Mary Chapin Carpenter

Mary Chapin Carpenter has her Grammys and CMA awards, but between tours she avoids the spotlight and keeps a low profile. “I never, even in college when I was playing music in bars and clubs in DC to earn money, thought I’d take [music] much further than the local bars,” Carpenter says from her home in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. “I thought I’d graduate from college and get a day job in the real world. It’s still unbelievable [to me] that I’m doing what I’m doing. There was no ‘bam’ moment when I decided to go for it. It just evolved and even today, every record is still excruciating. After I finish each one, I’m convinced that this is the end. Then every summer I call up the band and we go play for people. All the hard work you do to create an audience disappears the moment you step on stage.

“All that said, there’s something about the cult of celebrity in this country that’s kind of gooey. I read the junky mags to keep up with the gossip, but I wish people would balance that out with an interest in their local communities and work for the environment or vote or do something that would build connections between friends and neighbors.”

Carpenter puts her money where her mouth is and donates time and energy to many causes, including the Campaign for a Landmine Free World. It’s what you’d expect from a writer whose career is based on introspective, heartfelt songs. “When I’m working it’s a very intense state—working on and working through my emotions. The work feels cathartic, but is it a mirror of my life apart from the creative process? I’m sure there’s a connection, there’s always room to try to do better, be better, to reach out to the world more, but it’s hard to say if the intensity comes from my life and into my songs, or from the songs and into my life.”

Carpenter’s latest, Between Here and Gone, is as deep and intense as anything she’s ever recorded—a stirring meditation on love, loss and mortality, full of narratives that manage to find the light of grace even in the darkest places. “Every album, or collection of songs, goes through a process in the writing. I have a yellow legal pad and I sit at my desk with my mini-disc player and my pencil, with my guitar in my lap and work at it. It’s difficult for me to write anywhere else—on the road or in a hotel room. I remember Melissa Etheridge telling me, ‘I can write on an airplane on a napkin just to get an idea down.’ I wish I could grab ideas that way, but I don’t. Nothing comes all at once, but over a long stretch they do. I have periods of intense productivity and sometimes I look at a batch and nothing’s a keeper; other times I keep a lot of stuff and everything feels golden.

“When I wrote ‘Grand Central Station,’ [a song about the aftermath of 9/11] I thought that would be the centerpiece [of the new album] because it came from such a powerful experience, but there was a shift as the songs came to life and the themes of loss and grief came to the fore. ‘Between Here and Gone’ is about the death of Dave Carter, a great songwriter who was just starting to get some attention. I was so in awe of what he’d given this world in music and words that I was stunned when I heard he’d died. It was an odd sensation to feel this terrible grief for someone I’d never known. And since I was already feeling a lot of grief and awareness of my own mortality, I began wondering—if I died, could I make amends for my past sins? If happiness and love are so fleeting, are they still worth having? That’s why I closed the album with ‘Elysium.’ The themes of loss and grief needed a ray of renewal and belief and happiness, as fleeting as it may be; that was a shift I went through as I was making it.”

In the world of pop music, where people avoid reality—especially the taboo topics of aging and mortality—is Carpenter taking a risk by being so open about her core emotions? “Answering that question brings to mind an article I read a long time ago,” she says. “I wish I could remember the singer that was being quoted, but when she was asked why she sang so many sad songs she said, ‘Singing sad songs makes me brave.’ Facing your grief and loss is tough, but those emotions are also the feelings that fuel your soul.”