Mary-Chapin Carpenter - The Dirt and the Stars - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Mary-Chapin Carpenter / PERSONAL HISTORY - I started writing the songs on this album as the pandemic began winding down; the titular song InchWhat Did You MissInch pointed the way forward, with it's final verse InchI've been writing it down/song by song/as a personal historyInch when imagining this collection of songs as memoir, and how the wisdom that comes with growing older becomes a north star, whether one is celebrating life's joys or navigating life's inevitable losses.

2025 . The trio of Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, and Karine Polwart first came together as a writing experiment coming out of the pandemic lockdown. With touring off the calendar, multi-award-winning US singer-songwriter Carpenter was looking for something new and reached out to Fowlis and Polwart, two highly acclaimed Scottish singer-songwriters whose work she had long admired. Prompted by admiration and respect for each other's work, the trio quickly came up with a plan and, once able, met in Northern Scotland for an extended writing retreat to see what magic could be made. The success of this initial experiment led to a second writing session and, in early 2024, the 10-song album Looking For The Thread was recorded at Real World Studios in Box, England, with Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, The National, The Hold Steady) producing and a world-class band of musicians Rob Burger (piano, organ, accordion, keys), Chris Vatalaro (drums, percussion), Cameron Ralston (bass), Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh (hardanger d'amore) and Josh Kaufman himself (guitar, keys). The album features tracks written by all three artists, who take turns performing and collaborating on each song. Looking For The Thread will on January 24, 2025 with Thirty Tigers worldwide.

2018 . Sometimes Just the Sky is not a greatest hits endeavor or a remastered compilation. It's not a celebration or a souvenir. It is a reimagining of a most unusual nature. It is a collection of songs written across the decades, recorded in bucolic western England at Real World Studios with the great producer Ethan Johns. Carpenter sat with new and old friends who circled together in a wooden room and made music, in real time. What we hear is precisely what was played and sung, all at once. There's a song originally recorded for each of Carpenter's original studio records, and then there's a new song, which was aided and abetted by hillside contemplation and a punk poet's advice.