Amazing Grace is a very new venue for a long-established icon of Americana. A finely converted 19th-century church situated at one side of a quadrangle that covers London Bridge station, The Shard, and Guy’s Hospital, it is literally and aesthetically a vast journey from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s oft-referenced farmstead home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Billed as An Audience with Mary Chapin Carpenter, it’s an intimate evening for around 200 clued-up fans. Carpenter, with her acoustic guitar to hand, opened up to an insightful and well-prepared interviewer in, Nicole Taylor, the acclaimed screenwriter and a long-time Carpenter fan. It’s a one-off prequel to the imminent new album “Personal History” and to a truly hefty USA tour that ploughs through the summer and across that nation, edging briefly into the decidedly separate nation of Canada. It’s her first solo album since 2020’s excellent “The Dirt And The Stars”, though it follows just months after the collaboration “Looking For The Thread”, recorded with Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis, a real gem which includes three Carpenter-penned songs which carry her trademark style and her lead vocals.
Over 80 minutes, Carpenter chatted with Taylor, and we were treated to a mini set with four new songs, which confirm that she is in her creative prime. ‘Bitter Ender’, which she described in speech marks as ‘the first single’, chugged along endearingly: its title self-explanatory and stylistically it brought to mind her earlier years. Next was the lengthier ‘Girl and her Dog’, its narrative starting by observing an old lady driving home with her dogs after an early morning walk and broadening out to assess the creativity of the older generation, “The older I get/the more I see…..the older I get/the less I need”. ‘Saving Things’ has its genesis in Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand blog, and both lyrically and musically, it is a rich gem, picking up on a range of physical and experiential things that carry personal resonance. The fourth new song, ‘Home Is A Song’, was the most tranquilly paced number and reiterates that underpinning link between the artist, her home and her music.
Carpenter is always respected as a reflective, original, and notably open and honest articulator of her thoughts, whether in songs or in speech. Her upbringing steered her contemplative nature, with both parents steeped in music and “Three sisters who were really loud“, so she took on the quieter role in the sisterhood. Tonight, we are offered such insights and neatly navigated by Taylor; she drills down into the granular details of the writing and creating process. She stressed that however much there may be the occasional inspiration from the ether, the majority of the crafting is done “at my kitchen table…..with a yellow legal pad of paper and a pencil and eraser.” She described an often painstaking process with numerous unsuccessful drafts discarded along the way. Talking about the recording process, she gave high praise to the Real World studio near Bath, where she has recorded her last four albums, and she’s modest and slightly cautious to acknowledge that any of her work gives her great pride or joy, though she’s clearly aware that it plays a large role in other’s happiness, as her 17 million album sales testify.
She briefly and tactfully touched on matters outside the music itself, mentioning how the modern world of streaming has totally uprooted the “paths” she had in developing her early career. And without directly referencing anything political, she relates how “art can be resistance against…. chaos, ignorance, intolerance”.
Whilst the pandemic dealt a huge blow to the prospects of touring her then-new album “The Dirt And The Stars”, she said of the obligatory solitude that it imposed that “I’ve been training my whole life for this!” and amongst creative stimuli in that period she found Elizabeth Strout’s novel ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’. Regarding fame, Carpenter told Taylor that she never enjoys “the white-hot light of attention above your head” that celebrity brings, which in her case came at around 30 years old, fortunately at a stage when she had people to keep her grounded in normal life. And after all this, her essence remains as though “I still feel like the same 12-year-old kid“.
Excellent article. This befitting venue must have been an awesome night for those lucky enough to attend. Can’t wait for the new cd to arrive in the mail in a few short weeks and catch her live in Toronto with Brandy Clark come August.