Mary Chapin Carpenter Sings Her Life on Personal History
Mary Chapin Carpenter brings her most intimate album yet, Personal History, to Wolf Trap on Aug. 16 with special guest Brandy Clark.
“I spent five years working on this record,” says Mary Chapin Carpenter of Personal History, her luxurious new album released in early June.
As its title suggests, it’s an autobiographical work — though many of Carpenter’s songs across her vast career, from “This Shirt” to “Between the Dirt and the Stars,” have long drawn deeply and soulfully from her life.
“Writing songs has always been just the ultimate personal expression of life for me,” she says during an all-too-brief 15-minute phone call earlier this week. “Songwriting has always been the way I make sense of the world, my life, and my feelings.”
Carpenter freely admits she doesn’t know what makes Personal History different from her other works.
“It just feels more — to overuse the word — personal than anything else I’ve ever done,” she says. “You’d think that might be constricting in a way, but actually, there was just such freedom in embracing that. It’s like scanning all my memories and thoughts and feelings and remembering what it was like to — for example, in the song ‘Paint + Turpentine’ — slide into The Birchmere and see Guy Clark play when I was in my early twenties.”
She laughs, gently. “I have so many stories behind all of the songs that we don’t have time for me to share with you. But it was like every song was a moment in time in my life that I wanted to inhabit and explore and try to find understanding in. The album is about art as expression and memoir.”
Personal History, her 17th release, is ravishing. It’s among Carpenter’s finest in a career teeming with extraordinary works. The songs have her signature feel but reach further, with graceful traces of jazz instrumentation peppered throughout. She credits the layered richness to producer Josh Kaufman, a member of Bonny Light Horseman and a frequent contributor to Taylor Swift’s work.
“He’s so amazing,” says Carpenter, who still calls the D.C. area her home and will make an annual pilgrimage to Wolf Trap on Saturday, August 16. “Josh just hears things and then sort of lets something swing a little bit. I love the sound of this record, I love the elements in it, I love the horns, I love everything about it.
“When you’ve worked five years to make a record,” she continues, “and then it’s done, if you can’t feel like it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, then something went wrong.”
Kaufman also produced Looking For The Thread, a “one-off” surprise release that arrived a few months before Personal History. The album pairs Carpenter with Scottish folk singers Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart, the three trading off leads while weaving their voices into rapturous, entrancing harmonies.
“Am I giving it away if I tell you that the very first song of the [live] set is [Thread‘s] ‘A Heart That Never Closes’? It feels like a wonderful way to open our set on tour. It’s almost like a mission statement.”
Mary Chapin Carpenter appears with special guest Brandy Clark at Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Road, Vienna, Va., on Saturday, Aug. 16. Gates open at 6 p.m. Tickets start at $54.50, with both reserved seating and lawn still available. Visit www.wolftrap.org.
The current tour continues through Oct. 11. For venues and dates, visit www.marychapincarpenter.com.
More from Metro Weekly:
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.