Interview with Singer-Songwriter Carrie Newcomer

Photo by Jim McGuire



              Much has been written over the years about Carrie Newcomer, all I can really add is my own encounter with her work. A long time ago, back when there were still used record stores where you could spend hours combing through bins until you came up with some secret, sacred treasure, I stumbled across her album "My True Name." The music on that record transformed me, like a light in a dark attic, her songs revealed all of the nearly forgotten heirlooms of the soul, almost every line seemed like a call inward, and also outward; be true to you, be true to the world. Carrie once wrote "I believe that one of the finest gifts we give one another is our unhurried presence." I think the same could be said of her songs, they are a type of unhurried presence and the most precious gift that can ever be given; hope. "I'm well aware what people can bear when there is a reason for them to face it" she sings in "Nothing's Ever Wasted" and in fact I think that is the underlying soul of Carrie's work, Nothing is ever wasted, it's never too late and second chances have more room to move around in than you'd think.



AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way?

Carrie: That is a wide and wonderful question. I don't believe I could answer it well in a few sentences. It's been such a strange, fascinating, wonderful, surprising, heartbreaking, beautiful, still unfolding  life in music.  I don't think I could have creatively imagined all the places music would take me when I was starting out. 

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

Carrie: I didn't grow up in a musical family.  I encountered music through the American public school system.  The town I grew up in was home to several of the most prominent band instrument factories.  So as a result the public schools had a wonderful music program.  I started there. I'm a huge supporter of art and music being essential subjects.    Later as a teenager I fell in love with the singing poets, the songwriters who were combining interesting, poetic and thought lyrics with music. I picked up a guitar and started immediately writing songs.   But, I didn't go to college for music.  My degree is in visual art.  I think when I began college I wasn't ready to risk the thing I loved the most.  But, I put myself through college playing in coffeehouses, restaurants, weddings, festivals, house parties and bars.  Gosh I played everywhere.  I think I played a few garage sales.  After I finished school, music was calling and I decided to follow.  I had no idea where it would take me.  And, it's taken me places I could have never imagined at the time.  All these years later, I'm still following. 

AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote?

Carrie: I vaguely remember.  I think it was something about love and a boy being killed in a car accident.  Kind of my version of "Teen Angel."  I was pretty shy and angsty then. 

AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations?

Carrie: I listen to all kinds of music.  But I would have to say I still always come back to the singing poets.  For example, Paul Simon continues to put out beautiful albums.  His lyric writing is brilliant.

Often my inspiration comes from literature and poetry. I'm drawn to poets where the natural world shows up in their work. Poets like Wendell Berry, Naomi Shyab Nye, Mary Oliver, Ranier Marie Rilke, and Rumi.  In terms of my own process, my songs usually begin with my own poetry or essays.  Then when I finally sit down to write the song I have already explored the topic and created some of the language I might use.  


AHC:  What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, the perfect angle of light, so to speak?

Carrie: The reason why I'm a songwriter is because I love the marriage of music and language. It's a whole heart, mind and body experience.  The language and music are completely entwined. Everything the music is saying is backed up and taken further by the language.  Everything the language is saying is backed up by the music. If a song is working, it says more than the words.   I write regularly, some folks say I'm prolific, but really I'm just faithful.  Writing is a practice, and perhaps my most consistent spiritual practice.  To write you have to show up for your own life, you have to pay attention. I write the song I write today. What I mean by that is when I first started writing songs I thought I had to put the sum total of all my experience into each song.  But now I know a good song is usually about one thing. I write a song today about this topic.  Tomorrow I'll write another.  I have a lot of songs in me.  It takes some pressure off.  This song may or may not be my masterpiece. But that's not the point.  The point is I keep listening, showing up, writing it down. I've heard people call writing practicing the "mule work."  But I think of it more as "dog work."  Anyone who has a dog knows that they are so hard wired.  A retriever is never happier than when it's brought you something. When I'm songwriting I'm completely in my own skin, doing this thing I feel made to do.  And sometimes if I'm faithful,  I find that elusive zone where I get totally immersed in the process and come up for air 2 hours later. Sometimes I can tell when a song is right. That is a satisfying feeling.   But I've been surprised by songs as well.  

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the power of song?

Carrie: As a songwriter I'm always trying to capture in language and music the things we experience that have no words.  I've often thought that to be an odd job description. But yes, for me songs are a beautiful container for human experience, a beautiful place to describe all the longing and loss, ache and awe of it.  Often I'm described as having a spiritual current in my work. The reason for that is because I have a spiritual thread that runs through my life.  If that quality were not present I'd be censoring something very important about how I experience my life and the world.  But that being said, I very consciously write about that thread in a manner that is inclusive, that reaches to that shared human experience of longing or leaning into something, if not greater, perhaps larger than ourselves.  In my experience, it is in the small and daily that we most often catch a glimpse of something whole and sacred in the world.  I guess I'm one of a growing number of people who are choosing not to put the sacred in such a small container. 

I am often struck with wonder and gratitude at the power of a song.  There are songs that make me cry, always at the same part no mater how many times I hear it.  There are songs that heal and help in deep and comforting ways.  There are songs that we feel in our bodies as they tap into something primal.  People are very generous with me and will often tell me how a particular song has helped, healed or opened a new conversation.  As a songwriter I send out my songs not knowing where they will land. I can only hope they land well and with my best intentions. And so I am always deeply grateful when someone takes the time to let me know that a song has landed well and safely in their hearts.  What a fine and tender thing.

AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories?

Carrie: That is a difficult question because after years of touring there are so many memories I really treasure.  And, I treasure them for a variety of reasons.  Being a traveling songwriter you see the world close up. So many interesting ecosystems and communities.  There are people and their stories that I'll carry with me always.  When I am traveling I experience the world so intensely, and so much happens in a relatively short amount of time. But when I get home, everything is pretty much the same. The only thing that has significantly changed is me.   

I have met so many beautiful, bewildering, extraordinary, ordinary people, and experienced so many different landscapes. I carry mental pictures of landing on an Alaskan glacier in crop duster style plane, weeping for the beauty of it, I remember walks in the desert and experiencing a northern boundary water silence so deep it seemed like a noun. I remember the pulse of several enormous cities and feeling the power of all those heartbeats around me. I remember small towns and an old clapboard church set out on a rocky coast.  I remember the sound of prayer flags of Dharmsala, and a school of Kenyan children running across a field to sit at the feet of an elder.  I remember a young woman on a train in Germany, a beautiful sleeping child in her arms.  I remember so many things, but most of all I remember the music, all that sweet sweet ephemeral stuff I've sent into the air, letting it go and wishing it well.  

If you want one particular experience

I remember performing on the southern tip of India in a home run by a poet for 200 women and girls who had been living on the street. I didn't know what to sing, and was at a loss for what might I offer to women that had lived and suffered in ways I couldn't imagine.  At that point the women asked if they could sing for me. They sang "We Shall Overcome" in Hindi.  I sang it back to them in English. And we went back and forth like this for a very long time.  The song was one of struggle, hope, and affirmation.  The song said, "We are not invisible people, hear us and know we are here and whole."   

AHC:  Do you have any words of advice for young musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world?

Carrie: Something really good happened to my writing when I gave myself permission to sound like a midwesterner.  What I mean by that is I learned my most powerful voice would always be my truest voice.  My friend and songwriting colleague, Bill Harley, put it this way.  "Carrie you don't want to be the best singer-songwriter. No, what you really want is to be the only Carrie Newcomer."  Bill articulated something so important.  The world needs your truest voice.  It needs what you uniquely have to offer. Your most powerful songs will always be your truest songs. 

Also something good happened to my songs, and to my life in music, when I stopped just following music as framed by the music industry - but created my own frame based upon what I write about.  I write songs but I write songs about something.  It was that something that would lead me where the songs (and I) needed to go.

AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about?

Carrie: I just released my 16th album called "The Beautiful Not Yet" with a companion book of poetry and essays called, "The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays and Lyrics." 

I'll be touring this album through the early winter.  I'm working on completing a co written play called, "Betty's Diner: The Musical" and creating a music and spoken word work with Quaker author Parker J. Palmer called, 'What We Need Is Here: Hope Hard Times and The Human Possibility.



For more information visit www.carrienewcomer.com/
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