Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Hammersmith Apollo, London, Britain, 5-6-1995

Here's a BBC concert by American singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's from 1995, arguably the peak of her popularity.

This is one of the least necessary albums I've ever posted at this blog. What I mean is, I've already posted an album from her, "The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA, 7-3-1995," that is very similar, since it took place on the same tour, only two months later. But since I've been posting BBC albums from her, I want to be thorough and post this one too.

This is another album I found due to Progsprog sharing it from his music collection. Kudos to him. It's another one that I didn't even know existed, and there's virtually no mention of it on the Internet. One of the treats of focusing on posting BBC material is how rarities like this keep popping up. And despite its obscurity until now, the sound quality is excellent.  

I had already posted three BBC albums by her that take place after this one. So, once again, we have to do a renaming shuffle. I recommend you re-download the others, to get the now correct titles, cover art, mp3 tags, and so forth. 

This album is an hour and 38 minutes long.

01 Why Walk When You Can Fly (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 I Take My Chances (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 Rhythm of the Blues (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Tender When I Want to Be (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 The Last Word (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 John Doe No. 24 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 House of Cards (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 Right Now (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 Down at the Twist and Shout (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 Stones in the Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Fx3in6hK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/YpwnbE81wKZD4P8/file

The cover photo is from 1995. I don't know any details beyond that. 

Various Artists - Songwriters Special, Austin City Limits, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 9-11-1991

I recently stumbled across this on YouTube. I thought it was pretty interesting, so I decided to post it straight away. It's a special episode of the Austin City Limits TV show from 1991, called "Songwriters Special." It's basically a songwriters' circle, with four different musical acts taking turns: Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, and Julie Gold.

I found a blog post by Julie Gold about this concert. She said that Nanci Griffith was selected as the host, and Griffith got to pick the other musical acts. However, each of the acts played the same number of songs (three), and then everyone joined in on the finale, a cover of "No Expectations" by the Rolling Stones.

Chances are you haven't heard of Julie Gold, because her music career has been very low profile. However, she was chosen because she was the songwriter behind Griffith's biggest hit, "From a Distance," which she performed here. She also wrote a song appearing on Griffith's next album at the time, called "Heaven." She would go on to write several more songs covered by Griffith.

Here's the Wikipedia entry about her:

Julie Gold - Wikipedia 

This album remains unreleased. The sound quality is pretty good. I downloaded the YouTube video, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go (Nanci Griffith)
02 talk (Nanci Griffith)
03 You've Never Had It So Good (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 talk (Nanci Griffith)
05 talk (Indigo Girls)
06 Hammer and a Nail (Indigo Girls)
07 talk (Nanci Griffith)
08 From a Distance (Julie Gold)
09 talk (Nanci Griffith)
10 Late Night Grande Hotel (Nanci Griffith)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Indigo Girls)
14 Fare Thee Well (Indigo Girls)
15 Heaven (Julie Gold)
16 talk (Nanci Griffith)
17 Listen to the Radio (Nanci Griffith)
18 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 talk (Indigo Girls)
21 Jonas and Ezekiel (Indigo Girls)
22 talk (Julie Gold)
23 Temporary Worker (Julie Gold)
24 talk (Nanci Griffith)
25 No Expectations (Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls & Julie Gold)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CR4CKJX5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/sAVcPay4fNv5Hl8/file

I got lucky with the cover art. I found a photo taken backstage of all the musical acts at this concert. The original version of the photo was black and white, but I found a colorized version. It had issues though, so I recolorized it. I looked at the YouTube video of the concert to get in the general ballpark of the colors of the clothes they were wearing. 

From left to right, that's Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, Julie Gold, Nanci Griffith, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Various Artists - A Country Music Celebration, Grand Ole Opry House, Nashville, TN, 1-13-1993

There are so many interesting tribute concerts that have taken place over the years but then were largely forgotten because they didn't get an official release. Here's another one I happened to find recently. 

There have been many country music themed TV specials over the years. I'm not familiar with most of them. But in terms of sheer star power, I couldn't overlook this one. The vast majority of the biggest names in country music at the time performed, back before country music went downhill with "bro country," rap, Autotune, and so forth. I don't know how often the Country Music Association has put on shows like this. I did find their 25th anniversary concert on YouTube, but it's less than an hour long and not as impressive a line-up.

This concert crammed in a surprising number of songs in the amount of time it had. That's because it often only allowed for truncated versions of songs, meaning two minutes or less. In the worst case, Glen Campbell's version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" was under a minute long. But the plus side is the show kept moving, so if there's a song you don't like, it wasn't long until the next one started.

I pretty much kept the show intact, until near the end. Very late in the show, around track 45, there was an extended tribute to Dolly Parton. I cut the vast majority of it out, because it was a video presentation, with short snippets of the recorded versions of her most famous songs. I cut all that because it was meant to be seen more than heard, with no live musical performances in it. However, immediately following that was a speech by Parton, and I kept all that.

The sound quality is excellent, even though this all remains unreleased. The only problem I had was with the last song, "I Will Always Love You" by Dolly Parton (with Kenny Rogers assisting). Clearly, the time allotted for the TV show came to an end, because the song was cut short, at only about a minute long, and then faded out. But at least it seems the performers knew the version was going to be a short one, because they only sang the chorus over and over. However, even that short version was marred by an announcer speaking over part of it to hype up the next shows coming up on that TV channel. I managed to cut that out by largely repeating one of the choruses. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

Oh, by the way, this website has a couple dozen nice photos from the event:

Nashville Then: A Country Music Celebration to honor CMA in 1993 

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 This Nightlife (Clint Black with Ricky Skaggs, Glen Campbell & Mark O'Connor)
03 talk (Clint Black)
04 Road Scholar (Lee Roy Parnell & Delbert McClinton)
05 talk (Clint Black)
06 Here I Am (Lyle Lovett)
07 talk (Clint Black)
08 Heartland (Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson)
09 One More Last Chance (Vince Gill)
10 talk (Vince Gill & Travis Tritt)
11 What Would Elvis Do (Pam Tillis)
12 Wear My Ring Around Your Neck (Rodney Crowell)
13 T-R-O-U-B-L-E (Travis Tritt)
14 Devil in Disguise (Trisha Yearwood)
15 That's All Right, Mama (Vince Gill)
16 talk (Reba McEntire)
17 A Little Bit of Love (Wynonna Judd)
18 talk (Reba McEntire)
19 Goodbye Again (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Take It Back (Reba McEntire)
22 talk (Randy Owen)
23 Old Time Rock and Roll (Little Texas)
24 talk (Randy Owen)
25 It's a Heartache (Lorrie Morgan)
26 talk (Randy Owen)
27 Hard Working Man (Brooks & Dunn)
28 Drive South (Suzy Bogguss)
29 I'm in a Hurry (Alabama)
30 talk (Vince Gill)
31 The Heart Won't Lie (Reba McEntire & Vince Gill)
32 The Whiskey Ain't Working Anymore (Travis Tritt & Marty Stuart)
33 Love Certified (Ronnie Milsap & Patti LaBelle)
34 Silver Bells [Instrumental] (Charlie Daniels, Mark O'Connor & Sam Bush)
35 talk (Charlie Daniels & Emmylou Harris)
36 Too Far Gone (Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill & Ricky Skaggs)
37 Two More Bottles of Wine (Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill & Ricky Skaggs)
38 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Glen Campbell)
39 talk (Glen Campbell)
40 The Ride (John Anderson)
41 Talking to Hank (Mark Chesnutt & Joe Diffie)
42 talk (Glen Campbell)
43 Midnight in Montgomery (Alan Jackson)
44 You Decorated My Life (Kenny Rogers)
45 talk (Kenny Rogers)
46 talk (Dolly Parton)
47 Full Circle (Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers & Glen Campbell)
48 talk (Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton)
49 I Will Always Love You [Edit] (Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Eosyj9Qd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2l2znKTYkfdFKDm/file 

The cover photo is from the finale of this exact concert. From left to right: Emmylou Harris, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Joni Mitchell, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-2000

For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the TNT TV network hosted a few annual "all-star tributes" to some music legends. I've already posted albums of such tribute shows to Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, and Paul Simon. Here's another one, celebrating the music of Joni Mitchell.

This concert actually featured Joni Mitchell herself, but she had a relatively minor role. At the very end, she performed one song and gave a short speech. Instead, the bulk of the concert consisted of famous musical acts performing her songs. Just look at the cover or at the song list to see the names. There also were some famous non-musicians who talked a little bit between songs, such as actors Susan Sarandon and Laurence Fishburne, and the main host, Ashley Judd. Plus, I never thought my music blog would have a track by Hillary Clinton, but here we are.

If I recall correctly, there was some more stuff to this concert that I edited out, such as testimonials about Mitchell's life and career, narrated by the likes of Goldie Hawn and Rosie O'Donnell. I kept the focus on the songs, and introductions to the songs.

The Stone Temple Pilots were also due to perform at this concert. However, the band's lead singer, Scott Weiland, blew his voice out by performing three full concerts the day before. They were due to perform the song "Woodstock." At the last minute, Richard Thompson stepped up to perform that song instead. That's why he's the only performer here to do two songs, because he also had been scheduled to perform the song "Black Crow." 

Note that the final song, "The Circle Game," faded out before it ended. Probably that's when the TV broadcast came to an end. I extended it a bit by repeating a chorus from earlier in the song and then fading it out. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

There's an amazing official Joni Mitchell website, www.jonimitchell.com. It has a webpage just on this concert, with lots of pictures and dozens of newspaper articles about it. Here's a link:

Joni Mitchell - 2000.04.06 | An All-Star Tribute To Joni Mitchell Hammerstein Ballroom | New York 

This album remains officially unreleased as an audio album. However, a DVD of it has been released. But this is about ten minutes longer. The sound quality is excellent. 

This concert is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 Raised on Robbery (Wynonna Judd & Bryan Adams)
02 talk (Ashley Judd)
03 Carey (Cyndi Lauper)
04 talk (Ashley Judd)
05 Woodstock (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Hillary Clinton)
07 Chelsea Morning (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Big Yellow Taxi (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter with James Taylor)
09 talk (James Taylor)
10 River (James Taylor)
11 talk (Ashley Judd)
12 You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio (Wynonna Judd)
13 talk (Susan Sarandon)
14 Help Me (k.d. Lang)
15 talk (Laurence Fishburne)
16 The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines (Cassandra Wilson)
17 talk (Ashley Judd)
18 The Circle Game (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
19 talk (Ashley Judd)
20 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Amelia (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Ashley Judd)
23 Black Crow (Richard Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 talk (Ashley Judd)
26 Free Man in Paris (Elton John)
27 talk (Elton John)
28 A Case of You (Diana Krall)
29 talk (Ashley Judd)
30 talk (Tony Bennett)
31 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
32 talk (Joni Mitchell)
33 The Circle Game [Reprise] [Edit] (Joni Mitchell & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/acNAjTY6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/GVHWLt1ZTKXHMpu/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right, that's Joni Mitchell, James Taylor (in back), Cassandra Wilson, Shawn Colvin, and Elton John.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Celtic Connections Festival, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Britain, 1-24-2014

Here's the fifth, and so far last, BBC album I have of Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's a concert one, but it's rather unusual in that she is backed by a full orchestra (specifically, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra).

In January 2014, a couple of weeks before this album, Carpenter released the studio album "Songs from the Movie." Instead of being new material, it consisted of older songs, but redone with orchestral backing. In this way, it was similar to a couple of Joni Mitchell albums from around 2000 in which she redid some of her songs with an orchestra. This is basically the live version of that album. Nearly all the songs here come from that album. This definitely has a mellow feel, since rocking songs usually don't fit well with orchestral backings.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 10, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 On and On It Goes (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 Between Here and Gone (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 The Dreaming Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Mrs. Hemingway (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Where Time Stands Still (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Goodnight America (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Nvi7WQTK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Bj6QrwWrYbB3itx/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image some.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: BBC Music Live Festival, Barbican Centre, York, Britain, 5-24-2001

Here's another BBC concert by singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's the fourth out of five I plan on posting.

Just a few days after this concert, Carpenter released her studio album "Time* Sex* Love*." She'd had great success for all of the 1990s, but this album didn't do so well. The music was still as good as before: if you look at the crowd-sourced ratings website rateyourmusic.com, her rating for this album is on par with her 1990s albums. The problem was that she was marketed as a country artist, and she was steadily moving away from a country sound. So country music radio stations stopped playing her, but she didn't have a clearly identifiable new niche to fall into.  

Five of the songs here would appear on her new album: "Swept Away," "Whenever You're Ready," "The Dreaming Road," "The Long Way Home," and "Late for Your Life." Curiously, the lead single fro the new album, "Simple Life," wasn't included. However, I'd guess she played it but the BBC edited it out when they were cutting the concert to less than an hour.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 10, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 Swept Away (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Whenever You're Ready (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 I Take My Chances (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 The Dreaming Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 The Long Way Home (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Late for Your Life (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Y2eFURbP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Pp0cummYfpZsTRQ/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Today Show" TV show some point in 2001.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, London, Britain, 11-3-1999

Here's another BBC concert from Mary Chapin Carpenter. This one is from 1999.

I previously posted a BBC concert she did in 1994. I recently have discovered some more. I found one from 1993, but I decided not to post it, because I've posted a 1993 concert she did in Glasgow that is almost exactly the same, except with more songs, more banter, and slightly better sound quality. It took place only two days apart. I've also discovered this one, and two more one from later years that I plan to post soon.

This concert took place after Carpenter released the album "Party Doll and Other Favorites." It's kind of an odd duck, because it's a mix of new songs, rare songs, and alternate versions of previous hits. A couple of the songs here, like "Party Doll" and "Almost Home," were new songs from that album. She also performed a funny original song she's never released, "If I Were a Diva."

This album is 55 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 10, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too.  

01 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Almost Home (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Stones in the Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 It Works (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Friend to Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Party Doll (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 If I Were a Diva (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 My Love Will Not Let You Down (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Why Walk When You Can Fly (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3HUrydrc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/t1NFfrQc0ayDaJX/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Hammersmith Apollo in London in June 2001.

Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter - Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville, CA, 6-29-2003

For a long time, I'd had this bootleg concert sitting in my huge pile of albums I want to listen to. Then yesterday, I posted a concert of the Allman Brothers Band playing with Eric Clapton for well over an hour, and that got me to remember this, as another rare example of two headliners playing a full concert with each other. Boy, am I glad I found this. If you're a fan of Shawn Colvin and/or Mary Chapin Carpenter at all, you need this. The sound quality is amazing and the performance is great.

There seems to be a kind of loose association of female singer-songwriters from a certain era. For instance, Colin, Carpenter, and Rosanne Cash harmonized together on a song for a Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992. But it's rare to have a genuine collaboration that lasts for a whole concert like this one. You'd think the two of them were long time musical partners, with the way they play and sing harmonies together on all but a few of the songs here. (There was a third person on stage, John Jennings, the long-time lead guitarist in Carpenter's band.)

But what I particularly like is how you can tell that they were having a ball, especially with all their joking. For instance, there was a running joke about one of them smoking crack backstage, and another running joke about the low voice of Greg Brown (who apparently was the opening act). Near the end, of them even danced with a hula hoop while the riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" was played on guitar! Too bad we can only hear that and imagine, instead of getting to see it.

Listening to this, I got the sense that the two of them are good friends. I was pleased to see that they've occasionally played concerts together since this one. For instance, they did a tour in 2019 with both of them and Marc Cohn on stage for all of the concerts.

I also have the feeling that the set list was quite different than what they usually played in their solo concerts at the time. There was an emphasis on cover songs, including Donovan (two, actually), the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Simon and Garfunkel, the Flying Burrito Bros, John Gorka, and even the Backstreet Boys! Another female singer-songwriter, Tracy Grammer, also briefly joined them on stage to sing one of her songs, "Gentle Soldier of My Soul."

The concert is in acoustic format, but the were assisted by a lead guitarist. And damn, the sound quality is impressive, especially for a bootleg. One could practically hear a pin drop at times. I searched the Internet for mentions of this concert before posting it today, and I could find almost nothing. So I'm really glad that I saved it when I did, which probably was a bunch of years ago.

This album is two hours and three minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Catch the Wind (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Someday (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 One Cool Remove (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Dancing in the Dark (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Shotgun Down the Avalanche (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Keeping the Faith (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Wichita Skyline (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 A Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Good Night America (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 Grand Central Station (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 Gentle Soldier of My Soul (Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter & Tracy Grammer)
20 Colours (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Even Here We Are (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
23 This Shirt (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
24 I'll Be Back (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
25 That's the Way Love Goes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
26 Safe at Harbour (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
27 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
28 I Want It That Way (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
30 The Only Living Boy in New York (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
31 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
32 Smoke on the Water (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
33 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
34 Sin City (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
35 Quittin' Time (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Jg2aGU6X

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/t3embemgaqyziYZ/file

I believe the photo is from this exact concert. I edited it in Photoshop to bring the two of them closer together.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Her Majesty's Theatre, London, Britain, 12-10-1994

Here's a Mary Chapin Carpenter performing for the BBC in a 1994 concert. This concert features Carpenter mostly in acoustic mode, with just a couple of backing musicians and no drummer. 

There isn't much banter between songs, but several times she starts a song by making some comments over the music. There's a running joke about her crush on actor Hugh Grant that's amusing.

Although this is unreleased, the sound quality is as excellent as you'd expect from the BBC.

This concert is 56 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 28, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I renamed the album to "Volume 1" after finding music for a later volume.

01 This Is Love (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Stones in the Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 A Keeper for Every Flame (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 The Last Word (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Where Time Stands Still (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EG6Hv65A

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yjoDVIcFtGRTt3d/file

The cover photo comes from an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in 1994. In February 2025, I upgraded it with the use of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 6, Afton, VA, 1-10-2021 to 3-21-2021

Sometimes I forget things, but I do tend to get around to them eventually. It just might take a while. In this case, I posted five volumes of Mary Chapin Carpenter's home concerts from 2020 to 2021, and then I forgot to post the sixth and last one. I happened to notice that oversight while looking through my music collection today, so here it is.

This volume is very similar to the others in the series. As usual, she had some comments before each song, but also as usual, I cut out a lot of inconsequential talk (often about the current states of her dog and cat), and kept it just to the talk relevant to the music. 

Also as was the case with the last couple of volumes, there were issues with squeaky toys for the dog. Luckily, that was pretty minimal this time, and it didn't get in the way of any of the songs. But you'll hear some squeaky noises in the into talk for a couple of the songs.

Carpenter decided to end the series, and gives her reasons in the comments before the last song. That's a bummer, but then again it's pretty impressive that she kept this going on a weekly basis for a full year.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Farther Along and Further In (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 A Keeper for Every Flame (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 What You Look For (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 The Ending (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 The End of My Pirate Days (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Traveler's Prayer (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Here I Am (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 Livingston (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 Sometimes Just the Sky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/otLse4WW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ifqAVPhCnjWt2C7/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from one of the videos of these songs. In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 5, Afton, VA, 10-18-2020 to 1-3-2021

Here's the fifth out of six home concert albums from Mary Chapin Carpenter. She started doing this in early 2020 and continued into early 2021. The songs here are chronologically ordered, as usual, and just barely dip into 2021 on the last song.

As with previous albums in this series, Carpenter played solo acoustic and talked a fair amount before each song. But also like those previous albums, I cut her talking down quite a lot, removing repetitive parts she said before each song as well as updates about her pets, and keeping the parts relevant to the songs she was playing.

For the last album in this series, I spent most of my write-up talking about the sound program created by the dog's squeaky toy. I'm glad to report that that toy didn't make much of an impact on this album. I think the only song where it can be heard is "Keeping the Faith." But luckily that was mainly during instrumental parts that were repeated, so I was able to eliminate most of the squeaking by replacing one part with another from elsewhere in the song. There's only a little squeaking at the last few seconds. There also is some squeaking in a couple places during the comments, but not enough to be annoying, in my opinion.

I believe there was only a single time Carpenter played piano instead of guitar during this entire series, and that's here, on the song "Thanksgiving Song."

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Girls like Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 The Moon and St. Christopher (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Keeping the Faith [Edit] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 It's OK to Be Sad (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 Thanksgiving Song [Edit] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Bells Are Ringing (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Christmas Carol (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 The Longest Night of the Year (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 New Years Day (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5x5GasqX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3O1EDEtFYZPyvLg/file

As mentioned above, Carpenter made rare use of the piano on one of the songs here, so I took a screenshot of her at the piano on that song and used it for the album cover photo. The resulting image was rectangular in order to fit both the piano keys and her head into the frame. So I have some black space on both sides.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 4, Afton, VA, 7-12-2020 to 10-11-2020

I'm trying to get back to posting more of the home concerts from 2020 that I'd missed. Here's another one from Mary Chapin Carpenter. 

There's one frustrating problem with this album that almost caused me to give up on posting the rest of her home concerts. Ever since she started posting songs performed from home on YouTube in early 2020, she'd made a big deal out of her two pets, her cat White Kitty and her dog Angus. White Kitty seemingly slept close to 24 hours a day, so was almost never seen or heard from. But Angus was usually there in the video, hanging around the same room Carpenter was in.

This typically wasn't a problem, since the dog generally stayed quiet and didn't bark in the middle of songs. But around the time frame of this album, a squeaky toy showed up, and got used. I've tried with various sound editing programs, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of the squeaky toy squeaking. I guess it's too close in range to the human voice, so removing one tends to remove the other. 

I've tried to get around this in two ways. For three songs, there was so much squeaking that I decided they were unlistenable, and I haven't included them here. Those are "The Way I Feel," "We Traveled So Far," and "Where the Beauty Is." If you want to hear them, they're still on YouTube, squeaks and all. The other thing I did is that the squeaking tended to be worst during her talking before songs, since she typically engaged with Angus, petting it and so forth. Once the song started, the dog almost always settled down and stayed quiet, though there were exceptions such as those three songs mentioned above. So with the talking, I cut out more of the dialogue, if a lot of squeaking was going on at the same time.

So this is mostly squeak-free, but there's still some here and there. Hopefully, it won't annoy you too much. The good news is, this album coincides with a time in which the squeaky toy was popular. For whatever reason, it pretty much disappeared after this, so the last two volumes in this series are largely squeak-free.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 I Have a Need for Solitude (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Late for Your Life (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Secret Keepers (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Lafayette Square (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Twilight (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Grand Central Station (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 American Stooge (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TjH9bPwm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uFGwKOUbk2OnPpQ/file

Since my write-up is mainly about the squeaky toy problem, I thought it was fitting to include a screenshot that includes the dreaded toy. Carpenter is holding it while Angus is chewing on it. I had to use a rectangular shaped image to get both her head and the toy in view. So there's some blank space on the sides.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 3, Afton, VA, 5-28-2020 to 7-9-2020

It's been a long while since I've posted one of these home concerts from Mary Chapin Carpenter, so let me refresh your memory a bit. Carpenter tended to play about a song a week from home, and post them on YouTube. But she also could be fairly talkative. Much of what she said was repetitive from song to song. She'd usually start with some greetings, then despite what her pet dog and pet cat were doing at that moment. (The pet dog was usually with her and the pet cat was almost always sleeping.) These sorts of comments don't have much relistening value, so I cut them all out. But I kept any comments she made pertaining to the song she was about to play.

The songs are mostly taken from her albums, but there are some exceptions. For instance, "No Fear" is a song she co-wrote but one she never recorded in a studio. And "Four Strong Winds" is a cover.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 No Fear (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Heroes and Heroines (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 4 June, 1989 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Oh Rosetta (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Stones in the Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Why Walk When You Can Fly (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 What If We Went to Italy (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Goodnight America (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Four Strong Winds (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 Another Home (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BUL871TW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/bklr3j7KFOOt5NI/file

Pretty much every single time she did one of these home concert recordings, she did it from inside her house. But for "No Fear," it seems she sat on a porch just outside her house. So I took a screenshot of that and used it for the cover art.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter - A Late Show, BBC, The Bottom Line, New York City, 8-29-1992

Today, as I write this, August 13, 2021, singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith died. The cause is unknown, but she was 68 years old.

I'm not a huge Nanci Griffith fan, but I do like some of her material, especially her 1988 live album "One Fair Summer Evening." It so happens that I have something to post from her, so here it is, in tribute to her music career.

This is a concert recorded for the BBC TV show "A Late Show" in 1992. (I'm not sure if the date I have for it, August 29, 1992, is the date it was recorded, or the date it was broadcast, but it's the only date related to the show I know. If anyone knows the exact recording date if it's different, please let me know.) Actually, this is equal parts a concert of Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Just the three of the sat on the same stage together with their guitars, and took turns playing songs. As I write this, you can find the video of the show on YouTube. You can see from that that occasionally one or two of the others would join in with backing vocals and/or guitar, especially near the end, but most of the time it's just each individual performer doing their own songs.

Nanci Griffith played the first song, then Rosanne Cash played the second one, and Mary Chapin Carpenter the third one. That rotating pattern continued for the rest of the show without exception. The last song was one of Carpenter's, so each of them did an equal number of songs.

I wish there were more concerts like this, with similar artists performing on stage together. The sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from the BBC, and the performance was solid all around. The only thing I'm not happy about is that it's rather short, at only 42 minutes long. I suspect the concert was longer, but it was cut down to fit into the time allotted for the TV show.

01 There's a Light Beyond These Woods (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 Rise from the Ashes (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Never Had It So Good (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 It's Too Late (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Bedroom Lies (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 I Feel Lucky (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 The Sun, Moon and Stars (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 Dance with the Tiger (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 The Moon and St. Christopher (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Listen to the Radio (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 Blue Moon with Heartache (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 talk (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 Quittin' Time (Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash & Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V7jCFHRB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/g1lc5iPb7BoZWu2/file

For the cover art, I took a screenshot from the YouTube video of this concert that I mentioned above. It's not an ideal cover, esp. since the quality is rather low-res, but I figured it was important to use a picture of all three of the stars together, and I couldn't find any images of them together outside of that video. (By the way, Carpenter is on the left, Cash is in the middle, and Griffith is on the right.)

In February, 2025, I decided to completely replace the cover image, after deciding it was too dark and blurry. I took a different screenshot from the YouTube video. Then I used the Krea AI program to improve it a bit.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Britain, 10-21-1993

Mary Chapin Carpenter has been known as a folky singer songwriter type for a long time. But for the first half of the 1990s she was considered a country rock artist. For a long time, I was looking for an excellent sounding concert from those years. I finally found one, which only started being traded as a bootleg a few weeks ago. In this concert, she played with a fully band, and frequently rocked out. Normally, I'm all for mellow acoustic stuff, but in her case I wish she would rock a lot more.

This concerts dates to 1993. That's a significant time for her, because her "Come On Come On" album released the year before was the peak of her popularity, selling four million copies in the US. It has no less than seven hit singles on the country charts, and she plays most of those here. 

This concert was recorded for a live radio broadcast in Britain. As such, it's professionally recorded. There was one snag though. Apparently, it was edited down to fit into an hour long time slot. So there probably were some missed songs, as well as some missed banter between songs. 

However I made up for that a bit because it turns out there actually were two concerts recorded for live radio broadcast in Britain just two days apart, one in Glasgow and the other in Edinburgh. The same bootlegger recorded them both off the radio. I've compared the two shows, and found two songs played in Edinburgh that weren't played in Glasgow. So I've added those two to the end. If you include those songs, the concert totals an hour and ten minutes. That's not far off from the typical concert length of her musical genre at the time, which I would guess at an hour and twenty minutes to an hour and thirty minutes. So if there is some missing music (and there probably is), at least it's not that much.

01 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 I'm Going Out Tonight (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 Rhythm of the Blues (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Read My Lips (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 How Do (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Down at the Twist and Shout (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 I Take My Chances (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Hearts in Her Eyes (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 Party Doll (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15282390/MaryChapC_1993_RyalCncertHallGlasgwBritain__10-21-1993_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in 1993.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA, 7-3-1995

I think it's strange that Mary Chapin Carpenter has never released a live album. But there were to be one, I'd be most interested in hearing one from her mid-1990s commercial peak. Unfortunately, when it comes to bootlegs, there are virtually no soundboards or radio shows from that time period. However, I did find one concert that's worthy, and that's what's presented here. It's the audio from her live DVD, called "Jubilee: Live at Wolf Trap."

The good news is this is a professionally recorded concert from the weirdly named venue "The Barns at Wolf Trap." (I gather "The Barns" is in front for clarification, because there's more than one concert arena at Wolf Trap.) But there's a big downside to using the audio from this DVD: instead of just presenting the entire concert, there usually were interludes between songs that cut to clips of her being interviewed at a different date and location. Even worse, a couple of songs actually have dialogue over the music. One of those was a duet between her and Shawn Colvin that wasn't from the concert at all. Another, "Jubilee," is a backstage performance. So I don't feel bad losing those, since neither of them actually were a part of the concert.

But there's one more song, "Stones in the Road," that's all messed up. It started with some talking over the song, then switched to a duet version of Carpenter and Joan Baez in a different location. Then, about a minute and a half in, it switched to the version played at Wolf Trap. But even then, during an instrumental solo section, there was more talking over the music. So I found a different live version, the one released on the "Party Doll" album, and used that for the first couple of minutes, then morphed it into the Wolf Trap version for the second half of the song. The arrangements were pretty much identical since the two versions were performed only a few months apart, so I don't think you'll notice the switch.

The other big problem with the DVD audio was that the editors were quick to cut away from the songs as soon as they finished. So there's virtually no talking between songs. To fix the very short audience applause, I used the few songs where there was longer applause and copied and pasted that into the brief applause for the other songs. I was careful to match the volume of the end of the clapping of one song with the start of the next one.

Now, after those edits, this should sound like a normal concert, except one in which she hardly said anything between songs. In a way that;s a bummer, but it means the concert has no wasted time whatsoever.

If you enjoy Mary Chapin Carpenter's most popular albums from the 1990s, this is the concert for you. She plays pretty much all of her hits, as well as her other most popular songs. That's so much the case that this could easily double as the track list for a greatest hits album.

The album is one hour and 15 minutes long. Oh, and note she plays the songs with a band, so it's generally a lively album.

01 Why Walk When You Can Fly (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 A Keeper of Every Flame (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 The Last Word (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 John Doe No. 24 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Can't Take Love for Granted (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Down at the Twist and Shout (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Stones in the Road [Edit] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15282389/MaryChapC_1995_BrnsatWlfTrapViennaVA__7-3-1995_atse.zip.html

I could have used a photo from the DVD, but the quality wasn't that good. I also could have used a screenshot from a video of the DVD on YouTube, but that was a bit low resolution as well. So instead, I went with a photo from an unknown 1995 concert.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 2, Afton, VA, 4-26-2020 to 5-24-2020

A few weeks ago, I posted an album of songs Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. I'm happy to say that she's continued to post new songs every few days, so I now have enough for another album. May she keep on posting more songs, even after the crisis is over.

I don't have much to say that I didn't say for the first album compiling her home videos. As with that album, she usually talks a lot before starting each song. But, as I did there, I've edited her comments down a lot to make this something much more likely to stand up to repeat listens. I've cut out her repetitive comments wishing people well during the pandemic, as well as her frequent comments about her pets. Instead, I've generally just kept the parts that are relevant to the songs she plays.

Pretty much all of the songs are her originals, from all parts of her career. If you like the first album of home concerts I've posted, you'll like this one too.

One minor note: since she's posted enough songs for me to create this album, I've gone back to the previous album and renamed it "Home Concerts 1," with this being "Home Concerts 2." I've also changed the cover art accordingly.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 The Age of Miracles (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Why Shouldn't We (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 Transcendental Reunion (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Rhythm of the Blues (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 Something Tamed, Something Wild (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 John Doe No. 24 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 This Shirt (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 I Take My Chances (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MHu5jWaQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OUXi5muvDFJJm7H/file

The cover art is a screenshot from one of her videos. (I don't remember which one.) She lives with a dog, Angus, and a cat, White Kitty. At the start of each video, she typically reports on where her two pets are and what they're doing. So, given her emphasis on them, I figure it's only fitting to include a screenshot with them in it. This one only shows the dog Angus, since I don't think the two pets have made an appearance together yet. (That's not too surprising, since her cat seems to be napping 99% of the time.) Also, I widened the background on either side of her and her guitar in order to include enough vertically of the screenshot to show both her head and Angus's head.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Can't Be Here Now - Mother's Day Special Home Concert, 5-10-2020

In late March 2020, singer songwriter Billy Bragg wrote a song about the difficulty of being separated from loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. He called it "Can't Be There Today," and posted it on YouTube. From that, he came up with the idea to have a special home concert on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020, to help people celebrate that day in these weird times. The concert is named "Can't Be Here Now" as a play on that song title.

A lot of the best singer songwriter types joined in, recording one or two songs from wherever they happened to be hunkered down, and then sending in their videos. So I think this is unique in my music collection in that this "concert" has no fixed single location. Some of the musicians spoke a little bit before or after their songs, and others didn't. Most of the songs have some connection to a mother's day or at least a mother theme, but a few do not. It's a pretty loose gathering of performances, with no fixed rules.

No less than seven of the artists are ones that I've posted albums of here at this blog: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen, Joan Osborne, KT Tunstall, and Loudon Wainwright III. There are some other big names for this type of music as well, such as Bragg, Steve Earle, Rufus Wainwright, and Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. I have to confess that I wasn't that familiar with the others, but hopefully if you listen to this you'll discover some new artists, just as I have.

Since this is a collection of home recorded videos, the audio quality is variable. I did my best to adjust the volume and improve the mix whenever I could. The result is pretty good overall. But there were a couple of significant problems I couldn't fix. Valerie June recorded her song in the great outdoors. That looked nice on video, but late in the song a big gust of wind came along and blew on the microphone for about thirty seconds, rendering that part of the song unlistenable. Luckily, it was just a repeat of the chorus, so I was able to salvage the song by editing that part out. Some of her talking had to be cut out due to more wind.

Also, the Indigo Girls played their best known song "Closer to Fine." But the vocals of the lead vocalist Emily Saliers was way down in the mix compared to the guitar and the other vocalist Amy Ray. I couldn't do anything to fix that, so it's a rather unusual version.

The concert is nearly two hours long. If you don't like some of the artists and/or songs, you can edit your version down to just the ones you do like, and you'll probably still have a fairly lengthy album.

Oh, and by the way, I just posted the fourth of Norah Jones's home concert albums a day ago. It turns out I missed including one song and got the name of another song wrong. So if you've downloaded that one, I recommend you do it again, now that I've fixed those things.

01 Can't Be There Today (Billy Bragg)
02 The Sunken Lands (Rosanne Cash)
03 talk (Fink)
04 My Love's Already There (Fink)
05 Buckets of Rain (Joan Osborne)
06 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
07 White Winos (Loudon Wainwright III)
08 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
09 Oedipus Rex (Loudon Wainwright III)
10 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
11 talk (Todd Snider)
12 Enjoy Yourself (Todd Snider)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Late for Your Life (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
16 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
17 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
18 talk (Andrew Bird)
19 What Shall I Feel My Love (Andrew Bird)
20 talk (KT Tunstall)
21 I Want You Back (KT Tunstall)
22 talk (KT Tunstall)
23 Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)
24 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 I Am the Light of This World (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 talk (Amy Helm)
27 Sing to Me (Amy Helm)
28 talk (Amy Helm)
29 Yakety Yak (Amy Helm)
30 talk (Mountain Goats)
31 Love Cuts the Strings (Mountain Goats)
32 talk (Mountain Goats)
33 talk (Steve Earle)
34 Devil's Right Hand (Steve Earle)
35 talk (Stella Donnelly)
36 Season's Greetings (Stella Donnelly)
37 Hammer (Shovels & Rope)
38 This Ride (Shovels & Rope)
39 talk (Joseph Arthur)
40 The Movies (Joseph Arthur)
41 The Day the Politicians Died (Stephin Merritt)
42 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
43 Peaceful Afternoon (Rufus Wainwright)
44 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
45 Tired of America (Rufus Wainwright)
46 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
47 talk (Valerie June)
48 Sadie [Edit] (Valerie June)
49 talk (Valerie June)
50 talk (Hamilton Leithauser)
51 The Garbage Men (Hamilton Leithauser)
52 talk (Indigo Girls)
53 Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)
54 talk (Billy Bragg)
55 I Keep Faith (Billy Bragg)
56 talk (Billy Bragg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iRd7bh6y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/DKNPmhRGcnJp6vL/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/eB76H

The video of the entire concert is on YouTube, if you want to watch it as well as hear it. (Just search for key words in the title.) So I could have used screenshots from that. However, if I did that, I would have to favor some artists over others, since there's no way I could fit them all in without having them look tiny. So instead I used the playbill that was promote the show. I made some changes, including squishing the entire thing horizontally to make it fit into a square space. I also redid the names of the artists, since there were about four of them that joined in late and so didn't get mentioned. But there's all mentioned here.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 1, Afton, VA, 3-18-2020 to 4-22-2020

Here's a home concert from Mary Chapin Carpenter. Actually, it's not a concert per se. But starting in March 2020, she began posting a new song performed in the kitchen of her house every few days. I've gathered them up and I'm presenting them as if they were one continuous concert. This album is an hour long. 

Carpenter is very talkative in the videos she's been posting lately. In fact, there's often two or three minutes of talking before each song starts. I made the editorial decision to cut most of that out, because I don't think it stands up to repeated listening. One problem is that she repeats herself a lot. For instance, each video usually begins by welcoming back the listener to what she calls the "songs from home" series. Then she almost always describes the current whereabouts of her dog and cat. (Her dog often is with her in the video while her cat is usually taking a nap.) She also usually makes some encouraging comments about the virus, advising people to wash their hands and "stay mighty" and so forth. She frequently comments on the feedback she's received on her past videos and well as requests for new songs.

A lot of that would be interesting to hear once, but not multiple times. So, generally speaking, I've cut it all out except when she directly comments about the song she's about to play. That usually reduces her talking from two to three minutes before each song to an average of about half a minute. If you want to hear the full versions, just check out her videos on YouTube.

One tricky aspect of posting these home concerts is figuring out where they're being recorded. I did some Googling and found out that Carpenter's house is in Afton, Virginia, so I assume that's where this has taken place.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Edinburgh (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Soul Companion (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 This Is Love (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Jubilee (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 The Blue Distance (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Don't Need Much to Be Happy (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Halley Came to Jackson (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 Far from Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 Chasing What's Already Gone (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 The Things that We Are Made Of (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
23 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
24 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6gG4ocK7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tGsY5OsXMm90tUJ/file

The cover art photo is a screenshot taken from one of her videos. She looks like that in pretty much all of them, standing at the same spot in her kitchen and wearing a cap.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Almost Home - Non-Album Tracks (1999)

I'm very puzzled by what the heck happened to Mary Chapin Carpenter's career in the late 1990s. She had hit albums in 1992, 1994, and 1996... but then she didn't release another album of all-new material until 2001. There was a greatest hits album with a few new songs on it in 1999, but that was it. Her career momentum was stalled, and she hasn't had a gold record since.

As this stray tracks album shows, she had plenty of quality songs from 1999 alone for an album that year. (And that's not even including a dive into the studio vaults.) Furthermore, that's on top of another stray tracks album covering 1996 to 1998 that I previously posted here. I think this is a strong album that compares well with her official 1990s albums, and could have had some hits.

Three of the songs here are from that 1999 greatest hits album I mentioned above, "Party Doll." Another is from a various artists compilation. The rest all come from concert bootlegs (with good, but not excellent, sound quality). Most of those appear to be originals. It's a real shame that she hasn't officially released these songs in any form. I especially like it when she shows her humor on funny songs like "If I Were a Diva" (also known as "The Diva Song"). But she's kept pretty much all the songs of that type unreleased, though I've included a couple of previous stray tracks albums posted here.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, she hasn't had as many non-album tracks since the 1990s, at least that I know about. So I still haven't been able to put together enough material for another album after this one, heading into the early 2000s. But hopefully I'll come across more material in the future.

01 Almost Home (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Bells Are Ringing (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 I Belong to You (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 These Are the Things that Matter (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 Leave It All Behind (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 No Fear (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 My Love Will Not Let You Down (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 If I Were a Diva [The Diva Song] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 It Works (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Wherever You Are (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Party Doll [Ballad Version] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264443/MaryChapC_1999_AlmostHme_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo comes from. But I found it on a website dated to 2001, so it could be from that year or a couple of years prior to that.