I go for days without seeing people….but I have my dog and cat for company, says Mary Chapin Carpenter

The Irish Sun

4 days ago

IN the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia lies the isolated farm where Mary Chapin Carpenter has made her home.
'I go for days without seeing ­people or talking to anyone,' says the singer, whose dusky, soulful tones and eloquent songwriting put her in such high regard.
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Mary Chapin Carpenter with her 'dear' Angus
Credit: Aaron Farrington
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Mary Chapin says her songs tell the story of her life
Credit: supplied
'It's not for everyone but I love it. I've been training for this my whole life.'
Yet she's not really alone.
'I have my dog and my cat for company,' she continues.
Mary Chapin's 'dear' four-legged friends are her
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So, I ask, does she ever get lonely?
'Oh for sure, who wouldn't?' she replies.
'But I've lived on the farm a really long time now.
'When I'm working on a project and I'm all in, I don't even notice that I didn't talk to anybody except when I went out to buy groceries.'
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Her rural idyll has four distinct seasons — scorching-hot summers, freezing-cold winters 'with lots of snow', beautiful budding springs and glorious golden autumns.
'I couldn't ever live somewhere that didn't have four ­seasons,' she decides.
'I need them to help me mark the passage of time.'
It was in these surroundings that she sat at her kitchen table — Angus at her feet, coffee cup beside her, acoustic guitar within easy reach — and wrote her new album, Personal
History
.
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At 67, it was her chance to reflect on her life, think about who she is and tell her stories.
I'm meeting Mary Chapin (it's a double forename, like Mary Beth) at a swish London hotel, a stone's throw from the hubbub of
Oxford
Circus.
A stark contrast to the wilds of Virginia, she calls the dimly lit conference room 'rather bleak' but adds with a smile: 'It'll have to do.'
Engaging and thought-provoking, she soon lights up the place by backing Bruce Springsteen's fervent stance
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Like The Boss, Mary Chapin is unafraid to speak her mind. 'When people say, 'You're just an entertainer, be quiet', it's always offensive to me.
'Just because I've decided to write songs doesn't mean I've abdicated my role as a citizen. When I have something to say, I say it.
'But it can be very perilous so I'm proud that Springsteen has his platform. He's a kind, compassionate and smart person.'
As for Donald Trump's angry riposte, she adds: 'I think he was rattled by it — and good!'
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We turn to Personal History's first song, the 'mission statement' What Did You Miss. (In case you're ­wondering, there's more about Angus to come).
Pondering life
She draws my attention to the last verse with its lines, 'I've been walking in circles for so long/Unwinding the mystery/I've been writing it down song by song/As a personal history.'
Mary Chapin had been 'pondering life' just as one of her favourite authors provided her with a dawning ­realisation.
'There's this moment in Elizabeth Strout's novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, when the main character's creative-writing instructor says, 'You only have one story to tell but you will write it so many different ways'.
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'When I read that, I took an
audible
breath and said out loud to no one, 'That's what my songs are!' '
Mary Chapin's recording career stretches back nearly four decades with efforts such as He Thinks He'll Keep Her and I Feel Lucky among her best-loved songs.
She was a regular ­fixture in the upper reaches of the US country chart in the Nineties, a period that yielded big-selling albums Come On Come On (1992) and Stones In The Road (1994).
I've had dogs most of my life, mostly golden retrievers. You get stuck on one breed.
'I think back to that time and it was like a white-hot light shining on my head,' she says.
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'I've always had an uneasy relationship with that kind of attention.
'I was also incredibly ill-equipped to handle it. It was so overwhelming.
'Going to therapy gave me the help I needed to navigate it. Luckily, thankfully, I was surrounded by lovely people.'
Underneath it all today is the same Mary Chapin Carpenter, an artist who stays true to herself yet more comfortable in her own skin.
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Returning to her new album, she says: 'It struck me that after all these years, however many songs I've written, they all come from the same place.
'It makes so much sense to me to think of them as my personal history.'
Part of that history is Mary Chapin's abiding love of ­animals. 'I've had dogs most of my life, mostly golden retrievers,' she says. 'You get stuck on one breed.
'I believe they know what we're feeling — and who are we to say that they don't?'
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Thanks to his forebears' sperm being
frozen
and stored, Angus is a direct descendant of his owner's other dear departed retriever chums.
He could be seen at Mary Chapin's side during the pandemic when she, like many musicians in lockdown, shared songs via YouTube from her home.
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The singer pictured in 1992 - a decade in which she was a regular ­fixture in the upper reaches of the US country chart
Credit: Getty
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Mary Chapin performing at the 2023 Stagecoach Festival in 2023
Credit: Getty
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This helps explain new track Girl And Her Dog, which finds Mary Chapin intoning, 'Now the older I get the less I need/Just a good old dog underneath the trees.'
It was inspired by an early-morning walk with Angus and comes with an intriguing backstory, which she describes.
'I love to walk in the fields near my farm but in summer, when it's tick season and it's full of them - ugh!
'So, before it's too hot, we head to these beautiful gravel roads that stretch for miles.
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'Doing her own thing'
'It must have been around 6am when a vintage pick-up truck came up behind us so we stepped off the road to let it pass by.
'Through the cab window, I could see an older woman with salt-and-pepper
hair
tied into a long braid down her back. And two dogs.'
At this point, Mary Chapin's imagination took over. 'As the woman drove by, I started making up a life for her.
'OK, so maybe she's a poet or a painter or a writer. Maybe when she's finished walking her dogs, she's going back to her house.
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'Maybe she'll have another cup of coffee in the garden before it's hot and then she'll go back to working on a book.'
The fleeting encounter got Mary Chapin thinking of her place in our uncertain world.
It's such a gift to be able to appreciate the quiet things, the simplest things, the most minor things,
She says: 'I'd just had a birthday — I'm in my sixties now — and I asked myself, 'Who am I? What am I doing?' '
First, she decided she wanted to be THAT woman on the gravel road 'doing her own thing'.
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Then she realised 'in the
next
breath' that, in a way, she already was much like her.
'After my walk with Angus, I knew I'd get back in my truck, go home, sit at my kitchen table and write.
'I love my home, I love the big trees in the yard (we'd say garden) — and my dog and my cat.'
Things brings us to Coda, the elegiac album finale, which neatly sums up Mary Chapin's ­feelings.
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She says: 'I've lived through all these different chapters.
'The big noise of my life is not so loud as it was but there's still a rich vein to be mined.
'It's such a gift to be able to appreciate the quiet things, the simplest things, the most minor things.
'It's that moment in the morning at the arboretum.
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"It's the way the light falls against the back of the house.
'It's ­seeing my dog.
'Not everything has to announce itself in a huge way.
'But the last 40 years have been quite extraordinary and I'm so grateful for where I am.
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'I wanted that song to express my gratitude.'
Another new one, Paint + Turpentine is also about gratitude — but tinged with regret.
It reflects on one of Mary Chapin's chief inspirations, the late, great Texan singer/songwriter Guy Clark, loved for songs like LA Freeway and Desperados Waiting For A Train.
When she was just starting out as a twenty-something hopeful, Mary Chapin would go to The Birchmere club, not far from The Pentagon, just across the Potomac river from Washington DC.
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'They were very kind to me there and I started to open for nationally known artists,' she says.
'The proprietor, Gary Oelze, knew I didn't have any money and he'd say, 'If you want to come down and see anybody, just call me and we'll sneak you in'.
'I saw Guy quite often. He would give a masterclass.
'One time. he invited me up to sing with him.
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'There I was, spending time with this person whose art I revered.
'He was so kind to me.'
Mary Chapin sighs and adds: 'Years later, when I had a record deal and was spending more time in Nashville, I heard from Guy, who said, 'Let's sit down and co-write'.
'Co-writing is something I've always been very poor at and I gave a reason why I couldn't make it.
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'It's one of the greatest regrets of my life.'
That said, she is tempted to 'let her younger self off the hook'.
Perhaps with Paint + Turpentine, she has laid her regret to rest even if one of the lines is a direct reference to Clark's bittersweet The Randall Knife.
'Memory cut like a Randall knife/Felt like it went right through me.'
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It's important to note that Mary Chapin returned to a familiar stomping ground in the UK to record Personal History —
'I have always loved coming over here,' she says.
'Years ago, I dated a wonderful man who lived in London, so I'd come back and forth.
'It's been a happy place for me.'
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'Know thyself, right?'
It may come as no surprise, therefore, that she brought her latest compositions to full bloom at the 'beautiful old mill' in the Wiltshire countryside, under the watchful eye of Bonny Light Horseman's Josh Kaufman.
She first worked with him on her other record of 2025, Looking For The Thread, a gorgeous hook-up with Scottish folk singers Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis.
From the first time I imagined I was in love with someone, I've been a bitter ender.
And thanks to her connection to Josh, Anaïs Mitchell, feted for her album and stage musical Hadestown, joins Mary Chapin on Home Is A Song.
'I'm such a fan. My head exploded when Anaïs said yes,' she says.
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Before we go our separate ways, I ask Mary Chapin about the harmonica-fuelled Bitter Ender and what the tantalising song title means.
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Mary Chapin has found peace and inspiration on her Virginia farm, drawing on life's quiet moments and loyal companions to create new album, Personal History
Credit: supplied
In response, she admits that she's not great at dealing with the end of relationships — including her only marriage, which lasted for ten years.
Of the song, she says: 'That's me. Know thyself, right? Even when I know something has no
future
, I'll be clinging on.
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'From the first time I imagined I was in love with someone, I've been a bitter ender.
'It makes me laugh now when people say, 'I'm a bitter ender, too!' We finally have a term for it.'
One thing's for certain though — Angus will be waiting for Mary Chapin when she gets back to her farm in Virginia.
That loving relationship will never have a bitter end.
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Personal History by Mary Chapin Carpenter is out on June 6
Credit: Aaron Farrington
PERSONAL HISTORY
Mary Chapin Carpenter
★★★★☆