Carrie Newcomer - Music and Career

Music and Career

In the 1980s, Newcomer was a member of the pop-folk and acoustic group Stone Soup which produced two albums. Newcomer was the groups main songwriter, their lead vocalist and she played dulcimer and guitar.

After leaving Stone Soup, she released her first album called Visions and Dreams. Vision and Dreams was originally released on Windchime records and then later re-released with two additional tracks by Rounder records. Between 1993-2010, she released twelve additional albums on Philo/Rounder. Her range of causes, activities, collaborations and philosophies significantly influences her music.

Her album Betty's Diner: The Best of Carrie Newcomer was released in 2004. It contained three new songs, plus, "what's held up for me what songs have become old friends, and what songs are requested often". The title track started out as a short story which Newcomer wrote while on the road, she then decided to incorporate the story into a song.

In 2009 Newcomer traveled to India as a cultural ambassador for The American Center and worked with students of the American Embassy School in New Delhi. While in India, Newcomer performed concerts organized by the U.S. State Department including those in the cities of Chennai & Trivandrum. After the first week in Delhi, she embarked a tour schedule that included concerts and performance in the evenings and working with community service groups during the days. Asked if the trip would affect her music, she said " “It already has. But I can’t write about India in the same way I can’t write about world peace. It’s too big. The way I generally approach songwriting is to tell a story in a moment as a way of talking about something much bigger. It’s the idea that we don’t remember days, we remember moments. We live moments......We live in an information culture. We’re getting so much information all the time from computers, BlackBerrys, cell phones, Twitter. This is about choosing to simplify, peeling back all the layers of distraction to find the heart of what really matters day to day, moment to moment. It’s not an album with a message. I don’t do messages. I’m not selling anything. But I do ponder this idea of the moment, being very present in your life."

In 2011 Newcomer returned to India as a cultural ambassador for The American Center and worked with students of the American Embassy School in New Delhi, the The American School Bombay, and The International School Chennai. While in India, Newcomer performed concerts organized by the U.S. State Department and visited community service projects and facilitated workshops.

In 2011, following her 2011 trip to India, she released the album, Everything is Everywhere, on Available Light Records which featured Amjad Ali Khan and his sons, Amaan and Ayaan on traditional Indian instruments. The profits of "Everything is Everywhere" benefit Interfaith Hunger Initiative In the article "Carrie Newcomer’s cool fusion of East and West hooks listeners" Firstpost (Mumbai, India) identified Amjad Ali Khan and his sons, Amaan and Ayaan as "three of the best sarod players in the world". With the music in this collaboration albm, Newcomer said that her objective was "to create songs that were based in western song form, but would integrate and preserve the power, depth and energy of Indian music. I did not want to create western songs, add a tabla and call it fusion."

Kindred Spirits: A collection is scheduled for release in November 2012. It includes two previously unreleased songs, two songs from her hunger benefit project (Everything is Everywhere) featuring Indian classical sarod performers Amjad Ali Khan, Ayaan and Amaan Ali Khan, two previously unreleased live recordings, and a compilation of other songs.