The Musical Box

mary chapin carpenter

It took a concert last spring in the Deep South to underscore for Mary Chapin Carpenter the love, vitality, and perhaps even restorative power that can come from a live performance.

The occasion was a songwriter summit staged as part of the Eudora Welty Centennial celebration at the Pulitzer Prize winning author’s hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. The show teamed Carpenter with a trio of new generation folk voices from the South - Kate Campbell, Caroline Herring and Claire Holley. In essence, Carpenter was honoring a lifelong inspiration but picked up three new friends in the process.

“We played a lot of songs that were directly and sometimes indirectly connected to Eudora,” Carpenter said. “It was put together and performed by the seat of our pants. But we had a wonderful time.”

The concert’s importance went beyond being a tribute, though. It was Carpenter’s first stage appearance in two years. Why such a break for a singer who toured incessantly for the previous two decades? And why a similar silence from a recording career that had yielded Americana albums full of stark emotive detail (1992’s quadruple platinum Come On Come On and 1995’s Stones in the Road being among the best of a strong lot) as well as a string of early ‘90s singles (I Feel Lucky, Shut Up and Kiss Me and the jubilant Cajun collaboration with BeauSoleil Down at the Twist and Shout) that earned her a solid fanbase at country radio as well as five Grammy Awards.

“It’s not the first time,” Carpenter said of the break. “When I got married in 2002 I took a few years off just to, well, enjoy married life.”

But this time was different. Following work on her 2007 album The Calling, Carpenter was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in the lung that often forms with few symptoms as warning signs. Severe and undiagnosed cases can cause sudden death, although Carpenter’s PE was discovered when chest pain and breathing difficulties sent her to an emergency room.

“You go through all sorts of questions about your identity and what you’re able to do when you get a health scare like that. It’s certainly not something I ever imagined would happen to me.

“When you sit down with your business manager and talk about the nuts and bolts of having careers like mine, they say, ‘Well, you’ve got to have insurance.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ ‘Well, what if you get sick and can’t play again?’ And I was like, ‘That’ll never happen.’ You just never think that will happen to you.

“You keep asking these questions about identity and purpose and things like that - things you just don’t think about on an everyday level. Maybe you shouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about those things. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got the time on your hands to think about them because you’re not able to do anything else. There’s not a manual for this. You just have to bumble your way through it.”

With recovery and reflection, there was writing - lots of it. Carpenter has completed a new set of songs that she will begin recording shortly after her first Central Kentucky concert in nearly 17 years. She performs Friday at Equus Run Vineyards in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival.

“As time goes on, writing sometimes feels harder. But maybe that’s because you become harder to please. Then every once in awhile, a song will kind of write itself, clichéd though that may be, and you will feel in full possession of your tools. It’s not predictable. But I still love to write songs. It doesn’t feel like anything other than a complete labor of love.”

Carpenter’s writing also went to print about a year ago. She was invited by The Washington News to write a bi-weekly arts-related column, which she continued until work resumed in earnest on her songwriting last spring.

Among her column topics: a tribute to Piedmont bluesman John Cephas, the beauty of a Hem song used in a TV commercial and the snubbing of Bruce Springsteen at last winter’s Grammy Awards (for not being nominated for The Wrestler).

“There were times when I had to be reminded that this was for the Arts page as opposed to something where I would be flapping my political wings,” Carpenter said. “I also have been taught how much respect to have for people who write on deadlines.”

But perhaps the most eloquent and moving writing Carpenter has penned since her recovery was a short essay for National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series titled “The Learning Curve of Gratitude.” There, she recounts her illness, the consuming guilt resulting from the canceled tour and the difficulties of her recovery. But it also speaks of a renewed appreciation of love of life.

“I will think about how uncomplicated it all is,” Carpenter writes at the essay’s end. “I will wonder at how it took me my entire life to appreciate just one day.”

“It’s your joy,” she added in our interview. “You get your joy back. I mean, I’m just so grateful to be here.”

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Mother Jane performs at 6 tonight at Equus Run Vineyards, 1280 Moores Mill Road in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival. Tickets are $55. Call (859) 846-9463 or visit www.alltechfortnightfestival.