Question: What made you fall in love with music?

Mary Chapin Carpenter:  Oh golly.  The Beatles.  Motown music.  The Mamas and the Papas. Any records that my older sisters had, those were the records that I wanted to steal.  My mother would blast the opera through the house on Saturday afternoons.  It was Texaco Opera Theatre live from the Met and my father has great, amazing collection of jazz records.  He would play boogie-woogie piano when he was a kid and so he had a lot of records and there was a lot of music in our house all the time growing up.  And I don't know if there was just one moment where I decided I loved music but it was something that I always had in my life and I remember stealing my mother's guitar and my sister's bass ukulele to teach myself how to play.  That's what I wanted to do I guess. 

Question: Can you still play the ukulele?

Mary Chapin Carpenter:  Oh, yeah.  It's the first four strings of the guitar, so it's just easy to transpose the positions and it's right there.

Question: What obstacles did you have to overcome in your early musical career?

Mary Chapin Carpenter: You know I think that I was the beneficiary of just some extraordinary opportunities.  I mean, I mean I really, yes I think I stuck with it but I think there's so many people in this world who is so gifted and talented and just for want of a lucky break or something, you know...  I think the people who walk around with sort of a sense of entitlement, you know like, "I'm really great and I deserve this," you know.  Those are the people I feel somewhat allergic to.  And I, you know, I and I'm sure they, you know, go on to great careers.  But you know I guess I just sort of feel like it's sometimes it isn't really necessarily how long you stick with it or how much you persevere, it's just sometimes it's dumb luck, you know, and I think remembering that is important.  It's good for the humble soul, you know.  But at any rate, I just knew it was something I wanted to try to do as much as I could but I think I, to this day, I can't quite believe that I get to do it to make a living, you know.  I just can't believe that I got so lucky, you know.

Question: What lucky breaks do you feel you had along the way?

Mary Chapin Carpenter:  I was making a record that; I was making a tape that was going to become my first record.  I had a little money in my pocket and I was going to, this was back in the days when it was still something of a novelty sort of to have your own record.  Nowadays of course, you can be your own record company and that's great.  But this was a long time ago when it was still something of a novelty to sell your own music out of your back pocket at shows.  And so that was what I was going to try to do.  And just before I finished making this tape, which I eventually was going to press into vinyl, a gentleman at a local club in Washington where I was playing, chatted up the, what was then CBS Records rep who was coming to see a show at his club with some their new artists and he mentioned my name.  And the CBS gentleman got in touch with me and then I got signed.  I mean, just complete accident, you know.  So I think that right there is just a complete fluke and crazy and amazing and lucky.  So that was a big break.

Recorded April 30, 2010
Interviewed by Austin Allen