I first heard the music of Mary Chapin Carpenter in the Fall of '92, while sifting through CDs at a local music store: a singular, poetic voice accompanied by a solitary piano.
"I can recall the sound of the wind/ as it blew through the trees/ and the trees would bend/ And I can recall the smell of the rain/ on a hot summer night coming through the screen"
The song was "Only A Dream" from her 1992 release "Come On Come On," and will most certainly be part of her concert Sunday night, Sept. 3, 7:30 p.m. at Wolf Mountain.
"Twirl me about and twirl me around/ Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground/ And when I look up at you looking down/ Say it was only a dream"
Carpenter was born in Princeton, N.J. Her father worked for Life magazine, which required the family to move frequently. During the family's four-year stint in Japan, Carpenter's seventh-grade science teacher persuaded her to pursue music.
Communicating with others was always difficult for Carpenter. When she was in high school, her parents split up, isolating her even more. Songwriting became an escape, a way to feel and say things without actually having to say them.
After college, she performed in clubs in the Washington, D.C., area, and, with the help of good friend and musician John Jennings, she made a tape. The result was 1987's "Hometown Girl." The recording received some fine critical notices but sold poorly.
However, Columbia Records had faith in her, and with the release of "State of the Heart" Carpenter became a rising star.
October 1990 marked the release of "Shooting Straight in the Dark." Propelled by the energy of its accompanying video, "Down At The Twist And Shout," the song became a "career" record, giving Carpenter her first Grammy.
"Come On Come On" was released to rave reviews and huge sales. The album gave Carpenter six more Grammy nominations and three Grammies.
Always willing to plumb her emotional depths, doubts and misgivings, Carpenter's current release, "Stones In The Road," does so with painful honesty and eloquence, treating some of life's darker moments as well as its joys. She is an artist who understands the range of human emotions: love, rejection, loss, gain and trying to make sense of it all.
Add to this the fact that Carpenter is a virtual musical chameleon: She's as comfortable with a rhythm & blues undertow as she is with a traditional reel or an unadorned ballad.
The most poignant and musically intriguing song on "Stones" is "John Doe No. 24." Based on a true-life obituary, it's a heartbreaking account of a blind, deaf and mute man found on the streets.
"They searched for mother and they searched for father and they searched till they searched no more/ The doctors put to rest their scientific tests and they named me John Doe No. 24."
I have no doubt that Sunday's concert will have everybody up and clapping their hands and dancing to songs like "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," "I Feel Lucky" and "Passionate Kisses."
But more than this, I hope Carpenter will take me back to childhood memories the way she did in a record store in the fall of '92.
- The Miami-based country group, The Mavericks, opens for Carpenter. These guys draw their primary inspiration from the same late '50s, early '60s country roots as Dwight Yoakam.
But they're a whole lot more.
As one music critic puts it: "A Mavericks show is a journey through Roy Orbison-like heartbroken grace, to rakish rockabilly-era raving, to lush, languid Tex-Mex torch singing with a raw joint of Memphis blues thrown in for good measure."
The band - singer/guitarist/song-writer Raul Malo, bassist Robert Reynolds, drummer Paul Deakin and lead guitarist Nick Kane - cut their teeth in the rock and original music clubs of Miami, the last place you'd expect to hear a country music band.
About the group's classic approach, Malo said in an interview with Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times, "If you can achieve the same feeling that you got when you first put on a Beatles record and heard the count to `I Saw Her Standing There' - you heard that song kick off, it was like, `Wow, what is this?!' If you can do that on a record, you've done your job . . .. We strive for that. Bring a smile to the face of the person listening to it."
Between Carpenter and the Mavericks, I've got a feeling there's going to be a lot of teeth showing on Wolf Mountain Sunday night.