Mary Chapin Carpenter: Solitary woman

Mary Chapin Carpenter on American civilization and its discontents

By Newt Briggs

Mary Chapin Carpenter isn't a natural mystic like Bob Marley or anything, but as a graduate of the American Civilization program at Brown University, she does seem uniquely qualified to critique the condition of modern America. At least that's the theory, anyway.

Mercury: Given your background in the history of American society and culture, how would you evaluate American civilization in 2004?

Carpenter: Oh, please, no. I couldn't even hope to answer such an enormous question in any kind of a meaningful way. I mean, there's too much detail to compress it all down into a nice, easy soundbite. I'm not Tim Russert, you know.

Despite her obvious dissimilarity to the portly pundit on NBC's "Meet the Press," Carpenter establishes herself as a cultural lodestar on her eighth studio album, Between Here and Gone. A significant departure from the chart-topping country-pop singles "Passionate Kisses" and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," Between Here and Gone traces the paths of characters adrift on physical and emotional journeys. "Grand Central Station," for example, follows an ironworker in the wreckage of the World Trade Center; and "Goodnight America" travels with its narrator from "the noise, the heat, the crush of cars" of L.A. to a "highway in Atlanta full of strip malls and used cars." "Yeah, I'm a stranger here, no one you would know," the song concludes. "I'm from somewhere else, isn't everybody, though?"

Carpenter certainly is. Gone from "a single girl living in a slum tenement apartment" to one of the United States' most celebrated singer-songwriters, Carpenter's life during the past two decades has been one of frequent transition and upheaval. Winner of five Grammys and two Country Music Association awards for female vocalist of the year, she's come a long way from the unheralded neo-folky whose 1987 Columbia Records debut went largely unnoticed outside of Washington, D.C.'s coffeehouse circuit. And yet as she reveals on "Girls Like Me," she remains the same reluctant superstar who once released a video collection titled My Record Company Made Me Do This.

"I've always been something of a recluse," she says, explaining the line "We live alone and in our heads/ We eat standing up and in our beds." "When I was living by myself, I would come home from work, lay the newspaper on the counter and nibble on whatever was around. It was like it wasn't even worth it to go through the motions of setting the table. Or else I'd cocoon up and say, 'What the hell? I'm taking my food to bed.'"

Carpenter's mood is lighter these days, now that she's moved out of D.C. and settled into her marriage of two years. "Life is what it is," she says frequently--almost like a mantra. Still, she can't help but be concerned by what she characterizes as "troubled times."

"I'm not a cynical person, but I am a very wary person," she says. "Having said that, though, I'm also a very hopeful person. And I believe--perhaps foolishly--in human beings and their capacity to do right by each other. I guess we'll soon discover whether that's optimism or just naivete."