Win Tickets to See Carlene Carter in Austin

Be a part of the SXSW convention and Direct

TV Live show………

Carlene Carter and Direct TV are taking Austin by storm and you can be front and center. You can win a pair of tickets for the live taping on Friday March 20 at 9 p.m. CST live from the Lonestar Lounge at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX. Simply tell us why you deserve the tickets using song titles from Carlene’s current YepRoc LP. Stronger. The person incorporating the most song titles in the submission wins. Winner will be announced

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Carlene Carter Shares Her Rich Musical History with Santa Barbara

Thursday, February 26, 2009

By Brett Leigh Dicks

Every February, a collective of seasoned music-makers and emerging songwriters converge on Buellton for the annual Durango Songwriters Expo. Now in its 19th year, the event has evolved into one of the leading songwriting forums in the nation. It draws aspiring songwriters from across the country and gives them the opportunity to show off their skills and refine their strategy with the help of leading industry professionals.

One such professional on hand for the 2009 installment is Carlene Carter, whose motivation for attending is a mighty personal one. Despite releasing one of 2008’s seminal albums, Stronger, the heiress to the Carter-Cash legacy (she’s the daughter of June Carter Cash and Carl Smith, and the step-daughter of Johnny) has elected to forgo the trappings of Nashville for her Santa Barbara County home.

“I’ve been coming here for a long time because my producer, John McFee, has lived up here for the last 30 years,” offered Carter from her recently acquired retreat. “So I knew the area pretty well from my friendship with John, and when we were ready to move, we thought we would check out the place. We found 10 acres here up on a little ridge with a beautiful view and room for animals, so we are really happy.”

It seems only fitting that it should be longtime resident McFee who helped to solicit Carter’s relocation to Santa Barbara, as he was also the driving force behind her musical return. Twelve years after her departure from the music world, Stronger launched Carter back on the map, and allowed her to regain her songwriting focus.

“I like to say I was doing a lot of research,” laughed Carter. “Part of it was that I was extremely burned out. I had been on the road pretty much for 10 years. I never wanted to hate what I was doing, but I found myself being on automatic and having no real life. I also had personal problems to take care of, and that took a lot longer than I thought it would. … I just didn’t know if I really wanted to boot up again.”

The time in between projects yielded unprecedented highs and lows for the singer/songwriter. In the same year that she found love again, Carter had to come to terms with the passing of her mother, stepfather, ex-lover, and little sister. But boot up again she did—and in no small way. Her emotional rollercoaster provided the foundation for Stronger, and subsequently inspired what arguably is Carter’s finest record to date.

Having channeled her emotions into song, Carter turned to her stepbrother, John Carter Cash, for assistance. She ventured back to Tennessee, quickly recorded a prerelease, and took the album on the road. While traveling, Carter realized the full potential of her new songs and, upon returning home, sought out McFee to help rework the material. The Santa Barbaran quickly proved he was the right man for the job.

Carter handed over the reins to McFee, who went on to record, produce, mix, and play most of the instrumentation for Stronger. “I just did the album that I really thought was right,” said Carter. “And that was largely due to John, who, apart from the songs, was the most important part of this.”

In listening to the recording, it is difficult to understand how anyone could tell Carlene Carter what to do—especially considering her collective experience and pedigree. Having launched her career as part of the Carter Family when she was only 15, Carter’s journey has been an undeniably unique one. By age 17, she was on the road with The Johnny Cash Show.

“There I got to sing my own stuff,” Carter recalled. “Everyone would sing a song—Rosanna and Rosey and me. John was really cool about that. He wanted us to do that and kind of threw us out there. And that’s really how it started as far as playing. A little after that, I started playing all the little clubs around Nashville. I played by myself as a songwriter, a lot of the time for just dinner or drinks. I just wanted to play. And that started my musical independence.”

Since then, Carter has delivered nine studio albums and three compilations and crossed over into television by way of a series of specials called Carlene Carter: Circle of Song. But before you chalk up Carter as another prodigal child of musical royalty, she’ll tell you that her family ties have always remained strong.

“Whenever I’ve not known what to do, I’ve always gone back to the Carter Family, because there was nothing like singing with my aunts and my mom to my grandma,” she said. “My grandma passed in ’78, and that’s the year I started recording. It’s also the year that my dad retired from his career. So it’s funny how torches get passed on and you feel a responsibility to be connected to the music that they did and try to carry it on in your own way. I went completely around the bend doing other things, but always in my heart and in my soul is that music.”

Live Last Night: Carlene Carter

From the Washington Post:

Most folks at Carlene Carter's Barns at Wolf Trap show on Saturday surely left feeling lucky they didn't grow up in a show biz family. Well, her family, anyway.

The gifted granddaughter of Maybelle Carter, daughter of June Carter and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash told the audience that "a lot of stuff to write about" has happened to her. She spent much of her pained and fascinating 75-minute set relating those tales with tears in her eyes.

Introducing "The Bitter End," Carter said it was a song she wrote for Johnny Cash about a "15-year old girl who left home because she was dumb and pregnant." After a pause and with a big guffaw, Carter added: "That would be me."

"To Change Your Heart" -- a song whose melody and structure recall "Long Black Veil," a traditional folk gem her stepfather used to sing -- was "about my third divorce." That would be her divorce from Nick Lowe, the U.K. pop genius who steered Carter into a New Wave direction in the late-1970s and for a time backed her with his peerless combo, Rockpile. (For those keeping score, Carter's second divorce was from Jack Routh, a Johnny Cash sideman who then married Carlene's sister, Cindy Cash, who left Routh to marry Marty Stuart, another Johnny Cash sideman. And so on...)

There is also an upside, of course, to fitting into Carter's genes. This country has produced few musical clans as talented as the Carter-Cashes, and the tools of the family trade have clearly been passed down to Carlene. Carter's voice, much like the singer/songwriter herself, seems simultaneously fragile and robust. At 53, despite all her years of wild living, Carter can still go from a growl to a breathtaking alto in mid-lyric. And the melodies she crafts can make even songs with the saddest subject matter sound uplifting.

"Judgement Day" was Carter's sweet ode to her troubled longtime companion, the former Tom Petty bassist Howie Epstein. In 2001, she was arrested for writing bad checks, car theft, and possession of black tar heroin while on a crazy crime cruise with Epstein through the American Southwest. He died a drug-related death a year and a half later.

Though backed for much of the night by an electric guitarist and keyboardist, Carter showed her soft and hard sides once again by ending the night sitting alone at the piano and belting out "Stronger," the title song from her latest record. It's a tribute to her sister, Rosey Nix, who in 2003, months after the deaths of June Carter and Johnny Cash, was found dead lying on the floor of a bus she was living in, surrounded by drug paraphernalia.

Like so much of her material: Horrible story, lovely song. That's show biz for you.

-- Dave McKenna

Kudos from around...

From the blog of Jim Bessman:

And so I am inspired again. But I neglect maybe the most inspiring Carlene Carter. She and the always-inspiring Graham Parker showcased for APAP two nights earlier at Joe’s Pub, the first time, she said, they were ever billed together. GP remains the most consistently compelling singer-songwriter to emerge from the new wave, and was a huge influence on Carlene (she used his pub-rock band the Rumour on her self-titled 1978 debut album). She gave him props after his typically self-deprecating solo set (he joked about getting confused for Gram Parsons and Richard Thompson and just sucking it up and going with it), then did an autobiographical set backed by piano and guitar that was truly triumphant: Here’s a woman with the greatest heritage in country music (the Carter Family, not to mention her step-father Johnny Cash), who caused a stir with her first rock-influenced country albums, then went through years of abuse and then the rapid-fire deaths of her mother June Carter, Cash, her sister Rosey Carter and ex-boyfriend/producer and former Petty’s Heartbreaker Howie Epstein, to emerge last year with the terrific comeback album “Stronger.”
At Joe’s Pub, she sang with abandon, looking and sounding so much like her adorable mother now instead of the glamorous rebel of her debut. And when she finished with “Stronger,” which was written for her sister (“I wanna crawl in that dark hole and curl up beside her/Wanna cradle her sweet soul and never let go”), mine weren’t the only eyes tearing up.
“Don’t shit on your talent!” bellowed Sandra Bernhard on New Year’s Eve, responding to a reveler who shouted out something about Amy Winehouse. The ever-glamorous Sandy, looking easily 30 years younger than she is, simply could not tolerate Winehouse’s appetite for self-destruction, her talent notwithstanding.
Carlene has now officially not shit on her talent. Go tell it on the mountain! Or take it from this post, three and a-half years in the making.
Sometimes it takes a while to get inspired.

GARY MORRIS TO PERFORM AT THE HEROES RED, WHITE AND BLUE INAUGURAL BALL

Gary Morris will be performing at the Red, White and Blue Ball for the Inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. The 2009 Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball will celebrate America's military heroes and honor injured service members and their families at the Walter Reed Army and National Naval Medical Centers. It will benefit the USO of Metropolitan Washington and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). Gary's international career was started when he joined Candidate Jimmy Carter on his whistlestop tour accros the country during his successful campaign. Since then Gary has performed for every US President as well as heads

of state from around the world. Gary's current LP Bring Him Home and Other Prayers features songs from his awad winning performance in Les Miserables as well as traditional inspriational tunes.