“And with that comes a familiarity and mutual love of songs by one another and by other artists that we have grown up loving.

“Shawn and I have been touring for the last year together and our friendship goes back nearly 30 years,” Carpenter says. These longtime friends share the stage as an intimate duo, performing material spanning their vast catalogs as well as some of their favorite songs. On Saturday, Carpenter will team up with Grammy-winner Shawn Colvin (of “Sunny Came Home” fame) for a concert at Wolf Trap. This is how I make sense of things, it’s how I seek connection and make my way through the world.” To try and push them away or write about something else, did not seem possible. So these are the songs that came about when I started to write. “All of those things have happened to me in the last few years. “They say that the worst, the most traumatic, things that people can go through in their lives are a divorce, the loss of a parent and serious illness,” she says. She describes her writing as a journey, what she saw, felt and experienced along the way. Her latest album, “Ashes and Roses,” reflects some of the trials and tribulations the singer has gone through over the past few years, including her divorce and the death of her father. Over the years, she has recorded 12 albums that have sold more than 13 million units. Songs such as “Never Had it So Good,” “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” “I Feel Lucky” and “Shut Up and Kiss Me” became hits, and she took home five Grammy Awards and was named Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 19. Jennings would convince Carpenter to take music seriously and become her producer and long-time collaborator.īy the early ’90s, thanks to Carpenter’s distinctive blend of folk and country, she became a radio staple. Not long after making something of a name for herself around the area, she met guitarist John Jennings and her life would change forever. Music, at the time, was just a hobby for her, and she always felt she would eventually have to stop passing the hat around and get a real job. Writing was important to me, but it wasn’t something I imagined making a living from.” I came late to the idea that I could take somewhere. Until then, I was fervent about playing other people’s things. that I got the courage to play some of my own music. It wasn’t until I was playing local clubs in D.C. “I played my Mom’s bass ukulele and graduated to her gut-string guitar.

“I was writing songs as a kid,” Carpenter says. area, playing acoustic sets at such venues as Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café and Food for Thought. (Photo courtesy Wolf Trap)Īfter graduating from Brown University in 1981 with a degree in American Civilization, Mary Chapin Carpenter did something her fellow graduates may have thought a little peculiar - she started hitting small music clubs and pubs in the D.C. Mary Chapin Carpenter says summer wouldn’t feel right for her without a Wolf Trap performance.

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