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Probing in Song - In her Portland show tonight, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer will venture out of her familiar diner to explore life's complications
September 27th, 2007
by Bob Keyes - Portland Press Herald
In Carrie Newcomer's world, the patrons at the diner have paid their tabs and gone home.
The singer and songwriter from Indiana, who performs tonight at One Longfellow Square in Portland, has a new CD coming out this winter, and for a change it does not involve the characters from her last two CDs.
Her last release, "Regulars and Refugees" from 2005, explored the lives of customers seated on the stools and in the booths of Betty's Diner, which also provided the setting for her previous record.
"After the last record was recorded, the diner people all decided that was enough for now. They paid up and left," said Newcomer.
Her new CD will be titled "The Geography of Light." On it, Newcomer explores the gray areas of our lives.
"I just have this feeling that life isn't always black and white. We are always navigating and negotiating the gray areas. I'm asking questions we are not supposed to ask, and not giving dogmatic solutions. We are living in a divisive time in our culture," she said.
"Some of the questions are not, what are we against, but what are we for? Where do we connect, as human beings? What is the nature of justice? Where do we go for strength? Why does the extraordinary escape our view? When is it time to forgive?"
Newcomer has released 10 CDs with Philo/Rounder Records since the early 1990s, and has established a reputation as a literate and articulate songwriter.
At tonight's show, she plans to perform much of her unreleased new album, but fans ought not fear that she will neglect her better-known, older material.
"I have songs that have become old friends and are requested often. I will do a selection of those songs, and things from previous releases. And there will be quite a few from the new album, and things that are new even since then. I'm always writing," she said.
Newcomer lives out in the country, in the woods of southern Indiana.
Her Midwestern roots populate her songs, either in a literal sense through the characters she writes about or through her perspective of the world.
"I'm a storyteller," she said. "It's hard to write about world peace. You can't get your arms around world peace. I find the best way to access those big subjects is through the small story and through characters."
Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or bkeyes@pressherald.com.