[SPEAKER_01]: I, and welcome to the Working Songwriter.
[SPEAKER_01]: The show work today's best songwriters come to talk shop.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Joe Pug.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest, and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, whether you're a grizzled veteran, auditing royalty statements from terrestrial radio in the 1990s, or else, a scrappy upstart.
[SPEAKER_01]: to anticipate your monthly payout.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your show because ultimately, it is what every writer seeks most and ironclad excuse to put off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, everyone, it's the first Friday of May, 2026, and I thank you for joining us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I guess this week hails from my neck of the woods, Washington, D.C., Mary Chape and Carpenter got her start in the Proto Americana scene of the 1970s and 80s in D.C., she broke out of that local circuit with her signing to Columbia Records.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her debut album went quadruple platinum.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's toured with Emilu Harris, Sean Colvin, Rosanne Cash, and a host of others.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's won five Grammy Awards, two CMA Awards, and two Academy of Country Music Awards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her song, Shut Up and Kiss Me, went to the top of the country music radio charts in the early 1990s.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's appeared on Late Night with David Letterman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rolling Stone calls her, one of the most grounded and sentient songwriters of her generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: NPR has said that she's a singular voice in country and folk, and the New York Times praises her intelligent, literate songwriting with emotional depth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Simply put, she's an all-timer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a chance to catch up with her earlier this year to hear about her musical journey so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: This Mary-Japan Carbender, thanks so much for being a part of the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such an honor after a remarkable career of 17 million records sold, Grammys, ACM, CNAs, a slew of any kind of accolade that you'd want to talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just such an honor to have you here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You music, though, began for you in the home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your parents, they were a big influence on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are some of the,
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's some of the records you remember them playing for you as as a kid that had a pretty big impression on you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, starting out.
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was a total jazz.
[SPEAKER_00]: Theficionado.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber fan and he just, he had a collection of 78s that was remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, as a young kid, I don't think I appreciated how remarkable that was.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's what he loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother was a classical music lover, opera lover, folk music lover, popular music lover.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we had, I mean, I remember growing, we had all the Beatles records.
[SPEAKER_00]: two o'clock every Saturday afternoon, my mother would turn on the radio and the metropolitan the texico-opper theater would be playing live through the house every Saturday.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a house that was full of music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I guess I trace my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
[SPEAKER_00]: desire to have music to around me at all times from that early childhood environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you still have any other 78s that you have 78s?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's what, I mean, I just, it just kills me now when I think about how, you know, it just,
[SPEAKER_00]: I you know we just didn't appreciate what what a treasure that was at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what happened to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean we moved a lot of you know as early on and so I don't know what happened to all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: you were saying you moved a lot your family though eventually kind of landed in the Washington D.C. area I'm from Maryland I'm from P.G.
[SPEAKER_01]: County, Maryland.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm very I'm very locked into the kind of scene that was happening there in the late 70s.
[SPEAKER_01]: in early 80s.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess kind of starting like every new harris was around in the early 70s with her angel band and then think twice was knocking around Jerry Douglas was certainly knocking around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you describe to me and in as much detail as you'd like because I find that particular time in place very fascinating?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the scene that you found on the ground there in Washington, DC at the time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well we moved to DC when I was
[SPEAKER_00]: 15 I believe so I would not have been old enough, you know, to go to the clubs, but I definitely remember being aware that like there was a, you know, the great seller door in Georgetown and desparados right across the street from the seller door, the child herald and downtown DC certainly the birch mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: These were iconic.
[SPEAKER_00]: venues, the birch mirror of course is still there, chugging along, but the other places are gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think
[SPEAKER_00]: The last time I was in Georgetown and I wrote down that street where you used to stand in line to get to the seller door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's now a Starbucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, of course, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, I think at the time, I mean, it was a very rich time for acoustic music, bluegrass music.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: being old enough or, you know, I don't know if I snuck in or had it, you know, was legal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember being at Desparados when Richard and Linda Thompson did one of the last shows of, I think it was I want to see the bright lights tonight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of that famous tour where everything was coming apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wheels were falling off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was, you know, just one of those remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: storied tours of music and and yeah so when I was old enough Gary Olesy the wonderful proprietor of the birch mirror he he he was such a friend to me he would
[SPEAKER_00]: He would allow me to open for national acts at the birch mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he knew I didn't really have any money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he would let me just sneak in into the side door off the alley and stand behind whoever was mixing at the soundboard.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like being schooled.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, every time you could go to the birch mirrors, I'm sure you understand, you see these people and these songwriters and hear them tell their stories and watch their hands and see how they're playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was going to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's as if Gary Olsey, gosh, I don't know why he did that, but he just was so kind to me and he let me, you know, he let me
[SPEAKER_00]: take it all in and absorb it and I remember in particular you mentioned when we were talking earlier you mentioned Tony Rice and he was a huge figure to me and they would have you know he would come and he'd play the birch mirror for like three nights straight and and when the show would be over everybody would leave and they'd lock the doors and then they would have
[SPEAKER_00]: sitting around and you know I was just like this little mouse like in the corner just listening and and taking it all in and I remember one time Tony asked me if I knew anything about John Wilkes Booth and it was around a time where he was spending a lot of time in the DC area PG County he he was a real history buff and so
[SPEAKER_00]: He had become fascinated with the story of John Wilkes Booth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he asked me if I knew any songs or knew anything about him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, no, and he said, you should write a song about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, OK. Tony Rice is asking me if I would write a song about John Wilkes Booth well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I go to the library because this was back in the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't just Google John Wilkes Booth, and so I remember going to the Tacoma Park Library and sitting on the floor and just getting books out because all I knew is what we grew up with as school children in terms of the the facts of his life and
[SPEAKER_00]: ended up writing the song called John Wilkes Booth and Tony recorded it on his beautiful album Native American and yeah it's just I mean I think about that now it's like that's just crazy
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't know that it was basically commissioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so late to the party with Tony Rice, when he passed away, I'd always known the name.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when Friends started posting about him, the level of respect and gravitas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, well, okay, maybe I should get into this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, for whatever it's been the last four or five years, I pretty much only listened to Tony Rice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really think anything else, because he's just so incredibly, the voice and the guitar, he gets into the voice
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like the difference, his own sort of arrows, thank you, Taylor Swift, his own arrows, like when he was in his Gordon Lightfoot era, you know, and all the songs of Gordon Lightfoot that he would sing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's just, but to your point of discovering him,
[SPEAKER_00]: on a later basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never too late to discover something wonderful and to take it all in, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's classic, you know it, you know it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when did, you know, you have these early years, you're getting interested in music, and we've kind of jumped ahead to there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are writing a song for Tony Rice, but when did the song writing part become a part?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're doing folk music, you start out by playing other people's songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: When did the actual writing and creating, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how it got into my head, but early, early, early, early.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just I not only love to learn and play other people songs, but I love to scribble on my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not, it's as if I suppose, it's not like anyone said, oh, that's, don't do, you know, it was, there were no instructions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just a desire that I had,
[SPEAKER_00]: When I say scribble, I mean, I really do mean scribble.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just probably terrible, unformed things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just the idea that you could make something up yourself, that just appealed to me greatly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: being very young and always sort of pouring over record album credits and sort of figuring out, well, who did what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who sang what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who wrote what?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so those were just interesting things to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I suppose
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I was a teenager, that's when I really started to write songs again, not for public consumption, it was simply an outlet for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was something I just love to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Were there was anyone mentoring you anyway at that time who was maybe an older songwriter or was it mainly you standing in the back of the birch mirror basically and kind of auto-diedactically teaching yourself by watching?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was me standing in the back of the birch mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although my parents, you know, it's they, I think my parents were really, I mean they knew I loved to play the guitar and they knew that I loved to write songs and I think they were very encouraging in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it was just sort of a combination of things, but I didn't have like one person saying, or not yet, because I think I did, I mean, and we can talk about that later, but at that time as a teenager, I didn't have like one person saying, oh, you should work at that, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the first song that you wrote you mentioned, you know, in that early period, you just basically any songwriter unless you're some kind of phenom, the first, you know, three, four years, the first 200 songs or whatever it is, are going to be scribble like you said.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you remember the first song that you wrote and you finished it and you thought to yourself, oh, that's something, that's different, that's a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't remember, I don't remember that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: just a gradual on ramp.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do remember when I graduated from high school, I knew I wanted to go to college, but I didn't want to go to college right away, and I knew I wanted to take a year off, just the way I felt, and I did a bunch of things during that
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad, we were living in D.C. and my dad said, why don't you go down to that bar that's right down the street off Connecticut Avenue?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have an open mic night on Sunday nights and why don't you go and sign up and play?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was like, God, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, long story short, I did eventually and
[SPEAKER_00]: became friends with a lot of the people who would frequent those open mics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's when I first realized, and they were all, they all wrote songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's maybe was the light bulb moment of, oh, well, I liked right songs in the privacy of my bedroom and
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't play them for anybody but look at these people who I enjoy their company and I think they're wonderful and I love their songs and maybe that's something for me too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it was just sort of growing up and meeting other people doing things that I thought were interesting and maybe that's sort of that was another on-ramp.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was this kind of scene bubbling up.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very serious in DC based on country and bluegrass music.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, Washington, DC is always going to be a company time for politics.
[SPEAKER_01]: That music.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not a real business apparatus for music in Washington, DC.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the big, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: for lack of a better term, the big break for you, sometime in the mid 80s, your music has passed along to some, I believe in Nashville, Tennessee, at, it was at Columbia or, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it was Gary Olsey at the Birch Mirror, once again, being,
[SPEAKER_00]: being so kind, the birch mirror, I remember this exactly what was going on, they were going to present a showcase of some Columbia artists that had just been signed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe the OKNs were one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget who else was part of that showcase.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they were setting up that showcase, and they were going to have a lot of industry people come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they were
[SPEAKER_00]: who was in charge of this showcase.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he asked him, just casually, what else is going on in the DC area?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Gary was kind enough to mention my name.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had just finished or was nearly finished making it a demo, you know, like a,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not a demo tape, because it was like a record, this was back in the day when making a record, but let's call it a cassette tape, making a record-slash tape that you would sell out of your back pocket at your local gigs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the beginning of the independent record movement and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I had made this record that I was going to sell out of my back pocket and I had made it with my friend John Jennings and he John was the one who was the first person to really kind of encourage me to write my own music.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget how much time elapsed between sending it to him and then getting a phone call saying, we'd like to sign you to Columbia.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where'd that be like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of bonkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I was at my day job, which was I worked as a sort of admin person at a small foundation around two punts circle and I was probably making coffee for somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is the thing that when you're like, let's say a 17 year old and you're starting out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is how you envision it going, but it's so it's so I was not 17 years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a lot older at that point, but I mean, like when you're younger, you think it'll go that way, then you spend 5 10 years doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, I guess it doesn't work that way, but then it came full circle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it did.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that debut record for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you go to Nashville then record it or did they use the record that you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: They used 95% of it, but they said there's no hit on here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember thinking, what the fuck is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't even know what that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a little bit of pressure, I say that gently, but it was true, a little bit of pressure to record another song that they thought they could take to radio.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we wanted to be good partners.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not my song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember what it was, Yikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which needless to say, I don't think it even did any.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may have even taken it to radio, but it was like, whoosh, it's bye-bye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: The record got enough notice, I suppose, and whatever lanes that they would pay attention to, that they said make another record.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all your work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I remember this, I still had my day job, but I had a week, a couple weeks of vacation saved up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just living in this little slum tenement apartment and to comb a park.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I took my vacation and I sat at my desk and I,
[SPEAKER_00]: I had some songs already, but I finished up writing what became my second record in that vacation period and that became my second record and it got more traction than the first one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was able to sort of go on from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you start hitting out on the road at that point?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, no, we, you know, we would drive, we could not afford a bus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did not have any such way to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we would drive in our cars, I remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a, I got a, I was invited to open for, I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone like that at the, in Minneapolis, and we all got in our cars and drove to Minneapolis, I changed behind an oven in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no dressing rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did it, we opened for a while of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we drove back and I had to get back to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's what we did for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's what we used to call the myth of the major label, record deal, where you sign a record deal and you get a bus and a wardrobe person and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, that doesn't, that's not exactly how it happened.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This scope of Mary Chaping Carpenter's career is enormous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Five decades, a slew of awards, millions upon millions of albums sold.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet she remembers it all in exacting detail, at least what I can tell from our conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many artists you talk to recall their history as a kind of giant wash.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't remember much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not her.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would guess that's a hallmark of someone who is fully present on a day-to-day basis in their life and in their work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a poem by Wendell Berry about the perils of not being present.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good reminder to all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's entitled The Vacation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once there was a man who filmed his vacation, he went flying down the river in his boat with his video camera to his eye, making a moving picture of the moving river upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly toward the end of his vacation.
[SPEAKER_01]: He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, preserving it forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: The river, the trees, the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat, behind which he stood with his camera, preserving his vacation, even as he was having it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that after he had had it, he would still have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: With a flick of a switch, there it would be.
[SPEAKER_01]: but he would not be in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would never be in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you were mentioning, you know, you had to write that second record in such a compressed time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was almost that vacation that you had there.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did your songwriting start to change at that point?
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you start improving at?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did you start becoming more adept at as a songwriter at that point?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a, that's a really good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that I just like to think that it's the time that you put in.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, it's as if when you're doing it, I don't know if you're that conscious of what you're trying to improve or what you're, you know, how you're trying to strengthen whatever tools you bring to the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think over time, I've just come to believe that it's just, it's just like working a muscle, it's just doing it and doing it and doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow in that, you find your voice, and you find your, you become more aware of what your abilities are and you, and you refine how you're doing it and what you're trying to say
[SPEAKER_00]: what interests you as a subject, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think there's so much to be said for craft and chops, you know, in that, in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's not like you're just, it's not like you just come out of the womb and you know how to write songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there are some people like that, but I think it's about working hard towards it, as well as those, those foundational experiences of
[SPEAKER_00]: discovering guy Clark at the birch mirror and you know feeling like that's that's like going to school.
[SPEAKER_01]: how have you you know you've had three four decades of writing music and when you're writing that first or second record it's a very heavy exciting time you know and it's easy to find inspiration at that time how have you managed to continue you have a new record out now how have you a managed to over time remain inspired or their certain techniques that you have to to bring yourself back into it if you're not feeling it or how have you managed to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's for the love of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's loving the creative process, creating something out of nothing, and that ideas just come into your head and you just have to get it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if there's no formula, although I think you could have the same conversation
[SPEAKER_00]: duly noted as, you know, pop savants in a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they maybe they have a formula or they have a structure or it almost like a scaffolding about how they put a song together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's certainly one way to approach it.
[SPEAKER_00]: For myself, I don't really have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a, it's just the
[SPEAKER_00]: excavate the details to to to to communicate that idea um but it's overall it's just the love of it it's I do remember having a conversation with an interviewer last year when I put my most recent record out and his question was you know why are you still doing this and I I was
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you trying to see her?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bit, bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember kind of laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I, you know, I wasn't trying to be snarky, but my response was, I didn't realize there was like a deadline or a shelf life for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, there's a part of me that wants to, that imagines like, I don't know, would he have, and I say this with a,
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to elevate myself on this other person's level, but you know, would he have asked Bruce Springsteen, why are you still doing this, you know, it's just it seemed kind of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sideways to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's for the love of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love doing it and as well as feeling like I still have something to say and and I still want to say it deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of those things I think fuel fuel it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned that most recent record personal history, you ended up working with Josh Kaufman on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love Josh and How did you end up crossing paths with him and how did that project come together?
[SPEAKER_00]: So a year ago or a year before I put this record out I had gotten together
[SPEAKER_00]: like heart, heart artists to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are, I love them so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have so much respect for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Julie Fowlis and Karim Polort.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're just legends in Scotland and particularly traditional music and folk music in Scotland for their work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And separately and together in many different incarnations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Julie and I had met at Celtic Connections
[SPEAKER_00]: a Korean and I had been ships in the night at the U.K. Focal Ward's years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, long story short, we
[SPEAKER_00]: we wanted to do a record together, a collaboration, and Josh was our producer for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all just agreed that we loved his work so much and we just felt like he was the perfect person and he was.
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought together all these really disparate
[SPEAKER_00]: ideas and thoughts, and all of us are all different kinds of artists, and he put it together in a remarkable fashion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went to real world studios, which in Southwest England, which is just such a a favorite place of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've made four records there so far, and it's a such a privilege to work there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Josh,
[SPEAKER_00]: helped us make this record that I love so much called looking for the thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it was time for me after that to sort of figure out what I wanted to do for my own next record, I just wanted to work with him again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved the experience that I had with him and Karina Julie and I wanted to see what that would be like with just my own songs and happily for me, he said yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the process like between the two of you in creating and how is it different from past records?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't that different from past records.
[SPEAKER_00]: The records I had made before working with Josh, I'd made with Ethan Johns and he's, like, beyond,
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, he's just amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ethan had, oh, it's like I didn't have to, and then before that, it was with Dave Cobb.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of those guys, nobody wanted, nobody needed to hear
[SPEAKER_00]: What I was doing before the sessions, which kind of came as a relief to me because it's almost like until you're in there in the barrel, you know, you know, it's kind of like, like when it's just me with my scratchy little voice memos, you know, because I don't have the big technology here at home to make demos, you know, I just, I just, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't
[SPEAKER_00]: have never really sort of previewed songs before sessions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think Josh asked me for a few things to listen to before we got going, but in general, it was just like, let's just arrive and then we'll see where to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very organic that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned liking to make records there in Bath England.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you think it is about recording and creating in a different place that can be such an elixir for creative work?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great word to use for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't elixir.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, real world is a...
[SPEAKER_00]: is a residential studio in that you can stay there and they take very good care of you and they feed you and they treat you like the beetles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're just all warm and snug and all you have to do is walk across the courtyard after a beautiful breakfast and coffee in
[SPEAKER_00]: immersive environment and it's it's just it's such a privilege to have that environment and and I would say you know it allows you to kind of shut the world out a little bit you're not worried about you know getting the trash out and doing your laundry and you know it's just you're allowed to sort of be a creative person for a few weeks and
[SPEAKER_00]: again the privilege of that is not lost on me at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, listen, it's congratulations on the new record.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being on the working songwriter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a total honor to host you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you, Joe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a pleasure speaking with you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mary Chaping Carpenter's latest album is entitled Personal History, available everywhere music is sold or streamed.
[SPEAKER_01]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let all that take care of itself and for you, just keep your eye on the song.