Between Here And Gone

Personnel includes: Mary-Chapin Carpenter (vocals, acoustic guitar); John Jennings, Eric Silver (acoustic guitar); Dean Parks (electric guitar); Dan Dugmore (steel guitar); Rob Ickes (dobro); Stuart Duncan (fiddle); David Angell (violin); Kristin Wilkinson (viola); Anthony LaMarchina (cello); Matt Rollings (keyboards); Glenn Worf (bass); Chad Cromwell (drums); Eric Darken (percussion); Garison Starr, Mac MacAnally (background vocals).
Producers: Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Matt Rollings.
Recorded at The Sound Kithchen and Sound Stage, Nashville, Tennessee between August and December 2003.
If Mary Chapin Carpenter had come up in an earlier musical era, she would have been part of the 1970s singer/songwriter movement a la James Taylor, Carly Simon, etc. However, the '80s and '90s found traditional songwriting values more welcome under the contemporary-country umbrella, so that's where Carpenter has blossomed. Granted, there's probably as much twang on BETWEEN HERE AND GONE as on most other early-2000s country albums, which is to say merely some. Full of introspective ballads that mix pithy lyrical observations with an organic, acoustic/electric Americana feel, the album presents a thoughtful woman with as many worries in her life as joys, alternately mourning death (the title track) and celebrating life ("Beautiful Racket"). Whether her sound is more at home in Nashville or New York is entirely up to the listener.