Corb Lund – HORSE SOLDIER HORSE SOLDIER!

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Mary Chapin Carpenter – THE CALLING

Mary Chapin Carpenter’s The Calling is her first release for Rounder Records. The Calling is unique among a body of work that has earned Mary Chapin Carpenter 5 Grammy Awards and helped her sell 13 million records in the first 20 years of her career. While her writing continues to be deeply personal, this new collection of songs also unequivocally addresses issues both public and political: from the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina to religious zealotry to the trial-by-radio of the Dixie Chicks. Thematically, the album is about faith, vocation, commitment, responsibility, and the ways these are wielded for various—often, competing—agendas.

Mary Chapin Carpenter’s approach is very intimate on this CD. The Calling is Carpenter’s second co-production with pianist Matt Rollings. On The Calling, as in previous recordings, Carpenter confidently crosses boundaries of genre, incorporating elements of folk and rock as well as country into the mix. Carpenter returned to Nashville last year to record The Calling and assembled many of the same players from the Between Here and Gone sessions, along with veteran engineer Chuck Ainlay, the long-standing right-hand man to Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. The Calling is available from Rounder Records.