Mary Chapin Carpenter Tickets

Short Biography
Mary Chapin Carpenter - The Age of Miracles

Street Date: April 27, 2010

I began writing the songs for The Age of Miracles in the summer of 2007. A few months prior, I had suffered a pulmonary embolism which had forced the cancellation of all touring and performing for that year. When I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands after recovering from this life threatening illness, the inclination to look inward and try to answer the question ""what now?"" was fairly unavoidable.

So I started writing a lot, and as often happens at that point in the creative process, I threw out far more than I kept. But little by little, over the next few years, ideas and thr...

Short Biography
Mary Chapin Carpenter - The Age of Miracles

Street Date: April 27, 2010

I began writing the songs for The Age of Miracles in the summer of 2007. A few months prior, I had suffered a pulmonary embolism which had forced the cancellation of all touring and performing for that year. When I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands after recovering from this life threatening illness, the inclination to look inward and try to answer the question ""what now?"" was fairly unavoidable.

So I started writing a lot, and as often happens at that point in the creative process, I threw out far more than I kept. But little by little, over the next few years, ideas and threads and themes and feelings and melodies started to stitch themselves together, and the soul of what would become this record began to reveal itself. Artwork credit: Laszlo Kubinyi

I have always made albums with the idea that each one is a snapshot of where you are in your life. That is no different with The Age of Miracles, and the title song was the first one that I finished with a sense that it was pointing the way towards the rest of the songs. It is a personal exploration of regret and resilience but also a larger, more universal expression of wonder at the times that we are living in. The references to the Apollo moon landing, Hurricane Katrina, the anguish of Jena, Louisiana, and the courageous protest of the Buddhist monks in Burma are backdrops to the message of the song, which is: we live in an age of miracles when we can still believe that they are possible. The title song ties together my own personal need to invest in optimism and hope with what I see as the world’'s weary yet unwavering ability to teach us lessons of humility and grace.

There are other songs on this record that I would describe as reports from that strange and mysterious territory known as Love and Marriage; there are songs of wishing to be a bird flying above the turmoil, of seeking solace and self knowledge in quietude; of longing to match the outwardly vulnerable person to the inward believer in strength and resilience. There is a song about the very first wife of Ernest Hemingway, using her voice to look back at the lost years of the Lost Generation, just before her husband falls in love with her best friend and changes her life forever.

And there is a song about the artist and activist Chen Guang, who was profiled in the New York Times in the days just before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. His dedication to his art and his need to bear witness to the events of that time now put him in daily peril; his unwillingness to be silent is now his life’'s purpose.

A few words about my co-producer Matt Rollings, my engineer Chuck Ainlay and the musicians that were gathered to record these songs: the sessions were charmed, in the way that intensely creative recording sessions can be. The energy of the core band [Russ Kunkel on drums, Glenn Worf on bass, Duke Levine on guitars and Matt Rollings on keyboards] never flagged and the generosity of ideas that flowed each day were utter gifts.

So, this is a collection of songs that blends personal tales of discovery and experience with more distant and imagined stories of one’'s purpose and relationship to the universe…...

In ""Mrs. Hemingway,"" the line goes, ""there’'s Sancerre and oysters/and Notre Dame’'s cloisters/and time, with its

In-depth Biography
Mary Chapin Carpenter was part of a small movement of folk-influenced country singer/songwriters of the late '80s. Although many of these performers never achieved commercial success, Carpenter was able to channel her anti-Nashville approach into chart success and industry awards by the early '90s.

Carpenter was born and raised in Princeton, NJ, the daughter of a Life magazine executive; she spent two years of her childhood in Japan, where her father was launching the Asian edition of Life. Her mother had begun to play guitar during the folk explosion of the early '60s, and she gave her daughter a guitar when Mary became interested in music as a child. Carpenter played music during her high-school years, but she didn't actively pursue it as a career. In 1974 her family moved to Washington, D.C., where she became involved in the city's folk music scene. After graduating from high school in the mid-'70s, she spent a year traveling Europe; when she was finished, she enrolled at Brown University, where she was an American civilization major.

Following her college graduation, she became deeply involved in the Washington-area folk scene, performing a mixture of originals, contemporary singer/songwriter material, and pop covers. Carpenter met guitarist John Jennings during the early '80s and the pair began performing together. They eventually made a demo tape of their songs, which they sold at their concerts. The tape wound up at Columbia Records, and the label offered Carpenter an audition. By early 1987, Columbia had signed her as a recording artist, and her first album, Hometown Girl, was released that year.

Hometown Girl and its follow-up, State of the Heart (1989), earned her a dedicated cult following, as well as two Top Ten singles, "Never Had It So Good" and "Quittin' Time." Country radio was hesitant to play her soft, folky, feminist material, but she received good reviews and airplay on more progressive country stations, as well as college radio. Shooting Straight in the Dark, released in 1990, managed to break down a lot of the barriers that stood in her way. "Down at the Twist and Shout" became a number two single and the album sold well, setting the stage for her breakthrough album, 1992's Come on Come On.

Come on Come On signaled a slight change in direction for Carpenter -- although there were still folk songs, she felt freer to loosen up on honky tonk and country-rock songs, which resulted in several hit singles. Two of the singles from the album -- "I Feel Lucky" and "Passionate Kisses" -- hit number four, and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" became her first number one. Come on Come On would eventually sell over two million copies. Her fifth album, Stones in the Road, released in 1994, concentrated on the folkier material, but it was still a major success, selling over a million copies within its first six months of release. Place in the World was released in October 1996, and Time* Sex* Love* followed in spring 2001. Carpenter's tenth album, 2004's Between Here and Gone, was produced with pianist Matt Rollings. The Calling was issued in 2007 by Zoë Records. Zoë also released a holiday album from Carpenter, Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas, in the fall of 2008. A new studio album, The Age of Miracles, appeared early in 2010. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi