Carrie Newcomer

Known for emotionally intimate songs that explore the personal, the political, and the spiritual with compassion, insight, and wit, singer and songwriter Carrie Newcomer became a mainstay on the contemporary folk scene in the '90s. With her warm yet assertive voice guiding her songs, her music has been rooted in acoustic folk from the beginning, while also embracing elements of folk-rock and adult alternative pop, as on 1994's An Angel at My Shoulder, the album that confirmed she was an artist to watch. Eager to enlighten as well as entertain, Newcomer's music is nearly always wed to a thoughtful message, though her work is strong enough to engage those not necessarily looking for the altruism typified by 2010's intelligent and well-crafted Before & After. 2021's Until Now focused on change and transformation in a difficult time, and 2023's A Great Wild Mercy explored similar themes of the search for unity and compassion in an era of conflict. Carrie Newcomer was born in Dowagiac, Michigan on May 25, 1958. When she was five years old, her family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where she grew up. Newcomer was in her teens when she began writing songs and performing at coffeehouses, festivals, and benefit shows. After completing high school, she attended Ball State University and Goshen College before receiving her degree in visual art and education from Purdue University; she took five months off from her studies to teach art at an elementary school in Costa Rica. While Newcomer created visual art in several mediums, she developed a passion for music, and performed with several folk groups, including the Indiana-based Stone Soup, with whom she released a pair of albums in the 1980s. In addition to singing lead and playing guitar and dulcimer, Newcomer was also Stone Soup's primary songwriter, and after the group split up, she launched a solo career. Newcomer made her solo recording debut in 1991 with Visions and Dreams, originally released on Windchime Records, the small label she founded to release Stone Soup's recordings. The Rounder-distributed folk label Philo Records signed her and released An Angel at My Shoulder in 1994. The album received positive reviews in the music press, and a second Philo album, The Bird or the Wing, came out in 1995; that same year, Philo reissued Visions and Dreams. 1996 saw the release of My Father's Only Son, and 1998's My True Name included the song "I Should Have Known Better," which would later be covered by the progressive bluegrass band Nickel Creek on 2002's This Side. Newcomer's next release, 1999's Bare to the Bone, was her first live album, with the proceeds donated to Planned Parenthood. The 2000s brought The Age of Possibility (2000) and The Gathering of Spirits (2002) before the arrival of her first compilation, 2004's Betty's Diner: The Best of Carrie Newcomer. The title track later inspired her to write a short story, and she told the tales of her characters in the songs on 2005's Regulars and Refugees; some of the tunes would later form the basis of a stage musical titled Betty's Diner, with Newcomer writing the songs and collaborating on the book with Richard K. Thomas. In 2007, she collaborated with musicians Tim Grimm, Krista Detor, and Michael White to create Wilderness Plots, a song cycle adapted from a book about the colonization of the Ohio Valley. The release was accompanied by a live concert broadcast on American Public Television. Newcomer's ninth solo studio album, The Geography of Light, was issued in 2008. It would be her last release for Philo, as she was moved to Rounder for 2010's Before and After, which included Mary Chapin Carpenter duetting on the title track. 2012's Kindred Spirits: A Collection was another anthology of highlights from her years with Philo/Rounder; it was also her final release for the label. By this time, Newcomer had already founded her own label, Available Light Records, and launched it with 2011's Everything Is Everywhere, a collaboration with Indian musicians Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan Ali Khan, and Ayaan Ali Khan. In 2011, she traveled to India to perform and teach as a cultural ambassador of the American Center. In 2014, Available Light released the album A Permeable Light, to accompany Newcomer's book A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays, also made available through Available Light. The year 2016 brought two Newcomer albums; The Slender Thread was a collaboration with Scottish guitarist Ian Melrose recorded for the German audiophile label Stockfish Records. Later in the year, Newcomer released The Beautiful Not Yet via Available Light. It featured several songs initially created for a collaborative project with author Parker J. Parker. Newcomer and Parker worked together to create a presentation that combined music and spoken word titled What We Need Is Here: Hope, Hard Times and the Human Possibility. That same year, she also published a second book of poems and essays, The Beautiful Not Yet. A solo Newcomer returned in 2019 with her 14th studio album, The Point of Arrival. 2021 saw Newcomer publish two books – Until Now: New Poems, and Impossible Until It's Not: A Carrie Newcomer Songbook. 2021 also saw the release of a new album; Until Now, which shared it's title with her poetry collection, was a set of songs reflecting the need for positive unity in a time of cultural unraveling. It was released as the world was struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the isolation brought on by lockdown, the flood of negative information in the media, and the need for compassion and sincere communications informed the songwriting for Newcomer's next LP, 2023's A Great Wild Mercy. Offstage, she is a noted activist and educator who devotes her energies to a variety of charitable and progressive causes, including the Interfaith Hunger Initiative, Literacy Volunteers of America, and the American Friends Service Committee.
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