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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