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Folk singer finds significance in the mundane
January 31st, 2008
by Wade Coggeshall - The Flyer Group
January 31, 2008
By Wade Coggeshall in The Flyer Group
Folk singer finds significance in the mundane
url http://www.flyergroup.com/local/local_story_031222958.html?start:int=15
To a Hoosier in this part of the state, it’s a banal sight. To Newcomer, it’s much more. So much that she wrote an entire song about it for her latest CD, the palatial and personable “The Geography of Light.”
“I love the metaphor,” she says of geodes. “We think of them as commonplace; they’re just rocks. But at the same time, they’re miracles. There are incredibly important and amazing things that happen when we pay attention. There’s a lot of that on this album: When you tell someone you’re so busy you can’t see straight, that’s considered a virtue. Our culture doesn’t really encourage us to take the time to pay attention. This album explores that. When you pay attention what do you see? When I stop long enough to be present in my life, I encounter miracles everywhere.”
Such afflatus is nothing unusual for Newcomer. Her folk music has always had a spiritual bent to it. But “The Geography of Light,” her 11th album for Rounder Records, goes beyond life’s big questions for something equally important — self-effacing humor. The bonus track “Don’t Push Send,” for instance, explores the potential pitfalls of e-mail in a series of red-faced morals.
“It was very important for me to learn how to laugh at myself,” Newcomer says. “Writers can think so deeply about things. But at the same time, learning how to laugh at just how funny we are as people, all our foibles, is really important. It balances me.”
Balance is important to Newcomer. It’s a big reason why, even after her music career found solid footing, she chose to remain a Hoosier. In fact she claims she came into her own with her song-writing when she fully embraced her roots.
“I started to value my own Midwestern voice,” Newcomer says. “I’m never going to write like someone from the
That may seem quaint, but to Newcomer
“At heart I’m basically a nice Midwestern lady,” she says. “I’m the woman who brings the casserole when somebody’s sick. I’m comfortable with that. The winds of the music business can blow with gale force. It’s really been good for me that I come home and ground and remember who I am.”
One aspect Newcomer will never be contented with is the ever-elusive search for truth.
“A considered life comes back to the same questions again and again,” she says. “What do I love? What’s most important? When I peel back the layers of all the distractions, what is really still at the heart of the matter?”
One of her new songs, “You’d Think By Now,” addresses that. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, there you are again.
“That’s usually how it works,” Newcomer says. “I’m a restless spirit by nature. But I have come to peace with the idea it’s not so much about coming up with an answer, but continuing to ask the good questions.”
“The Geography of Light” comes out Feb. 12. Newcomer performs Feb. 9 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in