Cody Englander
Staff writer
At 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, singer-songwriters Mary Chapin Carpenter and Brandy Clark will share the stage in a double-bill show for country fans of all ages.
Carpenter has sold 17 million records and is the winner of five Grammy awards out of 18 total nominations. She came onto the country singer-songwriter scene in the late ’80s, though 1992 is where she found the most success, when her album, Come On Come On, went certified quadruple platinum in the United States. The album charted seven singles throughout 1992 through 1994. In 2012, she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.She reflected on her style of play in an interview with Acoustic Guitar.
“The guitar most of the time is what kicks something off for me,” said Carpenter. “I play primarily in alternate tunings because I bore myself to tears in standard.”
Clark also has a Grammy to her name and has won numerous awards from the Country Music Association and Americana Music Association. She composed the music for the musical Shucked, alongside Shane McAnally, which garnered her a Best Original Score nomination at the 76th Tony Awards, and she’s written for The Band Perry, Keith Urban, Kacey Musgraves and others. Her song “Buried” was noted as one of NPR’s Best Songs of 2023.
She recently won Best Country Solo Performance for “Buried” at the 66th Grammy Awards and Song of the Year at the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards for her song “Dear Insecurity.”
For this joint tour, Carpenter will play songs from both her catalog and her new, introspective album Personal History that released June 6 of this year. Personal History marks her 17th album.
In their review of her new work, Folk Alley said, “Carpenter weaves songs from lyrical filaments and layers of cinematic instrumentation, enfolding us in a rich rhythmic grandeur. It may be her best album yet, and it is certainly one of the best albums of the year so far.”
In an interview with American Songwriter, she reflected on her uncomplicated writing process.
“I’ve been writing songs by myself for 25 years,” Carpenter said. “I don’t even think about it. It’s just that’s what I’ve been doing for so long. I never really knew what co-writing was until I got a record deal. It was just me sitting down with my guitar, and a legal pad, and a pencil and an eraser. That was just the way I did it.”
While Carpenter reflected on her artistic process, Clark reflected on her discovery of wanting to become an artist early.
In a “Songwriter 2 Songwriter” article in American Songwriter, Clark expanded on that moment while in conversation with Ben Platt.
“… The music of Patsy Cline was what got me,” she said. “And then, when I would see ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ and see that Loretta Lynn wrote those songs. … Because I, as a kid, thought every song that was ever going to be was in existence. Like on the seventh day, God said, ‘Here are all the songs.’ I didn’t realize that people were making up new songs until I saw ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ and that Loretta was writing those songs.”
