Orpheum

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.

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Brandy Lynn Clark is a country music singer-songwriter whose songs have been written for and covered by Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, Reba McEntire, LeAnn Rimes, and Kacey Musgraves. She is a seven-time Grammy Award nominee (Best New Artist in 2015) and won the Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year as a co-writer of Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow.”

Visit Brandy Clark's website