I’ve known Carrie Newcomer since 1991. She’s one of the most reflective people I know and a person who puts her Quaker principles into action. Carrie will drop a new album A Great Wild Mercy later this fall–a full review will come when it’s available–but I had a chance to speak with her in late July. That interview has been edited for space.
Carrie Newcomer on empathy and A Great Wild Mercy:
I think that the title cut … holds a lot of the threads that that through this album. The opening image is of a woman who has a blue umbrella over her head…. She steps out into the rain, looks up, puts down her umbrella, and lets the rain wash over her.
I … thought we all been longing…. for the presence of something wilder…. There's a line in the song “There's news of the world and news of the heart .” The news of the world will tell us that that we are small that we are without power in light of climate change and economic injustice. But the … things at the heart are the great mercy. There is an ever-present goodness still in world and that we are part of it if we choose to be.
On remaining optimistic:
I’m not the kind of person who thinks that the glass half full or half empty; I just think it's a really big glass! My friend [author] Parker Palmer has [a] beautiful definition for hope: “Hope is holding in creative tension all that is and could be and each day taking action to narrow the distance between them.” It's not sugar-coated optimism; it's holding what is and the challenges we face. I don’t belittle that, but … holding onto our finest aspirations … is what I do each day what in my daily action and voice. I read a quote by Rick Rubin: “The things we believe carry a charge,” and I really believe that. What we do in our daily lives does matter and does shift something in the world…. O]ur current media system is based on a steady diet of fear and outrage. It’s important for the arts to uplift another kind of voice: We are not small and are not without power.
On “Singing in the Dark,” co-written with John McCutcheon
… We are living in a vulnerable moment culturally and as a planet. We need to keep singing in the moment and in the darkness. “Singing in the Dark” happened I had gone to Gethsemane where Thomas Merton worked. The monks do something called “singing the hours.” Seven times during the day they all gather [to sing]…. One of those times is 3 AM and I [spoke] with one of the monks … and asked him how he felt about getting up every day at that time. He said [that]… he worked on a crisis hotline before [he] became a monk and … that 3 a.m. was when people hit bottom. It’s also the darkest time in the monastery, but… “the idea of faithfully putting what we do into practice and supporting others sustained me.”
On the collaboration process with McCutcheon:
…John is a writer’s writer. [He’s] in Georgia now, so we Zoom. John is a lyrics-first kind of guy and so we break down lyrics and shake them together. Sometimes … a quote, an idea or a poem… become[s] the basis for lyrics…. Then we take it to music, and we’ll work on the music separately. One song that I really love that we created together is “Field of Stars, “ which came out walking to Compostela. We created the lyrics and then John wrote the music and played it for me. Sometimes I'll have the music … and we shift or change … the bridge…. but the lyrics really come together very organically in the moment.
On the whimsical song “Potluck:”
In Joy, Robert Gay talks about a potluck where everybody brought their joys and their sorrows as a way to prayerfully be kinder to one another. I love writing with Siri Undlin [of Humbird]. We both … thought the Midwestern potluck was a great metaphor…. It’s part of Midwestern culture. You have to trust what people will bring to the table. If everyone brings chocolate cake, that’s what we have! You put it on the table next to the beer…. There's a … kind of graciousness but also the blessing of community and the care that we give one another, a “glad you're here” moment. We're coming out of a pandemic …. and we're coming back to community, [but] …. we’re a little rusty. At the same time we're celebrating connection.
On integrating poetry, music, and meter:
My process for songwriting is to do a lot of writing… essays, journal[ing] … a Substack page, poetry…. A lot of writing isn't a song, but … from all that writing I'll start to pull out things that become lyrics. That's pretty much the classic Carrie Newcomer process. I definitely write prose poetry, though.
… I always come back to songwriting because it makes me happy. There’s something about a few verses and choruses in a compressed format…. Language is powerful, but a song also has music that must be completely entwined to be effective. In poetry there's the setup, but in a song…. you're … laying out of the story, but it can't just be documentation.
On the new album’s varied genres:
I've always crossed genres that way. There’s something really beautiful about a great pop song. The Beatles' [songs] are still around for a reason. The funky bass on “Start with a Stone” grew out the cushion that drummer Jim Brock [laid down] and Paul Kowert is one of the finest bass players I've ever encountered. But, I’ve never had any problem calling myself a folk artist because I don't censor my subject matter…. I write about all kinds of relationships [not just love songs]… romantic relationships… but also family relationships, spiritual relationships, and political relationships. The lack of a censor very much puts me in the folk music [category]. The last few records were a bit more intimate, but I coproduced this one with David Weber… There are songs that are very quiet, but three of the musicians are members of Hawktail and project a bluegrass- meets-classical [feel]. My longtime creative pianist also plays Hammond organ, so it was … an interesting collaboration.
On the mental shifts between genres:
That's production, I guess. The songs are generally what I'm writing, so… one [might] end up with a combination of pop longing with a kind of Americana rhythm. But I started writing “Path Through the Evening Woods” when I was walking and there’s … Irish ethnicity entwined in the song, the arrangement, and melody.
On being a veteran performer in a younger profession:
I embrace it. In the song “Book of Questions,” every line could be a writing prompt and tell my story from it. Everything has brought me here–the seriously stupid stuff and the transcendent. I had something important to say at every point of my career, but I couldn’t have written the last album one day before it was done or 10 years ago. I’m … grateful for who I’ve become as a writer and for the songs I write today. I … often [don’t know] know exactly what an album is about–this is like my 20th–and when I'm recording one. I [also] don’t write songs because I have answers; I write songs because I have questions. Who was I becoming? What do I still have to offer?
I love … collaboration … with those in their 20’s and 30’s but Jim Brock is 70 and we had fabulous conversations … about what art is and what is it that [we] still have to offer…. [There’s] a certain kind of soup that we're all kind of swimming in right now and I love that I get to swim with folks from different generations and think about all kinds of ways we create together. Bob Dylan said that if you’re not growing, you die.
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