You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation - that doesn't leave you just like that. And that is what that song is about. I remember that, and that is imprinted on me, that sense.- Mary Chapin Carpenter
You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.
When I think of the artists I admire and seek out musically. It's because I am curious about where they're going to go the next time they have a chance to put a record out. It's not about where I find them on the radio dial, or how many records they're selling.
There's timing. And then there's also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing.
So I think that if I do feel more freedom right now in my career, it's not so much because I have less at stake but more a sense that I have learned more.
So I came home and I had a resume and everything, but the only job experience I had was just playing in bars and clubs on my summers off. So, I was temping and stuff during the day and playing music at night.
My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India.
It's like the code of living by yourself. People who are single know what I am talking about. You eat standing up, reading the paper. Or you say to yourself, this is not even cutting it, I am taking a TV dinner and I am getting in bed here.
It's a pretty frantic world that we live in.
It's a marvelous feeling when someone says 'I want to do this song of yours' because they've connected to it. That's what I am after.
I have never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world.
I am a liberal arts junkie.
I went to college and I never allowed myself to think for an instant that I would have this chance to do this.
I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I will go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out.
I think that every new record is a chance to... I think what it is for me is my heart and soul at that moment in time... I have always felt that just being able to make a record is a privilege.
