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Mary Chapin Carpenter
Personal History
Release date: June 6, 2025
One of life’s most satisfying sensations is the click of a realization. Something blurry coming into sharp focus.
Mary Chapin Carpenter can vividly recall just such an epiphany.
“A novel that I've loved for years is My Name is Lucy Barton, written by Elizabeth Strout,” says the singer-songwriter. “There's this moment where the main character is taking a creative writing course, and her teacher says to her, ‘You will only have one story. You will write your one story in many ways.’ I remember reading that line and taking an audible breath. In that moment, I said out loud to no one, ‘Oh, that's what the songs are.’"
Carpenter has been writing that story for nearly 40 years, enjoying commercial success through numerous hit singles and 17 million albums sold, universal critical acclaim, a bounty of awards — including five Grammy wins from 18 nominations — and the respect of multiple generations of her songwriting peers, earning herself a place as one of 22 women in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her most recent album, “One Night Lonely” from 2021, received a Grammy nod exactly 30 years after her very first nomination. In “Personal History”, her 17th album, she presents a set of songs more autobiographical than any collection that has come before, offering songs as memoir, when the wisdom that comes from growing older becomes a north star, whether one is celebrating life’s joys or navigating life’s inevitable losses. The title is taken from the album’s opener, “What Did You Miss.” The music is both buoyant and wistful, as she sings in her rich alto, “I’ve been walking in circles for so long/Unwinding the mystery/I’ve been writing it down song by song/As a personal history.”
The track’s blend of pandemic musings with more joyful distant memories — of steamed-up dive bar windows and late-night porch sessions — suggests what will follow, with memory, time and place guiding the narrative from a young girl’s love affair with songwriting to a woman at peace with her choices and where they have led her. “It's not necessarily chronological,” however, she says of the album. “The sequencing traces life backwards and forwards. But every song is connected to something deeply personal.”
“Paint + Turpentine” flashes back to Carpenter’s mid-20s and 30s and a missed opportunity: an invitation from Guy Clark, a hero of hers, to sit down and write together. “It’s about finding peace with a long-held regret of mine,” she says of being too intimidated to sit with the legend. But thankfully, “life allows you to eventually understand and accept how things turned out. Some gifts take their time.” “Bitter Ender,” with its keening harmonica, is a self-lacerating ode to her history of dying on clearly indefensible romantic hills. “Know thyself,” says Carpenter with a laugh. The sacred spaces offered in the natural world and the concept of our souls returning to cosmic stardust inform several songs including “Hello My Name Is”, and the enveloping “New Religion,” about the passing of someone Carpenter adored as a teenager, who helped shape her belief that “nature is my church.”
Other songs, including the moving “Home is a Song”, featuring the singer/songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, “The Saving Things”, and the vividly sketched “Girl and Her Dog,” find Carpenter taking stock of life in various ways after passing a milestone birthday. “Girl and Her Dog” is definitely a meditation about growing older,” she says of the tune, inspired by a salt-and-pepper-haired woman she spied in a vintage pick-up truck with her two pups while out on a walk. “As she drove by, I made up this story for her. Maybe she's a writer or a painter or a poet, and she's about to sit down at her kitchen table —which is where I like to work for myself — or work in her garden. I think I had just turned 60 and I was casting about: What am I doing? Who do I look up to? Who do I want to be? These are questions that you would think you would have the answers to long before that age, but I'm still asking them. And I hope I’m still asking them until my last day.”
“When you're younger, you're racing around trying to figure out where you belong, what you are you good at, how do you shine. And failure is this terrifying idea. But when you're older, you realize, hopefully, that failure is your most valuable companion because it teaches you so much.”
“By the end of that walk, I had done this deeper emotional excavation, sort of a heart and soul inventory and eventually it became that song.” If songwriters are often described as craftspeople, there may not be a better example of Carpenter’s skills in this regard than “Say It Anyway”; here she takes words and phrases more aptly labeled as cliches, and creates a musical scaffolding to show their truthfulness, spirituality and utility. Similarly, in “The Night We Never Met”, the listener is transported back in time, both musically and lyrically, to a chance meeting that only happened in someone’s imagination.
The recording sessions for Personal History brought Carpenter together with a mix of newer partners and longtime friends. Carpenter first encountered producer Josh Kaufman ((The Hold Steady, Bob Weir) while recording her January 2025 release Looking for the Thread, her collaboration with Scottish folk musicians Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. “I loved that experience, and I felt like he was the right person to help me shepherd these new songs into the wider world,” she says.The pair were joined by a coterie of musicians, veteran bandmates Duke Levine on guitar and pianist Matt Rollings, Cameron Ralston on bass and Chris Vatalaro on drums and percussion. Returning to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in rural southwestern England and reconnecting with Grammy-nominated engineer Katie May (Peter Gabriel, Phosphorescent, and asst engineer for Harry Styles, The 1975, and Carpenter / Fowlis / Polwart’s Looking For The Thread), Carpenter said of the sessions: “It's such a privilege to be able be somewhere dedicated to the work at hand, where you're sharing the space, meals, hang time with everybody. When it’s time to press record, everybody's live on the floor. I've been so fortunate to work there for my last four records, and it's hard to imagine being happier anywhere else.”
The album closes on the hopeful glimmer of “Coda,” which looks back fondly on grainy childhood memories on Super 8 film, appraises the battles picked and fought, acknowledging that while all the big noise of life may not be as big and loud anymore, these new, quieter passages are just as rich as any other time than came before it,” says Carpenter. “The gratitude you have for where you have ended up brings with it the wisdom that what’s most important is to have felt loved in this life. That you've mattered to people.” A fitting coda indeed to one’s personal history.
Brandy Clark
A GRAMMY, CMA and Americana Award-winner, Brandy Clark is one of her generation's most esteemed songwriters and musicians. In the midst of a landmark year, Clark won Best Americana Performance at the 66th GRAMMY Awards and Song of the Year at the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards with her acclaimed song, "Dear Insecurity," featuring 11x Grammy-winner Brandi Carlile. The track is from Clark's self-titled album, which was produced by Carlile and features her most personal songwriting to date. Released to overwhelming praise, Forbes calls the record "an Americana Masterpiece," while Variety proclaims it "further clarifies that she's one of America's treasures" and Billboard declares, "Clark continues to convey her inexorable talents as both a song-crafter and vocal interpreter." In addition to her work as a solo artist, Clark has written songs such as "A Beautiful Noise," the GRAMMY-nominated duet performed by Brandi Carlile and Alicia Keys, and Kacey Musgraves' "Follow Your Arrow." She also composed the music for the hit musical comedy, Shucked, alongside her longtime collaborator, Shane McAnally. With the show, Clark won Outstanding Music at the 67th Drama Desk Awards and was nominated for Best Original Score at the 76th Tony Awards, with Shucked receiving nine Tony nominations overall last year.
LOCATION: Cahn Auditorium | 600 Emerson St, Evanston, IL
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FAQ
ARE THERE ID OR MINIMUM AGE REQUIREMENTS TO ENTER THE EVENT? This show is all ages, but please bring a valid ID if you selected will call.
WHERE IS THE CONCERT LOCATED? This show is presented by Out of Space at Cahn Auditorium, located at 600 Emerson St, in Evanston, IL. This event is NOT at SPACE.
IS THIS EVENT ADA ACCESSIBLE? Yes, Cahn Auditorium is ADA accessible. Accessible tickets can be purchased by contacting SPACE directly (boxoffice@evanstonspace.com or 847.492.8860). You may also purchase tickets in-person at the SPACE box office (1245 Chicago Avenue in Evanston) any evening we have a show from 5-9pm.
CAN I BUY TICKETS IN-PERSON? Yes, tickets with no added service fees are available for purchase at the SPACE box office. Advance tickets will NOT be available for sale at Cahn Auditorium. The SPACE box office is open any evening we have a show from 5-9pm. We're located at 1245 Chicago Avenue in Evanston.
WHAT ARE MY TRANSPORTATION/PARKING OPTIONS FOR GETTING TO AND FROM THE EVENT? We recommend the Northwestern University Visitor Center Garage off Sheridan Road (1841 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL)—free after 4 pm weekdays. and all day Saturday, Sunday and holidays. During other times it’s $8 (no pass or permit needed, pay by credit card only. Park for a fee in City of Evanston parking garages at Clark and Chicago, Davis and Benson or Clark and Maple. Please add at least 20 minutes to travel time for parking. A detailed map is located below.
We do not recommend street parking, as there are two-hour limits all around the theater. Please note restrictions on posted signs.
If traveling by CTA: Take L to Foster Street Purple Line Stop. Walk two and a half blocks blocks east to Sheridan Road, then one block south to Cahn Auditorium.
There will be a designated drop-off area for ride-shares.
DO I NEED A HARD-COPY TICKET? WHAT IF I LOSE MY TICKET? If you selected the print-at-home option, your ticket is attached to this email as a PDF. If for some reason you cannot locate your ticket, your name will also be on a will call list at the door. Please bring a valid ID.
WHAT TIME DO DOORS OPEN? WHAT TIME DOES THE CONCERT START? Doors for the event open 1 hour before show-time. For this concert, doors will open at 7pm and opener will on at 8pm. Headliner will go on at 9pm.
WILL FOOD & DRINKS BE AVAILABLE? IS THERE A BAR? Outside food and beverages are prohibited, but factory-sealed water and empty reusable water bottles are allowed inside. Cahn Auditorium is within walking distance of many great downtown Evanston restaurants. Click here for more info.
WHAT’S THE REFUND POLICY? All tickets are non-refundable.
HOW CAN I CONTACT THE EVENT ORGANIZER? For questions regarding your order, please email boxoffice@evanstonspace.com.
All SPACE and Out of Space events are safe and welcoming gatherings to ALL music fans. Hostile or harassing behavior towards any other concert-goers or event staff will never be tolerated. If you notice this type of behavior, please approach any event staff and let them know or email info@evanstonspace.com.
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