- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,

a Texas government
affairs consultancy,

the Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation,

Claire and Carl
Stuart, and by Entergy.

[EVAN SMITH] I'm Evan Smith,
she's a chart-topping,

Grammy Award-winning
singer-songwriter

who sold many millions
of records worldwide

over an amazing
30-plus-year career.

Her latest is "Sometimes
Just the Sky."

She's Mary Chapin Carpenter.

This is Overheard.

Let's be honest, this
about the ability to learn

or this about the experience
of not having to talk properly.

Now, have you avoided what
has befallen on the nations

in Africa and...

To say that you'd made us on bed

but you caused him
to sleep and...

You'd saw a problem and
over time took it on and...

Let's talk with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for president?

I think I just got an
F from you, excellent.

This is Overheard.

(audience applauding)

[SMITH] Mary Chapin
Carpenter, welcome.

It's so good to be with you.

[MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER]
So glad to be here.

[SMITH] So, we've
caught you on tour,

you're in the middle of a tour

supporting your
last, latest record.

[CARPENTER] Yes.
[SMITH] Which came out

about six months, seven
months go as we sit here

called Sometimes Just the Sky.

There's a Patty Smyth connection
to the name of this album.

Talk about that.

- Well, you know how it is
when you've got some time

on your hands and you pull
out that tracking device

out of your back pocket,

and you start going
down some rabbit holes

and as I've been
sharing with friends

and the audiences that
we've been playing to,

there's some days that you just,

you look up and eight
hours have passed,

and you have nothing
to show for it.

And in other days
where you magically

have stumbled on something.

You have no idea
how you got there,

but one day, that's
what happened to me.

I found this beautiful
interview with Patty Smyth.

And she was talking to
a group of young people.

But the way I, when I
read this interview,

the way I would feel about it

and tell anyone, I
think it would resonate

with anyone in any
season of their life

certainly because she's so
eloquent and she's wise.

[SMITH] Well, she's Patty Smyth.
[CARPENTER] She's Patty Smyth.

[SMITH] Right.

[CARPENTER] She's amazing.

She was trying to lift
up these young folks,

talk about her
work and her life.

And I'm paraphrasing
wildly, of course.

But she was saying to them

that if there's
something in your life

that you're passionate about,

that you can't
imagine being without,

or you can't imagine not being.

And going forward, she said,

"Claim it, don't apologize.

"Chase it with every
fiber your being.

"Know that that's what you're
meant to do it in life,

"that's it's okay,
that it's possible

"to believe in
destiny, perhaps."

And, she was saying
that if you do that,

if you do claim something,

you have to be prepared
to encounter loss,

rejection, fear.

Those days when you don't
have any self-confidence.

She was saying, "Life is hard.

"It can be so hard,
but at the same time,

"it's so beautiful, and
it's so worth claiming."

And she was saying,

"Sometimes, it's as simple

"as having a cup of
tea with your mother,

"having a talk with
an old friend."

And then, she said, "You know,

"Sometimes, just the sky."

[CARPENTER] And that was--
[SMITH] So you heard that

and you thought. [CARPENTER]
That was this phrase--

[SMITH] That's it, right.
[CARPENTER] And I could not

get over the simplicity

and the beauty and for me,

just the particular
meaning of that,

and that's where
the song came from.

- A lot of us in the
receiving end of music

or books or anything,
don't understand

that there's always a story

right behind
something like that.

[CARPENTER] I think so.

And you know,
inspiration can come

from so many different places.

You just have to be open to it.

It can come from
reading that interview

or it can come from just
driving down the road

and ruminating and
something just comes to you.

[SMITH] It's a very
elegant phrase, and again,

I love the idea that Patty
Smyth, somehow is involved.

In any story, I'm happy
to have Patty Smyth.

[CARPENTER] That's
great, that's great.

- Sometimes, Mary
Chapin, sometimes,

the inspiration
comes from yourself.

[CARPENTER] Sure.
[SMITH] This record is actually

a record of, except for
the one original song,

"Sometimes Just the Sky,"
[CARPENTER] Right.

- It is 12 songs that
you had recorded before,

one per studio album.
[CARPENTER] Existing album, yup.

[SMITH] So, 12 studio
albums, you'd pick one song

from each album, not the
obvious song, not the big hit--

[CARPENTER] Right. [SMITH]
And you did a reimagining

of those songs.
[CARPENTER] That's it.

[SMITH] You basically covered
yourself on this record.

[CARPENTER] That's right.
[SMITH] Right.

And I had some criteria.

I didn't want to...

Well, I took of
the table any song

that I had already
revisited, reimagined

on my orchestral record.

So, that took a whole
lot of songs away.

And then, I didn't have
a whole lot of desire

to reimagine,

shall we say, the
hits. You know.

I just felt like they
stood where they stood

and that's fine.

[SMITH] If someone's...those
of us who remember those songs

at the moment that
they became hits,

it would be a little
strange for us

to hear a different
version of it.

[CARPENTER] Well, I just
wanted to dive deep.

[SMITH] Right. [CARPENTER]
The format for this record

was to take these existing
songs and the new song.

I worked with a new
producer, new to me,

the great Ethan
Johns in England,

with a group of
musicians who had never,

who weren't familiar
with the music.

[SMITH] So, they'd come into
this stuff for the first time.

[CARPENTER] Exactly,
pretty cold to it.

And certainly, my
feeling about it was

that they were so open-hearted

about what they gave
to those sessions,

but it was as if
it was brand new.

I would sit in the studio,
we'd all gather around

and Ethan's way of recording
is completely old school,

as well as, not having
any isolation booths.

Even the drums were in the room.

And it's Ethan's gifts
for micing things

that allow people to have
a sense of being a part

but all being together.
[SMITH] Yup.

[CARPENTER] And I would
play the song for everybody

and then, we would just
start out on our journey.

[SMITH] Yup, and
this is different

than you've recorded
stuff previously.

[CARPENTER] Well, it was
similar, but in a sense

that I've been lucky
enough to do it old school

as opposed to emailing
tracks to people.

I've been lucky enough to
have enough of a budget

to be able to do
it all together.

[SMITH] Again, like
the titles of songs,

we don't think about the
story behind the process

of making a record,

and you just told me
something very interesting.

I didn't know that
this record was done

with all the
musicians in the room.

[CARPENTER] Yes.
[SMITH] Ordinarily, these songs

or songs like these
are put together.

[CARPENTER] Well--
[SMITH] Right, they assemble

the tracks.

[CARPENTER] It's
certainly, that's one way,

but in the way I've been,

the way I've done
it in the past,

and the way that many
people still do it,

is to be in the
studio, and to kind of,

track it all at once,

wait until later to do overdubs.

[SMITH] Right.

[CARPENTER] But you
are in separate rooms.

[SMITH] Yeah, right, and that--

[CARPENTER] And
that's a technical--

There's a technical
reason for that.

[SMITH] I love this.

So, you made very
specific choices,

as you said about
the songs to cover.

[CARPENTER] Yeah.
[SMITH] Is there a,

generally speaking,

I've always wanted to
understand this better,

when you think about
covering another song,

someone else's song
or your own song,

the criteria for what
makes a song worth covering

or able to be covered.

[CARPENTER] I will give you
what I think is the only example

I could give you from
my own experience.

- [SMITH] Yeah.

- So, I sing the song by
Lucinda Williams called--

[SMITH] I'm so glad you...

I wanna know the story of this.

[CARPENTER] "Passionate Kisses."
[SMITH] Right.

And you recorded it five
years after she did, right?

Or four, five years?

[CARPENTER] I'm not exactly
sure what the timeline is,

but, I, it was her
rough trade record,

and it was the early,
early, or late '80s

or early '90s.

[SMITH] Yeah, I looked it up.
[CARPENTER] Okay.

[SMITH] Her record was 1988
and your record was 1993.

[CARPENTER] Okay so,
in the early nineties,

and I forget what year,
I'm gonna say '91 or '92,

I was lucky enough to be invited

to be on a tour with Rosanne
Cash and Lucinda Williams

to Australia.
[SMITH] Wow.

[CARPENTER] And it
was just us three

and we toured around Australia

and it was in the
round every night.

Our guitar pool, is you know.

[SMITH] Yup.

[CARPENTER] People refer to
it, swapping songs and stories

all at the same time.

Lucinda would play
all her great songs

that I knew and loved from
that record, Rosanne as well.

I was a puppy--

[SMITH] Oh, could you imagine
with those two, right?

[CARPENTER] It was just, I
couldn't get enough of it

and I have lots of
stories about it

but I'll just cut to the chase.

Said I loved "Passionate Kisses"

and I loved singed
along with it.

Every night, Lucinda would,
we'd walk off the stage

and I would just, you
know, just embrace her,

slobber all over her and tell
her how much I love that song.

And I think, finally,
by the end of that tour,

she just got so sick of me.

(audience laughing)

[SMITH] Fangirling her, right?
[CARPENTER] Fangirling her,

and she said, "Oh,
for God's sake,

"just record the
song, why don't you?"

So, I felt that I
needed and I felt

that I got her
blessing to do so.

And so, I recorded that song

and I was on
Columbia at the time

and I turned in that record

and they didn't hear that song

as a single and they didn't
hear a lot of the songs

on that record as a single.

[SMITH] Man, the
record business.

[CARPENTER] But, you
know, that happens.

And it's not for me to
sit there and condemn it

or criticize it.

It's just, there's so
many different components

that go into it.

That said, we were on
the road at that time

and the way it
worked, what seem to,

the way it was setup is
that the record labels

would have reps all
over the country

and wherever in, you know,

checking in with you,

and showing up at your gigs
and so forth and so on.

And I started, I was
playing "Passionate Kisses"

in those shows it
would go over so well,

and the reps started
to report back

to the home office that,

"You guys, should think about
releasing that as a single."

And it took that
kind of momentum.

[SMITH] To the ground up.
[CARPENTER] Correct.

For them to, sort
of, go, "Oh, okay."

That's sort of how it happened.

- And then it ended up being...

I still think, if you ask people

about your extraordinary
body of work and career,

that has to come up in the
top three or four songs,

if people think about.
[CARPENTER] What I
was gonna say and--

[SMITH] 'Cause I
had to remind myself

that it was Lucinda's
song that you covered

and not your song
that she covered.

[CARPENTER] Oh, God.

[SMITH] I honestly
associate that song,

in some ways, with you.

[CARPENTER] Well so, to get
back to your original question

about, how do you decide,

especially, like for myself,

I have always been the
purveyor of my own songs,

and it's, maybe, two or
three songs in my career

that I've...

outside songs that I've done.

For me, it was the sense
that "Passionate Kisses"...

First of all, over the
years, I've played it with a,

raise the roof rock band.

I've played down slowed
down, stripped back

as a tender,

bittersweet kind of thing.

Not an anthemic kind of thing.

And however I've
presented it to me,

it represents a perfect
vessel of songcraft.

It speaks to the most basic,
to the most human emotion

in all of us, which is
to love and to be loved.

And in the most simple language.

[SMITH] It's everything music

is about in a lot
of ways, right?

[CARPENTER] Yeah,
and it's like...

I like to say that for the
three and a half minutes or so

that I get to inhabit that song,

it feels like the perfect song.

- Am I remembering correctly
that she won an award--

[CARPENTER] She won a Grammy.
[SMITH] She won a Grammy

for having written that
song that you recorded

and...I think it's
a wonderful story.

It just tells me
everything about.

[CARPENTER] I may
have this wrong

and she may kill
me for saying this,

but I remember, I
don't think she came

to that particular
Grammy ceremony

because she was
unhappy with her hair.

(audience laughing)

[SMITH] You know what,
it happens, right?

[CARPENTER] It
happens to all of us.

[SMITH] It happens.

- I wanna talk about you.

We don't have an
infinite amount of time

but I wanna take some time,

'cause I think your
story is so great.

So, I love...

So, born in
Princeton, New Jersey,

went to school in
Princeton, New Jersey

and Watertown, Connecticut,
went to Brown University,

then moved to Washington, DC.

The classic country
music origin story.

(audience laughing)
Right?

Who among has not gone
to boarding school

and Ivy League schools and
come out on the other side

and thought, country
music, what a career.

I'm just interested
in how that happened.

The input became then
this unusual output.

- The way I've put...

It is an interesting
circuitous route.

I was living in Washington, DC,

playing bars and clubs, and
there's this iconic club

called The Birchmere, just
outside of Washington, DC.

And the wonderful owner
of The Birchmere, Gary,

was kind enough to allow me
to open shows for people.

And--

[SMITH] You were like
literally just out of school

at this point, right?

[CARPENTER] Oh well, I mean I
was-- [SMITH] Couple of years.

[CARPENTER] Yeah,
couple of years.

I was just doing temp work and--

[SMITH] Mid '80s.

[CARPENTER] I was trying to
figure what I was really going

to do with my life.

I mean, that's the truth.

I--

[SMITH] You were an
American Civilizations major

when you had it at Brown, right?

[CARPENTER] That's
right, that's right.

[SMITH] This was not,
again, academically,

or anything else, did not
point you in this direction.

[CARPENTER] Yeah, no, I was
living in group houses in DC

and just trying to make
my rent and try if...

I was going to do
something else,

I just hadn't
figured it out yet.

And I do remember coming
to a point in my life

where I just didn't
want to haul my

cruddy sound system

up another flight of
stairs to another bar.

And I reached this
point where I just said,

you know what, I
think it's time for me

to just find that real job.

[SMITH] Get out of this, right?
[CARPENTER] Yeah.

And I remember,
this is in the day,

again, such a
different time now,

but scanning the classifieds
and looking for anything

that would take a Liberal
Arts major, just anything.

(audience laughing)

I interviewed for
a consulting firm

in downtown K Street, DC,

and as a researcher, 'cause
what else was I going to?

[SMITH] You can be
Kellyanne Conway today.

[CARPENTER] Oh Jesus.
(audience laughing)

[SMITH] It's a good line for...

It's a good line
for PBS, actually.

Couldn't turn out differently.

[CARPENTER] I wish I had
come back for that but...

(audience laughing)

But I remember interviewing,
consulting firm,

the woman, it's as if she
couldn't come right out

and say, "I'll hire you,"

but she was sort of saying,

"If I offer you this
job, will you take it?"

I'm like, I'll take anything.

I'll make coffee,
I'll do anything.

And it was a Friday and
that Monday, no, no, no.

She called me on a
Friday, and she said,

"We'd like to offer
you this job."

And I had this moment
of (gasps), oh.

And I said,

"Would you give me the
weekend to think about it?"

And I could tell
she was not happy

and that weekend, I
really thought about it.

and I realized, it wasn't
ready to give up music.

[SMITH] To give up, right, yeah.

[CARPENTER] And it's not
like I had some plan.

It's not like I had--

[SMITH] Yeah, but you knew.

[CARPENTER] I just knew
that I wasn't ready to...

I just wanted to keep
playing music somehow

and I wasn't ready to completely
abandon it as I knew it.

And that Monday,
I called her back

and I said, I'm so sorry,
I can't accept the job.

She was not happy, but then,

it's as if, the way things go--

[SMITH] Right, fate
intervenes, yeah.

[CARPENTER] Yeah, and
then I met a person

who introduced me to a person,

who introduced me to a
person, and yada, yada, yada.

[SMITH] It all worked out.

[CARPENTER] It just,
things changed.

[SMITH] And you were
playing at that point

what we would know or
would've known at the time

as folk music, sort of?

Some folk, some country.

[CARPENTER] To me,

I wasn't, I am a
singer-songwriter.

[SMITH] Without regard to
genre-- [CARPENTER] Exactly.

[SMITH] You don't
label yourself, this,
that, or the other.

[CARPENTER] Yeah, never
have and when I found my...

And so, just ever so briefly,
the gentlemen at The Birchmere

who was hiring me to
open shows got a call,

or was putting on a showcase
for some Nashville artists

who were coming up to
DC at The Birchmere,

and they were just having a
phone call about the logistics.

And in the process of
the phone call, he said,

"So, what else is going
on in your world?"

And Gary mentioned
my name, and said,

'cause he knew this,
I had just made a tape

that I was carrying around
in my back pocket and--

[SMITH] Isn't it amazing?

[CARPENTER] Yeah,
and this gentlemen,

this scout from Columbia,

guy named Larry Hamby said,

"How do I get ahold of this
tape? I'd like to hear it."

And--

[SMITH] It's something
as simple as that.

[CARPENTER] As simple
as that. [SMITH] The
kindness of one person--

[CARPENTER] Exactly.
[SMITH] And you find that.

Did you grow up with a lot
of music in your house,

like you have sisters, right?
[CARPENTER] Yes.

[SMITH] And records
on in the house.

[CARPENTER] And my father
was a total jazz buff.

My mother was a classical
music aficionado

so we had music blasting
in the house all the time.

- You're kin to the
Chapins by some-- Is
it some, like distant?

[CARPENTER] Who knows?

Many, many, many years ago.

[SMITH] The lore is that
you and Tom and Harry Chapin

are somehow connected,
somehow, somehow, somehow.

[CARPENTER] Well,
many, many years ago

at Kerrville Folk Festival,

I met Tom Chapin and we decided

that we must be related.

(audience laughing)

[SMITH] So, like all
important truths,

it's more asserted
than proven, right?

That's it, it's an
asserted relationship.

What do you think about...

You don't wanna yourself
folk or country,

but if you think about the
Grammy Awards that you've won.

[CARPENTER] Well,
if you could just--

[SMITH] Yeah, please.

[CARPENTER] Just, so I got
signed by this gentlemen,

Larry Hamby, to the
Nashville Columbia label.

[SMITH] The Nashville,
slice of it.

[CARPENTER] The Nashville
office. [SMITH] Right, yeah.

[CARPENTER] And the reason
why I think that happened

is that that was a time,
it was the late '80s

when country music was,

it was like this
wide open place,

and there were people.

That was the time when
Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle,

Rodney Crowell, Rosanne
Cash, Nanci Griffith.

These extraordinary
singer-songwriter artists,

who, in my mind, what
they all have in common,

is they have story songs,
they tell the stories

and that's what
you've been saying.

And so, somehow, it was,

they thought maybe--

[SMITH] They just put
you in-- [CARPENTER]
Maybe I could be there.

[SMITH] In the same category.
[CARPENTER] So, I think,

that is what I've always
had in common with them

in the sense that I've tried
to tell stories with my music.

And whether I neatly
fit the profile or not,

I think that's what allowed
me to sort of find a niche.

[SMITH] So, think about
what Nashville country

or country broadly has become
through the years later.

I mean--
[CARPENTER] It's very different.

[SMITH] You and
Florida Georgia Line

don't have a lot in common.

[CARPENTER] No, no we don't.

[SMITH] And even if you
go back 10 or 15 years,

you and what we're
referred to contemptuously,

I don't think they saw you
fairly as the "hat acts."

You and Garth Brooks didn't
have a lot in common.

Country has become
something else.

Is there a place,
still, I hope there is.

The answer must be
yes, you're here,

you're still making
records and touring.

Is there a place
for story songs?

[CARPENTER] Oh, absolutely.
[SMITH] For those...

And how are we to think
about that in terms

of how the world has evolved?

- Well, first of all, I think
this could be a conversation

that we could talk
for hours about.

[SMITH] Hours about,
it's right, yeah.

- But the delivery system
for music is so different now

and the way people get their
music is so different now,

and it's not confined

to what is on the radio.

[SMITH] It's been
democratized, hasn't it?

[CARPENTER] The
compartmentalization of radio,

it's so different.

So, you can explore, actually,
what it feels like to me

in a certain way,
is when I grew up,

I remember being 10 years old,

and having a transistor
radio, living in New Jersey

and listening to 77 WABC.

[SMITH] Oh, I
remember that, yeah.

[CARPENTER] Cousin Brucie.
[SMITH] Cousin Brucie.

[CARPENTER] And you could
hear Penny Lane, Motown,

the Rolling Stones all in
an hour, the same hour.

So, that compartmentalization
wasn't in play,

so you could be exposed to
so many different things.

That's, to me, kind of what life

is like now in a wonderful way.

- And the streaming
services allow you

to get access to music.

It's, essentially,
you don't need

a big record company
budget behind you--

[CARPENTER] That's right.
[SMITH] Or big promotion budget

and satellite radio
among other things.

[CARPENTER] That's right.

[SMITH] Now has these
narrow verticals.

[CARPENTER] And, to me, the
most profound difference

is that as an artist,

you can hang blankets
in your bedroom,

and create an environment
where you can make,

you can use your laptop to
be your recording studio.

[SMITH] The technology
allows that, right.

- The gatekeepers are gone,

and that, to me, is the most
exciting thing about our time.

[SMITH] But to come back to

where we started
this conversation,

with about a minute or two left,

the Ethan Johns production
of "Sometimes Just the Sky"

is not you in your
bedroom with blankets up

on the wall and a laptop,

you've actually gone old
school on us in many ways

which I think is one of the
more refreshing things about you

is that times changed,
planets realign, you are you.

Everybody else has changed,
the world has changed,

you're still you.

And that's why it's so
great to encounter you now

because it feels like you
haven't allowed fashion or fad

to turn you into
somebody you're not.

- Well, thank you so much.

[SMITH] And so, as you
go, you look out now,

you still are enjoying this,

you still feel as
motivated, energized,

none of these is
different than it was.

- It's even more,
it's even sweeter.

And I would say that
after 30 some years

of making records, touring,

I know how fortunate I am
to be able to still do this,

to still be able to
find an audience.

And it's not something I
would ever take for granted

because I know it's rare.

[SMITH] The economics of it
still work out to do this.

[CARPENTER] They still work out,

and you have to
love what you do.

And I've never felt more
in love with songwriting.

I've never felt more
in love and in need

to feel that connection that
happens in a live setting.

The thing that I love to say,
to thank the audience for,

and it's absolutely the thing
I feel most strongly about

is to thank them for being
there, for supporting live music

because we can get
any song, any book,

any work of art, any poem,

anything from that
tracking device,

but it's always going to be
between us and that screen,

and there's never going
to be a substitute

for being together,

and the energy and the sense
of being on a journey together

that a live performance of
some kind of art gives you.

And we've never
needed that more.

[SMITH] Well, they don't
need to come see you

but they do and God knows
why they come see you.

So, Mary Chapin Carpenter, what
a pleasure it is to see you

and to be with you.
[CARPENTER] Thank you so much.

[SMITH] Thank you so much.

Good luck with
everything going forward.

Give her a big hand,
Mary Chapin Carpenter.

(audience applauding)

[SMITH] We'd love to have
you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at
klru.org/overheard

to find invitations
to interviews,

Q&As with our
audience and guests,

and an archive of past episodes.

- It's a challenge, but
I've been very fortunate

in my life to travel
with wonderful people,

and that makes a huge
difference, think about it.

Just, you're in a
tiny space with people

and you have to get along.

So, I've been really fortunate
to travel with great folks,

Respectful, mutually supportive.

[NARRATOR] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,

a Texas government
affairs consultancy,

the Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation,

Claire and Carl
Stuart, and by Entergy.

(soft music)