News Archives
Newcomer returns home after tour
June 12th, 2008
by JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
Four weeks after completing her 29-city tour, Carrie Newcomer says she’s ready to come back home.
The singer-songwriter who was born in Dowagiac, raised in
“You name the city, and I was there,” Newcomer says of her recent tour that included a February stop in
Although the festival may be a homecoming for Newcomer, who also played the 2006 Folk Faire, this will be the first foray into
The five-piece acoustic bluegrass band features the guitar and vocals of Darcy Wilkin and the upright bass and harmonies of Sarah Fuerst. So where did they come up with the name?
“It’s simple really,” fiddle player Michael Fuerst says. “The girls grew up in the
Corn Fed Girls, which also includes Ira Cohen’s banjo blends, Phil Barry’s lead guitar work and John Campos’ mandolin playing, has developed a modest following — thanks in part to their debut album “cornstar” — despite their sporadic show schedule.
“We’re not a bar band. We’re not really a working band,” Fuerst says. “We all work full-time jobs. We all have kids. We take music seriously, but we primarily play festivals because we’re a sit-down-and-listen type of group. Still, I don’t think we’ve had a show where we haven’t sold at least a couple CDs.”
Newcomer, meanwhile, is riding the success of her own recording, “The Geography of Light,” her 11th release in 14 years on the Rounder Records label.
“The new album has been incredibly well received,” she says by telephone from her house in the woods near
“The Geography of Light,” a layered work that Newcomer says explores the appearance of light and shadow in our lives, combines her straightforward, accessible lyrics with Appalachian and classically influenced folk roots tracks.
Newcomer says her set list for the Festival of Art and Music will include songs off “The Geography of Light,” “some old friends” and a couple of new songs she’s written in the past month.
“I’m always writing,” she says. “As soon as I finish one album, I’m writing the next. Writing is like breathing for me.”
One of those new songs, “If Not Now,” describes a call to action and a call for societal change that fits quite well with the festival’s sustainable living theme.
“I wanted to write something that was immediately singable in the folk tradition but also had a message,” Newcomer says. “Everyone has their own something they can do and it all matters. If not now, when?”
For her own part, Newcomer has been donating 10 percent of the profits from tour sales of her album to the American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org), a Quaker-based charitable organization.
That she wrote “If Not Now” in time to perform it in front of the hometown crowd, however, was just a happy accident.
“Something really good happens to my writing when I get connected with my Midwestern voice,” Newcomer says. “There’s a spirit of place here, and that’s a powerful thing.”
Staff Writer Jeremy D. Bonfiglio:
jbonfiglio@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6244