No matter what people may think, Mary Chapin Carpenter hasn't left country radio. Quite the contrary.
"I'm very happy and comfortable to be thought of as a country artist," says Carpenter, at home in Seattle. "I still want to come to the party. I still have my invitation."
But in recent years the party has gone on without her. Country radio snubbed the offerings from 1996's wry A Place in the World, and the disc became her poorest-selling effort since 1989's State of the Heart.
"I haven't been a presence on country radio for a while now," she says frankly. "There's a part of me that says if I put a record out and it doesn't chart, it's disappointing. But what am I going to do? Take my football and go home?"
In some ways, her success on traditional country radio was a surprise from the start. When she first hit the national scene in 1987, Carpenter looked more like the college folkie she was than a potential Nashville queen.
Her music reflected the duration she spent in D.C. clubs. Her own compositions are smart, sharp and pointed: He Thinks He'll Keep Her spoofed a Geritol commercial and painted a vivid picture of Carpenter as musical Everywoman all at the same time.
She wasn't down home unless Seattle was your definition of "down." Her deliciously sly reading of Lucinda Williams' Passionate Kisses was about as country as Cosmo Topper, but it still was embraced by the Nashville establishment.
Her success painted her as a major player in the early '90s. She drew to the format legions of listeners who never owned a pair of Justins and who think Resistol is an over-the-counter cold medicine. "I never liked country music until Mary Chapin Carpenter" seemed to be the mantra of her fans.
"I appreciate that comment, but I figure people that say that don't know a lot about country music," she says. "There's a lot of stuff out there that people are not exposed to. It's hard to define."
And as radio playlists grow tighter and the number of Stetson-sporting hunks increases, Carpenter's place seems equally hard to define.
"I don't know what other airplay there is for someone like me," she says. "I'm making music, so if somebody's playing it -- that's great. At a certain point, if nobody's playing it, well, that's not so great."
There's no problem for Carpenter on the road. She can play when she wants to play, where she wants to play and still draw the crowds.
"The shows do well, so something is still working," she says. "But records . . . it's a struggle. I'll hopefully keep touring, keep making records. I recognize the importance of having hits, but I can't control it."
The ironic thing is that Carpenter usually winds up with a record that doesn't have the lasting quality of her best work when she tries for a radio success. Case in point: Not Too Much to Ask, a duet that teamed her with good ol' boy Joe Diffie. It may have been a hit, but you won't find a lot of her fans screaming for her to sing the song in concert.
"I try to sort of meet the record label in the middle and find the marriage that works," she says. "The songs that I feel are little compromises are the ones that don't find success. That to me is a message to try to be true to me, to just follow my nose."
That comes to touring as well. She's in between albums and has nothing to hype, but she still opted to strike out on a full-scale national tour.
"People keep saying to me, 'You don't have a record out - what are you doing on the road?' " she says. "But it's simple: I am a musician. I like to play."
The tour stops range from such prestigious, big-ticket spots as the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles to Saturday's gig at the intimate Celebrity. She will appear with five musicians and personally selected the acts who will open for her. Phoenix gets a recently revitalized Joe Ely.
"This is a very lean and mean tour with not a lot of bells and whistles going on," she says. "Joe Ely is great. I'm playing some songs by other writers I like, just because I like them. I'm touring to have fun. I don't want to go bankrupt doing it, but it's fun."
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