{"id":24085,"date":"2022-12-02T05:30:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T10:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24085"},"modified":"2022-10-19T16:15:40","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T20:15:40","slug":"carrie-newcomer-we-can-do-this-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/02\/carrie-newcomer-we-can-do-this-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Newcomer: “We can do this together.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Singer, songwriter, musician, author, poet, educator, activist. Those are just some of the ways to describe Carrie Newcomer. With 20 solo albums to her credit \u2013 including her latest<\/span><\/span><\/span> release Until Now<\/i> \u2013 the Michigan-born artist engages in myriad creative endeavors. And they\u2019re all in line with her deeply-held beliefs about the importance of human connections.<\/p>\n

Inspired and informed by what Newcomer calls the \u201cgreat disruption\u201d that defined 2020 and beyond \u2013 pandemic, civil unrest and widespread division \u2013 Until Now<\/i> is designed in part as a palliative response, a mediation on ways to move forward. \u201cWe\u2019ve been living in a time that felt outside<\/i> of time,\u201d Newcomer observes.<\/p>\n

The first lyric line of the album\u2019s first song, \u201cA Long Way Up\u201d opens with the phrase, \u201csharing the great unraveling.\u201d And Newcomer acknowledges that these times are tough for nearly everyone. \u201cBut in great disruption is the possibility of change, of even transformation,\u201d she insists. \u201cSometimes human beings can get stuck in our ways. There’s a wheel that’s turning in our society and in our lives, and we just kind of go along with it until something big disrupts it.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And that disruption can provide an opportunity to take stock, to as ourselves important questions. Newcomer mentions a few questions that she has posed to herself. \u201cWhere are the holes in our social safety net? What might I do differently in my personal life? What can I let go of? What do I really want to embrace in my life? What matters? What doesn’t really matter at all?\u201d <\/span><\/span>Until Now<\/i><\/span><\/span> is a musical and lyrical exploration of those and other big ideas. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But a record album \u2013 even one as richly expressive as Newcomer\u2019s 20<\/span><\/span>th<\/span><\/sup><\/span> release \u2013 isn\u2019t enough to communicate everything that the artist has on her mind. Concurrent with the album\u2019s release, Newcomer presented <\/span><\/span>Until Now: New Poems<\/i><\/span><\/span>, the third book of poetry from this prolific individual. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

She thinks of her poetry as distinct from her song lyrics. \u201cI write a lot of poems and short stories and character studies, and often my songs will start from those writings,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut sometimes a poem is a poem, and it wasn’t meant to be a song.\u201d Other times, her poems are a step on the journey toward a song. \u201cI don’t always know when I start to write whether a particular piece of poetry will become a song, or it will be a poem,\u201d she admins. \u201cBut it becomes clear when I finish.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Newcomer emphasizes that there\u2019s no one-size-fits-all approach to creativity. She says that when she teaches songwriting workshops, she shares this with those gathered: \u201cIf you line up ten songwriters and ask them their [creative] process, they\u2019ll give you 14 ways.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A highlight of Carrie Newcomer\u2019s 2016 album <\/span><\/span>The Beautiful Not Yet<\/i><\/span><\/span> is the song \u201cYou Can Do This Hard Thing.\u201d That tune has taken on new meaning during the pandemic. When her concert tour schedule was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, she sought ways to respond to the new challenges. \u201cI was home and looking at how everyone was trying to negotiate a moment of great change,\u201d she says. The song \u2013 a signature tune of hers \u2013 seemed especially apropos for the times. So Newcomer threw out a suggestion on her Facebook page. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c‘Hey everybody,\u201d she recalls announcing. \u201cJust put earphones in, sing to this song, and send me the video. I’m going to do a community project where all of us sing to one another!\u201d The response was overwhelming. \u201cI started getting all these videos, and they were wonderful,\u201d Newcomer says. Drawing on her art school background, she edited together a video using as many of the crowd-sourced clips as possible. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The video looks a bit like a Zoom conference, featuring people of all ages, all walks of life. Some are at their computers, wearing headsets and singing along. One is reciting the lyrics in sign language. Most are individuals, but a few have entire families huddled together. A few hold their pets. \u201cIn just about every section of the video there’s something really touching,\u201d Newcomer says. The simple beauty of the song and the heartfelt participation of scores of people all but guarantees that the viewer will be in tears within the first minute. \u201cIt was so generous of [the participants] to let me know the song landed well and safely in their hearts,\u201d Newcomer says.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just astounding, touching, intimate, fun, funny, and heartfelt,\u201d she says. \u201cThere were many times in the creation of it that would make me a little teary: \u2018Oh gosh, people are amazing!\u2019\u201d The finished video was shared on Facebook. \u201cIt was helpful for me to have this community of folks saying, \u2018We can do this, and we can do this <\/span><\/span>together<\/i><\/span><\/span>,\u2019\u201d Newcomer says. \u201cBecause we really <\/span><\/span>are<\/i><\/span><\/span> all in this together.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As facile as Carrie Newcomer is with turns of phrase that get to the heart of her big thoughts, to explain her fundamental goal as a poet and songwriter, she reaches for a quote from one of her favorite environmental writer. \u201cTerry Tempest Williams said, \u2018Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.\u2019 And that\u2019s really my approach.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Singer, songwriter, musician, author, poet, educator, activist. Those are just some of the ways to describe Carrie Newcomer. With 20 solo albums to her credit \u2013 including her latest release […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,41],"tags":[4984],"class_list":["post-24085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-interview","tag-carrie-newcomer","cat-30-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24087,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24085\/revisions\/24087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}