to Billboard as the “straighter country music industry of Nashville.” In response to that interview, Chuck Klosterman calls her out in Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs and predicts “Lucinda Williams’ music won’t matter in 20 years. Oh, she’ll be remembered historically, because the brainiacs who write pop reference books will always include her name under W. She’ll be a nifty signpost for music geeks. But her songs will die like softcover books filled with post-modern poetry, endorsed by Robert Pinsky and empty to everyone else. Lucinda Williams does not matter.”

As with so many Klosterman statements, it’s provocative, entertaining, and demonstrably untrue. Fourteen years later, Lucinda Williams still matters — as a songwriter routinely covered by artists in a range of genres, as an industry cautionary tale, as an alt-country figurehead, as an artist boldly reinventing herself on her most recent albums. And Lucinda Williams matters perhaps even more — not because we’re still talking about it 30 years later, but because no one is really from Los Angeles. At its heart, this is an album about small-town transplants in big cities, about Southern ex-pats far from home, and few artists have taken up that musical sensibility as confidently or as comfortably as Williams, an LA native displaced in L.A.

“The Night’s Too Long” makes the theme literal, describing a young woman who sells her belongings to move to where things are actually happening. Williams gives her a name, a job, and a hometown in the song’s first line: “Sylvia was working as a waitress in Beaumont.” She moves away to “get what I want,” which might as well be the laundry list of demands on “Passionate Kisses.” Home and travel and loneliness and melancholy suffuse these songs. “Crescent City” recounts a trip back to Louisiana, where she — maybe Lucinda herself, or perhaps Sylvia — hangs out with her family, listens to zydeco, takes rides in open cars. “Let’s see how these blues’ll do in a town where the good times stay,” she sings, as Doug Atwell’s fiddle solo winds its way through those familiar backroads and across that “longest bridge” over Pontchartrain. It’s a poignant song for any listener who doesn’t live where they grew up. It’s the sound of rediscovering the joy and reassurance of home, a theme that ultimately transcends genre, industry, and even performer.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Residing within the Questions

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It’s been said with age comes wisdom, but for Mary Chapin Carpenter, it’s more likely to deliver questions. Where wisdom does arise for the now 58-year-old singer/songwriter is in living with them, rather than thinking answers offer any absolute understanding. “I think the questions are far more important than any answers,” she says. “Our job is to pose the questions and provoke each other to think about these things.” Carpenter has long exhibited an inquisitive nature, her music serving as the conduit for explorations both internal and external, but don’t expect her new album, The Things We Are Made Of, to provide shining pearls of knowledge. Instead, she remains content residing in the unknown. “I don’t know if I would describe anything as a lesson,” she says about her new music, “because that conjures up the idea that there was some kind of reckoning, in a way.”

Carpenter’s conversation contains a measured quality as she seeks to connect the shapelessness of thought with the structure of language, so that nothing gets lost in translation. Words, after all, don’t always naturally comprise the meaning that manifests internally. Based on the care and consideration she brings to her everyday speech, it’s easy to draw parallels to her writing process. Carpenter has long been a striking lyricist, her ability to capture phrases earning her five Grammys and 15 total nominations, among many other industry accolades.

Discussing how she approached songwriting, Carpenter explains reaching a place where she, quite simply, tried to get out of her own way. “It was a very gradual sense of trying to be as un-self-conscious in writing as possible, and to feel as open to the world as possible. I think that inspiration is everywhere you look, and you have to be open to it, let it sort of filter in.” As freeing as that openness sounds, it also involves uncertainty. To be open to an experience arguably means discarding any expectations or control attached to it.

In the album’s first song, “Something Tamed Something Wild,” Carpenter explores relinquishing control and enjoying the journey, rather than the destination, as a result. It’s a sentiment long-touted to an increasingly frenzied and fast-paced population, but under Carpenter’s care, her lyrics do what they do best: evoke a remarkable level of honesty. “So the things that matter to me now are different from the past / I care less about arriving and just being in the path / Of some light carved out of nothing / The way it feels when the universe has smiled,” she sings, breaking beyond the meter while the melody and rhythm hold tight. As a result, the platitude’s original meaning takes on refreshing perspective grounded from her subjective experience.

Carpenter also plays with the chorus throughout the song, revealing the heart’s complexities: Treasures become lessons become echoes become voices become love. She creates a space where juxtaposing forces exist within the same moment, which finds its culmination in the chorus’s final line, “Something tamed, something wild.” That phrase, perhaps, pushes against the cultural tendency to position people — but, really, women — in either/or spaces. To be both tamed and wild moves beyond a restrictive dichotomy to rest in the messiness that living entails and further emphasizes what she offers as a songwriter.

Carpenter admits, “I’ve never in my life felt limited by anything other than myself,” but that doesn’t mean her own experience blinds her to what takes place all around her. “I’m fully aware that, in our culture and in our society, there are myriad limits and boundaries and ridiculous glass ceilings and etiquettes from top to bottom,” she says. “I know those things exist. Maybe I’ve gotten myself in trouble here and there by either ignoring them or mouthing off about them or whatever it is. I see something that says you can’t be a certain way, and it just makes me want to be that certain way.” Any conscious pushback on her part derived from her refusal to be silenced by what others might think. Of course, Carpenter shares, there have been negative letters and comments and opinions, but that hasn’t made her rethink her approach to songwriting. “Life’s too short to not say what you feel. Your voice is your voice; it’s all we have. To even contemplate not using it … I can’t even contemplate it,” she says earnestly, her dusky timbre expressing an assuredness that only comes from someone comfortable in her own skin.

Aging — especially reaching an age where society tends to look away — manifests thematically on her new album. But, again, she refuses to take any experience at face value. Carpenter says about the current youth-obsessed culture, “When you get to this place in life, it emphasizes loss and the things that you no longer have, and I feel like that is not digging deep enough.” The album’s second song, “The Middle Ages,” touches upon the surprise of finding yourself older, as well as the questions that follow. Carpenter turns what at first could come across as a melancholy reaction into a celebration. “And way back in the back of your mind, you heard something getting through / Like some beautiful passage without words welcoming you / To the middle ages,” she sings, the song’s lead guitar producing a lighter melodic layer to contrast her deeper vocals.

Carpenter exhibits a sense of pride discussing the years she’s achieved, turning to one of her favorite philosophers, G. K. Chesterton. If ever she can’t hit upon the meaning using her own words, she’s more than comfortable leaning into someone else who has influenced her. Chesterton is one in a series of references that pepper her conversation. “He talked about how, when you’re young and something bad happens, it often can feel like the end of the world,” she explains, “but when you’re older, he says, ‘The soul survives its adventures.’ It’s that great inspiration that comes to people who are middle-aged. You don’t care as much what people think. There’s so much freedom in that; there’s so much autonomy. You have a greater sense of purpose, you have a greater sense of control over your own life, you realize how important personal growth is, having these experiences that challenge you to think about yourself.”

If it wasn’t clear already, Carpenter is an avid reader, her mind stacked full of stories, poems, authors, and more — each of which has helped her face that challenge of self-discovery and each containing an important message clarifying the experience of being alive. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Straught is one such book. In it, a writing instructor character says, according to Carpenter, “Each one of us, we only have one story. And you’re going to write that story a thousand different ways. Don’t ever worry about your story; you only have one.” She found it applicable to her craft. “When I read that, what it made me feel like is, ‘Yes, I have one story and the songs are the ways I write it a thousand different ways,’ she says. “That’s what they represent.”

For Carpenter, the telling has naturally changed as she’s gotten older, but she doesn’t recognize age as a limit, nor should she. The prolific songwriter has put out 14 albums, infusing each with a degree of thought that not only makes her an important voice but a necessary one. It’s a point she sees reflected in her fellow musicians. She says, “I love how vehement Lucinda Williams, an old friend and someone I admire so much, is. She was talking recently in an article and she makes no bones about saying, ‘I’m doing the best work I’ve ever done.’ For her to say that without apology is so wonderful, so refreshing. Shout it from the mountaintops!”

While she takes a more modest tone when discussing her own work, it’s clear she’s proud of The Things We Are Made Of, but also the new direction in which it pushed her. She partnered with producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Lake Street Dive) for the first time. “As you can imagine it was terrifying to show up and you’ve never worked with someone before,” she says. “You’re putting yourself in their hands.” Curiously, Cobb did not want to hear her songs ahead of time. In the end, his process allowed Carpenter’s voice to shine through without weighing it down with unnecessary instrumentation or overproduction. “He wanted to be as responsive in an immediate way as possible,” she explains. “I didn’t know what to make of it.”

She adds, “He really pushed me to do certain things, but he freed me up, as well. I trusted him. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.”

With yet another album to her name, Carpenter continues to serve as a kind of contemporary philosopher, mining questions for what they offer in and of themselves, rather than seeking answers from the very start. Hers is neither a naïve nor a quixotic outlook, but one willing to view all experiences — both good and bad — with a degree of curiosity that only benefits the recipients of what she’s learned and is learning. Referencing yet another meaningful figure in her life, Sir George Martin, she says, “One of his favorite things that he used to say is that, ‘Age is a thing you have to live with, if you’re lucky.’ If we’re lucky enough to reach this point in time, we get to be the beneficiaries of this wisdom that can only come with reaching this point and time. I think that’s a big thing.”

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

LISTEN: Mary Chapin Carpenter, ‘The Blue Distance’

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Artist: Mary Chapin Carpenter
Hometown: Princeton, NJ
Song: “The Blue Distance"
Album: The Things That We Are Made Of
Release Date: May 6
Label: Lambent Light Records via Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: "The Icelandic writer Roni Horn spoke of the world as being 'blue at it’s edges and it’s depths … the color of that distance is the color of emotion, the color of solitude and desire … the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go …' This song attempts to speak to these things — how they make us who we are and how deeply we need people in our lives to understand these things in us." — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Photo credit: Aaron Farrington

The Natural Course of Things: A Conversation with the Infamous Stringdusters

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What do you get when you cross a bunch of roots-minded female singers with a bunch of bluegrass-adjacent male musicians? Why Ladies & Gentlemen, of course the new release from the Infamous Stringdusters which features appearances by Joan Osborne, Lee Ann Womack, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Abigail Washburn, and eight more of the finest voices roots music has to offer. It's the sixth record in nine years for the band — which is comprised of co-founders Chris Pandolfi (banjo) and Andy Hall (dobro), along with Andy Falco (guitar), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), and Travis Book (bass) — and it showcases why the Stringdusters are considered one of the most innovative groups currently on the circuit.

First off, kudos on some great guests. [Joan] Osborne and [Lee Ann] Womack are two of my all-time favorite voices. So, did you guys just put a bunch of singers' names on a dart board and start throwing? How'd you figure out who you wanted?

Chris Pandolfi: The concept for this thing was two-fold: On the one hand, we wanted to do something different, as far as an album goes, just to mix it up. But a big part of it was also that we had made a lot of great friends along the way and we thought, “Who could we utilize, in terms of special guests?” And this concept evolved out of that — “What if we call on some of these awesome lady singers that we've met over the years?”

As the process started, the list was mainly comprised of people who were more in our community, in our musical scene. But, then, of course, some of those names were not, necessarily, people that we knew before the advent of this project — like Joan Osborne. The list was a combination of the two and, as the material evolved and we were getting a feel for the aesthetic of these different songs, we just did the best we could. Once the list was close to what we thought it would be and we got some confirmations from people, we — along with our producer — just did our best to match up what songs we thought would be best for each lady.

To me, that's one of the awesome successes of this album: It really uses these artists, I think, in a context that works for them. Look at the Joss Stone track or the Lee Ann Womack track … or Celia Woodsmith, who had the perfect voice for that song. All the ladies, in their own ways, brought their thing to the project and I think, in the process, they helped us take these songs and make them something that we couldn't have necessarily done on our own. They helped us make the most of all these unique and different sounds and styles that they have. It really came together that way. Certain people weren't able to do it, and the list filled out from there. But where we ended up, as far as the guests and what songs they were on, I think that's one of the cool successes of the album. The song “Have a Little Faith” was actually written for Joss Stone, with her in mind. I know that.

I was going to ask … considering that the span does run from Joss Stone to Sarah Jarosz, which came first — the singers or the songs? Did you write for specific voices or was that the only one?

Andy Hall: Yes, I believe so. Aside from that, we all write individually or co-write or whatever and bring songs to the band. So we all had songs, individually, that we were ready to bring to the next project. But I think that was the only one that was written for the singer. In other instances, say for Aoife O'Donovan, hearing that song “Run to Heaven,” it sort of reminded us of Crooked Still, just the way that sounded. In that instance, that became clear that would work that way. Each song just triggered a little something … an idea. That was one of the fun, creative parts — who would sound good on what song.

So how'd you figure out that Joss likes a little bluegrass in her soul?

AH: [Laughs] Andy Falco was hired to play in her band for a Rock in Rio festival a number of years ago. That's how that connection came about. Our connection with Joss was one of the things that inspired this record because Joss came to the States, and we opened up for her in Kansas City. She wanted to do a video of us and her playing together, during the day. She sang our song “Fork in the Road” with us backing her up for this video project she was doing, and it just sounded so cool. That was one of the sparks for this project. But that's also how that connection came about.

Interesting. Who was the first to say yes? And who was the biggest long-shot you can't believe you landed?

CP: Hmmm … Who was the first to say yes?

AH: The first person who recorded with us was, I believe, Jen Hartswick who didn't sing, but played trumpet on a number of songs. Then Mary-Chapin Carpenter was the first vocalist to put her track down. She was in Nashville while we were tracking. But, as far as asking, I don't remember.

How free were the reins when it came time to let them do their thing? Was it, “Have at it, gals!”

CP: Our producer was on hand for every session, I think, except for one or two. He did a really great job with this project — Chris Goldsmith — just in terms of staying true to his vision, which a lot of it was sonic, and he got a really cool, consistent sound across the record, although there is a real variety of styles there. I think that vision extended into how these songs would sound best. But, then again, there were cases — Joss is a great example … that track, by design, was made to let her do her thing which is to cut loose and almost improvise a lot of the phrasing. In cases where that would make the music come to life, that's what happened. In other cases, probably Goldsmith had a clearer vision of how it was supposed to sound. To some extent, every song was about letting these ladies do their thing.

The Sara Watkins track jumps to mind. She has such a compelling vocal on there and it's all because she does her thing. There's a moment where she really goes for it, and she's such an awesome singer and performer that the idea of getting her to do her thing, that's the whole point. So, to some extent, I think that was going on with everyone.

Obviously, all the guest vocalists aren't on the road with you, so how are you touring this record?

AH: We have Nicki Bluhm on the road with us for this whole tour and she is really helping. She's singing a lot of the Ladies & Gentleman songs that we do. Sometimes we'll do a few just on our own, but Nicki's on every show for the whole Spring tour so she's singing a lot of it. We also had Della Mae opening for it on a bunch of it, and Celia Woodsmith would come up and sing her song.

It's amazing how you cross paths with musicians on the road and that's, initially, how we made a lot of these contacts. We ran into Aoife O'Donovan — she was in L.A. when we were there recently, so she came and sang with us, and did a Jam in the Van session with us. We've designed part of the tour to have female bands supporting us, so we have Paper Bird coming out to open some shows and, hopefully, they're going to be able to help share some of the vocal duties. We have a lot of guests, but Nicki is anchoring all that.

More broadly speaking, you guys are very invested in being innovators within “bluegrass.” That's often a very subtle thing, though, right? So break it down … what are some of the things you guys do to open it up a bit and set yourselves apart while still honoring the traditions?

CP: One big thing that we're really focused on, consciously, is playing our own original music. The process of crafting original music is the thing that, simultaneously, helps us develop our sound as a band. We have a lot of co-writing going on, but mostly we arrange the music together. And we just try to figure out new ways to make all these instruments go together and distill all the different styles and influences into one sound that makes sense. We're pretty conscious about that.

We're really conscious about our live show. We're pretty committed to making the live experience really different every night. Of course, we're not the first band to ever do that, but we just try really hard to do our own version of that. And our fan base has come to expect a lot of variation and innovation, as far as on a night-to-night basis. They expect to see something different, and we're playing almost three hours a night, so we have to mix it up for our own sakes, too. Those are two big ones: playing our own stuff and focusing on having that live show be something that is really predicated on being different every night.

AH: One thing, specifically, that I know we've worked on a lot in the past few years is that we don't have a mandolin, which a lot of bluegrass-type bands have. The mandolin is a key rhythmic thing. Since we don't have that, we've had to get really creative with how we play rhythm and play rhythms that are not, say, bluegrass. Like on the Ladies & Gentlemen record, there are a lot of songs that don't have a traditional bluegrass beat. We've consciously spent a lot of time developing unique ways to play our instruments that you wouldn't necessarily expect or hear in other string band contexts. Myself being a dobro player, I take a lot of the rhythmic responsibilities, which is not a common thing. Not having a mandolin, we've had to get somewhat innovative with how we create rhythm and play grooves that aren't necessarily bluegrass. To me, that's something unique that we do.

It seems like there has to be a lot of trust between the band and the fans. You have to trust that they're going to follow you wherever you go, musically. And they have to trust that you're not going to do some crazy, way out of left field thing. Do you ever worry about splitting the difference in such a way that you isolate them … or any part of them?

AH: Well, yeah. The scene of traditional bluegrass and, say, the broader music scene that we're playing more in now, there is quite a difference there. We've chosen to be part of a music scene that is broader, where we play in festivals that are not just bluegrass festivals. I think, in that context, it's not quite as strange to have music that is slightly more creative, record to record. A lot of the fans we're appealing to are a little more used to that. But this is the first time we've ever done a record like this that is a very different, specific vision. Sure, you certainly wonder, “What are people going to think?” [Laughs]

CP: And we have, over the course of our career, definitely alienated people. That's part of the natural course of things. What we do is our thing. We decide where the music goes. That's one of the cool upsides of not being in what most people would perceive as a more popular style of music: You're not really beholden to any record label or anything like that. In the grassroots scene, there is some idea that your fans are going to follow you wherever you will go. Obviously, there's an extreme there and there are anomalies to that rule. But, for the most part, we're lucky: We have these great fans who want to check out all the different voices.

I have a side project that involves electronic elements and it's clearly not for the hardcore bluegrass people of the world. But there are plenty of people in our fan base who, though they don't listen to anything like that, they are excited for that to be their introduction to this musical world. I think that's a good glimpse into the way they think. They're like, “We love this band. We want to see what they're going to do. If this particular thing is not my cup of tea, then there's always going to be another album that comes out.” I think they are getting used to the fact that there are a lot of variations between projects and between songs and the live show, so it's almost part of the whole thing. So, for me, I'm not ever too worried that they're not going to dig it. As long as we make music that we believe in, I think our fans will get behind it.

Photo credit: McCormick Photos & Design, LLC