Carrie Newcomer February 19th, 2005

I have been a Carrie Newcomer fan ever since I heard her song "Playing with Matches" on the 1994 Putumayo collection, Shelter: The Best of Contemporary Singer-Songwriters.  Since then, I have collected seven of her CDs, and I love every one of them.  So, hosting Carrie is a thrill for me!  And, based on the response so far, there are a lot of Newcomer fans in the area who are equally excited.

Acoustic Avenues is a small venue -- we can only hold 50 people.  In order to avoid crowd control problems, we insist on advance reservations.  Since I am expecting a sell-out, you should make your reservations early and follow up with your contribution to confirm your reservations as soon as possible.  Note if you choose the PayPal option, your reservation will be immediately confirmed.

Here are some more comments from the latest Bio at Carrie's website:

Describing Carrie Newcomer as a singer-songwriter is a little like saying Noah was a boat-builder.  So much goes unsaid when we fall to easy labels.  Perhaps it takes another like-minded artist to present a fuller vision.

"To my mind -- a writer's mind -- Carrie Newcomer is much more than a musician," says best-selling author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver.  "She's a poet, storyteller, snake-charmer, good neighbor, friend and lover, minister of the wide-eyed gospel of hope and grace."

That's a little better, a little closer to the truth.  In getting to the heart of Carrie Newcomer and her art, it's perhaps best to start just there -- her heart.

"I just have a great love and passion for creating music, for writing, for telling a story," says Newcomer, who makes no effort to separate her art from the other parts of her life -- such as her teaching, her family, her activism, and her spirituality.  "Sometimes I think you don't choose your art form; it chooses you and it doesn't let you go because that's who you are.  I really believe we are most effective in the world when we're doing something that is by nature what we love and who we are.  That's when we give our best.  Life is short and I want to give the best of what I am."

You can get Carrie's music online at Amazon.com: