Carrie Newcomer
Songs from a Midwestern Heart
by Tom Nelligan

Carrie Newcomer is a much-traveled acoustic musician who has been abundantly graced with all the basic tools of her profession. It starts with her voice, a rich and emotional alto that can whisper or soar with equal ease. She adds an uplifting sense of melody, the ability to tell stories in a way that matters to the listener, and a bright, poised stage presence that mixes self-effacing humor with a compelling sincerity. What further sets this Indiana native apart from many others who ply the singer/songwriter trade is a fundamental mood of optimism in much of her music, a maturity in her perspective, a confident sense of strength in the face of challenges, and a quiet but deeply felt spirituality with roots in the Quaker tradition.

There's an unmistakable feeling of warmth and hope permeating Newcomer's work. She sings about relationships, both good and bad, with the wisdom of someone who's been there and had time to think about it. She sings about broken lives, but mostly from the perspective of finding solutions, healing, and the inner strength to deal with whatever is coming. She writes a few songs that are specifically political — she describes herself with a smile as a "polite radical" — and a lot that incorporate a broad and positive humanism. Many of her arrangements are powered by a roots-rocking band, while others showcase the simple delicacy of an expressive voice backed by a solo guitar. She talked about her music during a visit to New York City last December, before a show at the Bottom Line.

Born in 1958, Newcomer grew up in the northern Indiana town of Elkhart, "close enough to Chicago to get the accent." Her father came from a family of Indiana farmers, her mother from a family of Italian immigrants, and neither was especially musical. "I didn't really come from a musical family," she explained, "but Elkhart was the home of most of the major band instrument factories. Because of that, the public school system had a great music program, because everybody's dad worked in the instrument factories. So my first exposure to music was the public school system. I picked up the guitar at 14, learned my first three chords, and wrote my first awful song. Writing has always been a part of doing music for me. You try different things as a kid, but at some point you try one thing and say, 'Wow, I really like this.'

"I really didn't know where this was going to take me. I went to college for visual arts. I got through school doing all sorts of odd jobs, and one of the things I would do is play music in bars and bowling alleys and wherever they would pay me." She graduated with a visual arts degree and a teaching certificate, and spent time as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in Costa Rica, but the music drew her back. "I thought about it, and music was really where my heart was. It was where my greatest passion lay. So I decided not to look for a teaching job and start following music."

What has remained constant over the years, she said, is the goal she sets in her songwriting. "What I'm really trying to do is write about what we all recognize as people. I use my own details, but what I'm trying to talk about is something bigger than myself. It's been a style of writing that I've really tried to follow through with, a style dedicated to honesty. I don't think there's enough honesty out there, so I try very hard to be honest with it. That means being honest about things you're happy about, proud about, things you're learning and you're joyful about, and honest about things you'll grieve till the day you die, and things you're not proud of at all. 'Cause that's what it's about."

Newcomer admitted with a smile that when she first chose music over visual arts as a career, she didn't know exactly where it would lead. These days, however, she has no doubts. "You have to be so aware of your goal in this," she says. "My goal is not for everyone to know who Carrie Newcomer is, really. My goal is to talk about life experiences in ways that maybe help, or heal, or make a person think, or laugh, or dance. The real goal is a communication, not me just telling you who I am."