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A Conversation with Carrie Newcomer (continued)
PM: On top of the way the music we listen to reveals us, I always feel that our subjects are uniquely revealed when they speak about the people who are close to them. So allow me to ask about one, the author Barbara Kingsolver. She says wonderful things about you, and she sounds like a good friend. How did you meet and what's she like?
CN: Barbara is amazing. In 1998 I came out with an album that had a song on it that was inspired by one of her essays. And I never do this, but I just love her work, and I sent it to her. I mean, I never do that. But I just sent it to her. And she wrote me back the most beautiful letter, basically saying, "You got it."
PM: Wow.
CN: And we started writing and e-mailing, and eventually we started doing shows together. She's a wonderful musician, and so is her husband.
PM: Really?
CN: Yeah!
PM: What do they do?
CN: She's a pianist, and her husband is a guitarist. And we've done a couple shows together in Tucson where she lives. It's wonderful when you've had an admiration for someone's work, and then you meet them and you get to know them, and you admire them even more as a person. It's not always like that.
PM: Boy, you're not kidding. How would you describe her music?
CN: Again, she's very eclectic. I think she was classically trained, but she enjoyed jazz a lot and has been working with that.
PM: Well, I should get in touch with her if they make records--and maybe review her in Puremusic?
CN: Well, they haven't made a record together. Now, several years ago, Steven came out with an acoustic guitar album with another fellow. And [laughs] actually for a while, Barbara was playing in this band called the Rock Bottom Remainders.
PM: [laughs]
CN: And it's a Stephen King and Amy Tan and--oh, gosh, the writer from Florida... Dave Barry. And it was just this rock 'n' roll kind of garage band.
PM: Excellent.
CN: And they would do these shows and all the money would go to a literacy foundation. But I guess they had a ball doing it for a season. Barbara plays piano, so she was the keyboard player in the Rock Bottom Remainders.
PM: That's great. So you're a storyteller kind of songwriter a lot of the time, and never far from the human condition as a subject. Have you written a lot of prose as well?
CN: I'm kind of a workhorse writer. Some people write from inspiration, it comes down and hits them on the head and they write it out and it's perfect the first time. But most people don't like them--no, no, I'm just kidding. Just kidding.
PM: [laughs]
CN: But actually, I write best when I write consistently. It's really a practice for me.
PM: Yeah.
CN: When I'm out on the road, I do a lot of writing that's not songwriting. I do a lot of essays and poetry and prose of different kinds. And a lot of my songs come out of those writings.
PM: Oh, that's interesting.
CN: The song Betty's Diner started out as a short story that I wrote when I was on the road. And then when I got back, I decided to encapsulate the story in a song, which was a great challenge, because how do I put pages of character study into four lines--
PM: No kidding.
CN: --and make that character really come alive? So that was really fun. Something interesting that has happened this fall, something I just starting includng in my shows--I wasn't done with Betty's Diner, I guess, so I've been writing all these songs from the perspective of characters who come to visit the diner.
PM: Wow.
CN: Now I have this whole collection of songs that are from all different walks of life, with the differences and the commonalities, all these people who come to this diner.
PM: What a rich motif that became.
CN: Oh, it's been really fun. And I can approach different subjects and different kinds of people and write from different voices that talk a lot about the human condition. Also about that idea that communion doesn't always happen in church, and that forgiveness comes in the most unexpected places. So it's been really interesting. And I just did my first show where I did basically a "diner set," where it's some of the songs from Betty's Diner to introduce it, but then a whole collection of voices from the diner.
PM: That's wonderful.
CN: It's been really fun. I've been talking to Aaron about creating a section at my website where I might put up a few of these diner-people demos---none of these songs have been recorded except in demo form--so that if people want to hear them again, they can just go to the website and stream it.
PM: That's great. I love when people keep their websites really up-to-date with stuff like demos or new thoughts. It really makes it so interactive.
CN: Yeah, I like that too. It's hard to do, if you're trying to be personally involved with it, because you're on the road and you're traveling. But I really love the site, and I think it'll be great fun.
PM: Yeah. And when you've got a good team member like Aaron is, you can just shovel him your ideas over the phone, that's hot.
CN: I actually talked to Aaron today and he said he spoke to you and had a really nice conversation.
PM: He hooked me up with Willy Porter, which I thought was really cool, too.
CN: Oh, yeah. Well, that's how we ran into Aaron, through Willy. It all comes around.
PM: As a musician and the wife of an intellectual property lawyer, do you have any thoughts on where this crazy music business seems to be very awkwardly headed? Do you think the future bodes well for the indie artist, for instance?
CN: I sure hope so, because it would be a tremendous loss to lose the indie artist. Our musical landscape would just be so much poorer without that voice.
It's a very amazing time we're living in, in terms of music. I keep thinking we're living in a time that's very similar to when radio first happened. When radio started, all of a sudden there were all these wonderful things that were possible. You could hear music that you could have never heard before. There was recorded music and live music coming into your home. But at the same time, the piano companies went out of business, because everybody used to have a piano in their house, and everybody played an instrument. And they sat in the parlor or out on the front porch and played. There was something wonderful about the fact that now you could hear music that you could never have heard before and be moved by it and experience it. But there was something really tragic about the fact that there wasn't a piano in every house anymore.
I think right now, with this whole internet explosion happening, the change in the landscape of the musical scene is similar to when radio came in, that moment in time where everything's changed. There's a whole new paradigm. And what's really important here is that the artist's voice doesn't get lost in this whole new amazing technology that has come on the scene, with all of the advantages, but at the same time, the possibility of losing really important things about music. I don't think indie art will ever go away. But I think we need to be outspoken about it, in terms of educating people about what we'll be losing if there isn't a way for artists to make a living, especially indie artists, if they can't make a living doing what they love, and doing what they do really well. I'm a folk singer, so my job is to generally look at the glass half full.
[laughter]
CN: So I think indie art is going to stay around, but--
PM: As it becomes more a world of downloading and less a world of retail CDs over the counter, I think that there's going to be a greater leveling of the playing field. And as people find ways to discover new artists, like, "If you like this artist, try these," places like Puremusic and other things--places online where people are referring you to artists you may not have heard of, and you can go to anybody's website and buy it there, I think the indie artist is looking better than they did for the '90s in the decade to come.
CN: Maybe so. I hope you're right. continue
