By Steve Pond
Live Magazine 
January,1997
Photograph by Caroline Greyshock 

When you're the private type, a journey of introspection in the public eye can be daunting. On "A Place in the World", Mary Chapin Carpenter takes the trip with aplomb. You would not expect to find Mary Chapin Carpenter in a strip joint near Times Square, but that's where she is tonight. Or, rather, she's in a former strip joint that has been transformed into a private supper club, whose three tiers of tables are filled with retail buyers, radio programmers and other record-industry VIPs. Sony Music has invited them here tonight and let them have at a distinctly caloric buffet (meatballs, little bacon-wrapped hot dogs, potato skins filled with cheese and beans, Buffalo wings, pasta salad and the like), in the hopes that the evening will stir their interest in Carpenter's newest album, A Place in the World.

It's a more upbeat, radio-friendly collection than Carpenter's last album, 1994's Stones in the Road, and Sony has high hopes; they remember 1992's Come On Come On , which boasted seven hit singles. Hence this series of meet 'n' greet 'n' play gatherings around North America-gatherings at which a crew of handlers brings Carpenter herself from table to table, where she says hello, makes small talk and poses for about 200 photos with assorted bigwigs, wanna-bes and hangers-on.

It's not nearly as tawdry as lap dancing, but this is hardly Mary Chapin Carpenter's kind of event, either. Painfully shy, fiercely private and generally wary of cameras, the 38-year-old singer-songwriter is rarely comfortable being the center of attention-which means that she's as surprised as anyone to find herself thriving in this setting. "I'm actually enjoying it," she says, seemingly amazed. "I find myself coming out of my shell."

But then, over the past 10 years, Carpenter-Chapin to her friends, never Mary-has found herself flourishing in lots of unlikely situations. Though she grew up in New Jersey (plus a brief stint in Japan) and now lives in Washington, D.C., she's made her mark via Nashville. Though her music owes as much to folk and to mainstream pop as it does to country, the country charts are where songs like "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," "I Feel Lucky" and "Passionate Kisses" first became hits, helping her sell some 8 million albums. Though her only exposure to Cajun music came in a Washington club rather than a Louisiana nightspot, she wrote the hit "Down at the Twist and Shout," which noted Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet says is on a par with Hank Williams's classic "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" as an outsider's evocation of Cajun culture. And though she's spent much of her life feeling isolated, suffering through her parents' divorce and fighting to communicate, she's found her calling by sharing her feelings with millions of listeners.

"Chapin is by nature a shy person, and I think there are many things about being a star that are not necessarily appealing to her," says John Jennings, who met Carpenter in 1982 and became her coproducer, guitarist and "partner in crime," to use her words. "You surrender a percentage of your privacy, which is probably the aspect of this that she is least comfortable with, for good reason. But at the same time, I think she has found her comfort level." He pauses. "God, I hope so."

"It's a struggle," Carpenter admits. "But when you're in that place where you're really into what you're doing-whether onstage, or by yourself at your desk, or wherever-there is a great sense of fulfillment. It's one of the few times that you know who you are. You can say 'This is my identity: I'm a singer, I'm a songwriter.' It's a moment of peace."

Peace is not exactly what Mary Chapin Carpenter is enjoying on this balmy fall day in New York City. Ahead of her is a full schedule of interviews and other promotional stops; she's already done this in three other cities, and after New York she's heading off to Dallas and then Los Angeles to do it again. Still, she manages to be placid and relaxed as she settles into a hotel-room chair in a black jacket and slacks. Never at ease discussing her personal life-"There are days when I just don't want to let anybody in"-she can nonetheless be a lively conversationalist, by turns introspective and quite funny.

Her new album also balances the two sides. For every lighthearted song like "I Want to Be Your Girlfriend" (written mostly while walking her dog), there's a more probing tune along the lines of "Naked to the Eye" or "Ideas Are Like Stars," a reverie inspired by the pivotal American artist Joseph Cornell, a solitary eccentric who combed lower-Manhattan thrift stores in search of the detritus he assembled into extraordinary boxes.

"The things he did bespeak an inner life that is hard to reconcile with the life he lived," Carpenter says quietly. "He was like a child, an innocent, optimistic child at times. And then he would have terrible moments of regret and sadness and feeling disconnected."

It isn't hard to see why Carpenter is attracted to disconnected outsiders with rich inner lives. From the time she was a girl, she felt isolated, as if she were watching people around her through a pane of glass, too shy and lonely to be fully a part of things. Her parents divorced when she was in high school, which made matters worse; writing songs, she says, was "an escape hatch."

But by the time she graduated from Brown University, music also began to pay a few bills. She got steady work at clubs in the Washington area, then made a demo tape with the help of Jennings, with whom she'd recently ended a relationship. "It was really wonderful, and really hard," he says of those sessions. "Neither of us had ever made a record before, and there was the extra weight of the relationship. But I'm really happy with what we got."

Carpenter planned to sell the tape at her concerts, but just before she was ready to sign with the independent label Rounder Records, a Sony talent scout heard it and offered her a contract. That homemade album became her major-label debut, 1987's Hometown Girl. State of the Heart followed, and then came 1990's Shooting Straight in the Dark, which included her first big hit, "Down at the Twist and Shout." Since then, she's made an album every two years: the hit-laden Come On Come On, the quieter but eloquent Stones in the Road and now A Place in the World.

"I guess I should realize that's how it goes with me and be comfortable with that," she says of her deliberate pace. "It's a mysterious process to me, but somewhat predictable in a weird kind of way." She throws out a lot of songs before settling on each album, she says-and she's intent on structuring albums that take listeners on a journey.

On the new album, that's a journey that ends with the reflective title song- "not a song I felt was summing up a record, but rather one I felt would leave it 'to be continued.'"It has the feel of a woman sitting down, looking around her and inside her and taking stock; it almost sounds like a companion to "The Moon and St. Christopher," the devastating piece with which she ended Shooting Straight in the Dark six years ago.

"I hadn't thought of that," she says when the comparison is made. "But my knee-jerk reaction is that there is a kinship between those songs. They could be brother songs, sister songs. They sort of come from the same place."

In addition, she once spoke about writing "The Moon and St. Christopher" as "like using a song to try to find my place in the world." And now that phrase has resurfaced, this time as a song and album title. Concidence?

"Did I say that?" Carpenter asks, incredulous. "Get outta here." She shakes her head. "Well, I've often thought about it that way."

And she still uses songwriting that way, she adds. "More so than ever. I've always found that when I feel like I'm doing good work, when my work is meaningful to me, that leads to a sense of place and perspective. That, to me, is like a moment of clarity every once in a while. And that's when it all seems to make a bit more sense."

She laughs. "What people have been asking, they've been sort of leaning forward meaningfully and saying, 'And have you found your place in the world?' And I say, 'No, no, no, that's not what it's about.' It's evolving, it's ongoing."

So, she adds, is her shyness, her loneliness, her feelings of isolation. "I just think it's in my DNA," Carpenter says softly. "I think I'm made a certain way that I lack confidence at times, and I sure as heck wish I didn't. But I don't necessarily feel like it's this burden all the time. Maybe that's what spurs me on to do what I do. It's one of the ways I've found in my life to connect or communicate."

She grins, then mentions that singer Lyle Lovett-whose name she dropped in a memorable couplet from "I Feel Lucky," written before they'd ever met ("Dwight Yoakam's in the corner trying to catch my eye/Lyle Lovett's right beside me with his hand upon my thigh")-once told her that he uses songs to send messages to specific people. "That's definitely a way to communicate," she says chuckling. "I know that over the years there have been songs that I've written, knowing it's highly likely that the person it's about will hear it somehow. It's liberating to write that way."

She breaks up laughing, then goes on. "I dated this guy between my first and second records. I had dated John Jennings before that, and while it's not entirely true, I could say, "Okay, Hometown Girl was all about John. And then after that record I dated this guy, and he totally broke my heart. Totally. In fact, my friend Shawn Colvin and I, we called him Torture Boy. So then I wrote all the songs to State of the Heart . And then one night John walked into this bar in D.C. where this guy was, and State of the Heart was just about to come out. And so Torture Boy went up to John, real nervous and uptight, and said, 'So, how's everything going? H-h-how's the new record?' And John just looked at him and said, 'Well, let's put it this way: It's not about me this time.'" Her laugh is even bigger than before. "So, yeah, I've sent a few messages."

And suitors had better beware: She may send a few more.

"As long as I'm in the dating world," she concedes, "I run the risk of getting my heart broken again. And no doubt I'll write about it." Once again, she starts laughing, "Oh, man, thank God I can write songs. If I couldn't, I would probably explode. I'd be like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver."

You would not expect to find Mary Chapin Carpenter in a sleazy hard-rock dive on the Sunset Strip, but that's where she is tonight. Or, rather, she's in a former hard-rock dive that has been transformed into a state-of-the-art nightclub, whose two floors are filled with the Los Angeles version of those New York retail buyers, radio programmers and record-biz VIPs. It's a week later, and this is the last stop on Carpenter's promo tour.

Once again, she works the room, poses for photos, then heads backstage while a pair of Sony execs tout her as "one of the premier artist-writers of our times." They also introduce a promotional video made for the album: A mixture of historical footage, interview footage and behind-the-scenes looks at the making of new videos, it contains a moment when the interviewer (who's offscreen, so you can't tell if she's leaning forward meaningfully) intones, "Would you say you've found your place in the world?"

Aferward, Carpenter and her band take the stage for 45 minutes of music. Most is up-tempo and most is from the new album, save for occasional hits like "I Feel Lucky" and "Shut Up and Kiss Me." Flanked by guitarists Jennings and Duke Levine, she is in a buoyant mood, grinning as the band adds muscle to new songs like "The Better to Dream of You" and "I Want to Be Your Girlfriend" and occasionally getting more intimate for the likes of "Sudden Gift of Fate."

She encores with her 1994 hit "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," the exuberant story of a woman who walks out on her husband after 15 years of being taken for granted. Carpenter bears down, the band rocks hard, and at the end of the song she takes the original, rueful ending-"Now she's in the typing pool at minimum wage"-and turns it into a coda as triumphant as the music: "Now she's in the swimming pool sipping lemonade." In the front row, a woman screams her approval of the new lyrics, throws her head back and applauds wildly.

Then Carpenter introduces "a song by that icon of country music, Mr. Van Morrison." A roaring version of Morrison's glorious "Real Real Gone" follows, and Carpenter's grin gets broader each time she belts out another chorus. "Sam Cooke is on the radio/And the night is filled with space" she sings, daring anybody in the room to pigeonhole her as a country artist, a fragile singer-songwriter, an everywoman. Rocking away in this unlikely setting, Mary Chapin Carpenter looks and sounds like a woman too strong and elusive to be categorized or compartmentalized. A woman who's discovered a way to communicate. A woman who, for now at least, has found her place.