Carpenter’s most recent release, Sometimes Just the Sky, a celebration of her 30-year recording career, features new versions of some of the singer’s most beloved songs plus one newly penned track. Her songs speak to the most personal of life’s details and the most universal. With hits like “Passionate Kisses” and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” she has won five Grammy Awards (with 15 nominations), two CMA awards, two Academy of Country Music awards and is one of only 15 female members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Over the course of her career, Mary Chapin Carpenter has sold over 14 million records. They will perform material from their vast catalogues as well as some of their favorite songs. On stage, the friends of over 30 years will swap songs and share stories. "I always defer to her, because she ends up singing it.SPRINGFIELD – The Clark State Community College Performing Arts Center will welcome singer-songwriters and longtime friends Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin to the stage of the Kuss Auditorium at 8 p.m. "She really does have a great melodic sense, and a great sense of surprise in the melody," says Leventhal. But the chorus finds Colvin's voice making much larger leaps, a dramatic shift in sound that completely pulls the listener in. On the verse, the music is linear and flowing, never moving up or down by more than a note or two at a time. But it's not just a matter of mood there's also a difference between the way the two melodies flow. Part of what made "Sunny Came Home" such a striking single was the contrast between those two elements, the dark, simmering verse and the bright, soaring chorus. But she came up with the that we used, and it was so much better." "Like 'Sunny Came Home.' If my memory serves me correctly, I had the melody for the verse, and another melody for the chorus. "I invariably have a melody line, but boy, can she come up with some great ones," he says. "She has a real personal vision as a lyricist, and her songs have to resonate from a really true place in her."īoth Colvin and Leventhal have input on the melodies, however. "I serve as her editor and soundboard for her lyrics," says Leventhal. Generally, when the two wrote together, Leventhal would provide the music - the chords, the beat and the general shape of the song - while Colvin took care of the words. "The objective was to create radio-friendly songs our own way. So when she teamed up again with Leventhal for "A Few Small Repairs" - they'd kept writing together, but he hadn't produced her since "Steady On" - she knew that there had to be some singles potential in her songs. "What that record really did for me was, it left me craving a fun time in the studio," she says. "Every Little Thing" didn't get Colvin onto the charts, but she had fun. "That was not apparent to me by that point." So she went back into the studio, and cut a slick, radio-ready remake of the Police hit, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," changing the "She" to "He." Duhhhh!" She chuckles self-deprecatingly. "I was still finding out that when you release a record, the record company wants a single. Colvin had forgotten one tiny detail: The album needed a designated hit. "I knew the songs, and half of it was going to be live," she says. She didn't really begin to enjoy recording until 1994, when she made her third album, "Cover Girl." The idea behind the album was simple enough - Colvin would cut a dozen "covers," or songs that had been originally recorded by other artists - and the execution was a breeze. I lost perspective, and didn't want to hear the music after it was done. "There was a lot of looking very, very closely at every little detail of the music," she says. It's enough to make anyone self-conscious.Ĭolvin hated it. Instead, you're faced with darkness, solitude and the merciless accuracy of recording tape. There is no audience vibe to play off, no fans in front to cheer encouragement. The recording studio has made more than a few musicians uneasy. "So there was a lot of angst, and a lot of second-guessing, and a lot of anxiety about, 'Is it any good?' " "It was the first record for both of us, for me as a producer and for her as an artist," he explains. He had been writing songs with Colvin for several years by the time he was hired to produce "Steady On," and initially hoped that their shared perspective and experience would make the recording process fairly painless. "The first record we made was very difficult to make," agrees John Leventhal.
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