Mary Chapin Carpenter - Opening Act - Non-Album Tracks (1987-1992)

Another artist I like is Mary Chapin Carpenter. I fear that she's getting forgotten as time passes, because she had her peak years of success in the 1990s, and her sales and profile has gone way down since then. To be honest, I'm not such a big fan of her material since then, but in the 1990s, she was firing on all cylinders, deservedly selling millions of records. People called her music "country," but really it was an interesting mix of country, rock, folk, and/or pop. I recommend most of the stuff she did back then, but especially her 1992 album "Come On, Come On."

As good as her albums were at that time, it turns out she left all sorts of great material fall by the wayside. So here's the first of several stray tracks albums I've made. This first one goes way back to 1987, which was the year of her very first album. Personally, I feel her first two albums, "Hometown Girl" in 1987, and "State of the Heart" in 1989, were hit and miss, as her songwriting ability grew by leaps and bounds in that era, finally reaching a peak in the early 1990s.

But those albums would have been a lot better had they included more of the songs on this stray tracks collection. All but the last two are still officially unreleased by her in any form, and those last two are from very obscure various artists collections.

One side of her music that rarely made it to record is her humorous side. Two songs included here, "Ain't No Cowboys in New Jersey" and "Opening Act," are very amusing, and obvious crowd pleasers, so it's a mystery why she never released them. Those two are originals, and most of the rest of the songs are too. (I think "April Rain" and one or two others are covers of relatively unknown songs.) Those are generally in an acoustic mode. She explained as part of a bootleg recording that I didn't include here that many of these songs were not usually played in concert because she was expected to play more lively songs, and the band didn't like it when they essentially weren't needed for certain songs. Luckily, she did play them occasionally, and they got recorded by bootleggers with very good sound quality.

To be honest, I'd rather listen to this album than either of her first two studio albums, even though most of the songs are from the same time period.

01 Ain't No Cowboys in New Jersey (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 April Rain (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 That Place Where Your Memories Are Strong (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Hard Times in Lonely Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 I'm Not Alone Anymore (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Opening Act (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 None but the Rain (John Carroll & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Wall 'Round Your Heart (Mary Chapin Carpenter with Kathy Mattea & Vince Gill)
09 Jenny Dreamed of Trains (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Dreamland (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264435/MaryChapC_1987-1992_OpenngAct_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a promotional photo of Carpenter that dates to 1992.