Music & Concerts
Mary Chapin Carpenter looks back on three decades of music
Singer/songwriter on Va. venues, Cyndi Lauper and her overnight test
Mary Chapin Carpenter says she loves performing at both The Birchmere and Wolf Trap. (Photo by Jonathan Stewart)
Mary Chapin Carpenter
‘Sometimes Just the Sky Tour’
With Laura Cortese and The Dance Cards
Oct. 29-30
The Birchmere
3701 Mt. Vernon Ave.
Alexandria, VA
SOLD OUT
Celebrating 30 years in the music business, singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter released a new album entitled “Sometimes Just The Sky” in March and has been busy touring overseas and the U.S.
Carpenter has been a staple of the D.C. area performing annually at Wolf Trap and returning every few years to one of her old stomping grounds, The Birchmere.
The singer/songwriter spoke to the Blade by phone the day before she heads out on the road to begin the fall leg of her “Sometimes Just The Sky Tour.” She’s been running errands and doing some last minute things around her home when when we talk about her upcoming shows at The Birchmere, her new new album and highlights from her 30 year career.
BLADE: You’ve said you get nervous performing at The Birchmere. Why?
CARPENTER: It’s not just The Birchmere, I get nervous pretty much anywhere (laughs). It keeps you on your toes. I’m sure you heard other people say that, but it’s true. It keeps you alert and on your toes and in touch with everything around you. That said it’s not something I wish on anyone, but it’s just after all these years I’m kind of used to it I suppose and I’m not surprised when I feel those butterflies.
BLADE: You were at Wolf Trap a few months ago which is a place you’ve regularly played throughout your career. What’s it like going from a show there performing for 7,000 people to being in room performing for 500 at The Birchmere?
CARPENTER: Both of those places are so special. Anytime you’re walking on either stage you feel thrilled. What’s great about Wolf Trap is that even though it’s so many people, it has this ability because of its beauty, the way it’s set up, the open hearts that people bring with them in addition to their picnics, it can feel very intimate. That being said, The Birchmere can feel, even though it’s comparatively less people, like the biggest rock stage you’ve ever been on. You feel like you’re taking the roof off. The audiences are so amazing and you can just really dig into the whole thing. So each place doesn’t necessarily correspond to what you think it may be about. There’s an intimacy in a huge space and an amazing sense of being able to lift off in a small space.
BLADE: You re-recorded both hits and deeper cuts for “Sometimes Just the Sky.” How did that project come about?
CARPENTER: Well first of all, I wanted to do something to mark the milestone. I wanted to celebrate it with joy and with an artistic project. I didn’t feel the need to just re-release existing tracks or anything like that. It was an experiment of sorts to see how the passage of time affected songs that I knew backwards and forwards over the last 30 years. The oldest song against the newest song for example. I thought it would be interesting to see if they feel connected in some way. Magically to me they absolutely feel connected to one another. It was just a really special project for me. Again, it was initially to celebrate this milestone but as it went on it felt as a new album standing alone on itself. It was just so wild to have that experience. To record it with Ethan Johns in Western England, it’s one of my favorite places in the world and Ethan is amazing and I just — it felt like such a privilege to do it.
BLADE: How do you come up with set lists with such a vast catalogue?
CARPENTER: You know it’s not the easiest thing but it’s the challenge of every tour and every set list I’m creating. I feel like I have some boxes to tick off. One would be if there’s a new album around that tour I want to represent a certain amount that’s on that record and then … dive deeper in the existing catalog and try to come up with some things that might not have been heard recently and then it’s important to include songs people know or I’m going to make the presumption they know. I want people to feel there’s things they recognize and they can latch on that way. You know, so mixing it up in a bowl of those three things is the challenge and it’s just something that feels right, that particular mix up.
BLADE: Looking back over all your albums, is there any that you feel didn’t get the recognition it deserved from either critics or fans?
CARPENTER: Oh golly, well first of all I’m probably not the best person to ask. I tried for many, many years not to read reviews. I’m sure you heard other performers, artists, novelists, authors or whoever say that. Some people are totally fine doing that and over the years I discovered within myself that I just did better if I didn’t try and follow those things, so I wouldn’t have a line on what’s been well received versus what hasn’t been well received. It’s not like I don’t care, but it’s just sort of recognizing I do better without having someone’s criticism in my head.
BLADE: In 2007, you released an album entitled “The Calling.” It featured a few songs with political themes as well as songs that provided hope during a crazy time. Many of the themes in that album still ring true now in 2018. Will you be featuring any of those songs on this tour?
CARPENTER: There’s a song on there called “Why Shouldn’t We” and I’m polishing that up for this tour. I feel like that song speaks to the themes of our time. I very much want to put that forth in terms of how it illustrates how I feel about so many things. We need to figure out ways to talk to one another. That’s the most important thing to me is building the bridge to be able to talk to one another because it’s pretty lonely when you’ve got no one to talk to.
BLADE: When you’re writing, do you think of the impact you hope to have on the listener?
CARPENTER: Well, I don’t think I have that in my head when I’m working on a song because I’m really trying to answer my own questions first and listen to my own voice in a way. It’s really about feeling, for me, I can’t speak for any other songwriter, but for myself I’m trying to just speak to something as honestly and personally as I know how. You know, that’s sort of the gauge I guess. I heard a quote the other day and God it was beautiful. I forget who said it in reference to a book or something but it was how do you know when the book is finished and the response is when you’ve abandoned it (laughs). You know, when do you know a song is finished? I guess when you abandon it. But with that said, I think it makes a lot of sense. I feel it’s finished and I let it sit on my kitchen table and I give it what I call the overnight test. I try and walk away from it, let it sit there overnight and then come back to it the next day. When I play it again the next day, the response I have then tells me whether it’s a keeper, needs more work or goes right into the garbage bin.
BLADE: In 1993, you appeared on Dolly’s song “Romeo” with Billy Ray Cyrus, Tanya Tucker, Kathy Mattea and Pam Tillis. How did that come about? Any special memories about the recording of the song or the music video?
CARPENTER: Well I don’t remember how it came about, but I remember Dolly invited me to sing harmony on the song. For the video, it was just one of those days, my God. To be hanging out with those fabulous women and Billy Ray (laughs). It was hilarious. I was just glad it wasn’t my video because I hated making videos, hated them. I’d rather eat a cockroach than make a video. On that particular set I just had to sit around and get up every once in a while and sing and hang out with Dolly and all those ladies and Billy Ray — it was fun. I also remember I got to buy that black leather motorcycle jacket that I was wearing and to this day I think I lent it somebody and I don’t know where it is, I’m so mad. I want that jacket back.
BLADE: Also in 1993, you wrote a song with Cyndi Lauper that was on her “Hat Full of Stars” album called “Sally’s Pigeons.” How did you meet and what brought you together to write?
CARPENTER: I have a memory that I was part of a show at the Beacon Theater in New York and Cyndi was at that show, she was brought up to my dressing room and we were introduced as possibly getting together to maybe do some writing together. I was thrilled as you could imagine and she was into it and sometime soon after that I flew up to New York and she and her driving instructor picked me up at LaGuardia, so she’s like the driver in training, driving down the Cross Bronx Expressway turning her head to me in the backseat having a conversation and her driving institutor is in the front seat having a panic attack. (laughs) No, she was a good driver. We spent the next day or two working on the song that became “Sally’s Pigeons” and I think we finished it over the phone. This was back in the day when we used landlines still. Anyway, it was thrilling and I’ll never forget it.
BLADE: At the CMAs in 1994, you performed “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and at the end of the song, Little Richard came out and kissed you. How did you get Little Richard to appear with you?
CARPENTER: (laughs) I don’t know! The producer had great persuasive powers somehow. How cool was that? I loved every minute of it. I was having a blast.
Music & Concerts
Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule
Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1
I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.
Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).
Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.
With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.
Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”
That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.
While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.
Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.
On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.
Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.
When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.
Music & Concerts
Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’
Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.
For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.
Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.
The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”
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